The Eternal Agitator

(3 of 4)

But there are other explanations for Arafat's abandonment of the peace process. At the beginning, he was the lead cheerleader for Oslo among the Palestinians. They were never enthusiastic about the accords because they fell far short of the minimum condition most of them required: a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That was plainly the bait Oslo offered, but it was not guaranteed. First the Palestinians would have to submit to a test, a period of autonomy. Arafat, aging and struggling for relevance in the early 1990s, was desperate for a toehold on the future. During a heated meeting with reluctant associates in Tunis, he thumped on the table and boomed, "I cannot be excluded from this historical process."

It became clear in time, though, that Arafat failed to understand how weak a deal he had made. In an interview with TIME after the first Oslo agreement, he boasted that Palestinian "independence" would soon begin in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. When a reporter noted that the agreement provided for limited self-rule, not sovereignty, Arafat shot back, "Who told you that? It has to be under my control. I know what I have signed." Associates confirmed later that Arafat had not actually read the document.

He came to learn the limitations of his power after he arrived in the Palestinian territories following an absence of a quarter-century. His hard-line critics remarked that he had been reduced to the status of "governor of Gaza," responsible for such matters as trash collection. Arafat, who loved power, didn't think much of governance and was ill suited to it. It was one thing to be the icon of Palestinian aspirations, another to manage an economy, deliver health care and pave roads. On top of those challenges, Arafat and his P.L.O. had to compete for popular standing with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, which violently opposed any compromise with Israel. And the peace process proved harder and harder to sell since even in the early days of relative goodwill between the Israelis and Arafat's Palestinian Authority, every expansion of self-rule promised in Oslo was hard won and overdue.

Still, Arafat continued to commit himself, at least verbally, to peace. He wept when Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister who signed Oslo with him, was assassinated in 1995. He beamed in 1996 when he shook hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though the hawkish Israeli leader had sworn earlier never to take Arafat's hand.

But Arafat couldn't make the final leap of faith. To reach an agreement with Israel on a Palestinian state, Arafat knew, would require deep compromises on what have become almost sacred demands among his people: that traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, including Islamic holy sites in the Old City, become part of Palestine and that Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war that followed Israel's creation be allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel. At the time of Camp David in 2000, Arafat's "obsession," an aide said, was that if he made those concessions, he would be remembered by his people as a traitor, perhaps even assassinated, as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was after he made peace with Israel. Better to leave the final accommodations to reality to a future leader. Better to die a revolutionary.