Arafat the leader, Arafat the friend.
Sami Moubayed
For three weeks now, I have had endless talks with Syrians and
Palestinians, from all walks of life, about the late Palestinian
leader, Yasser Arafat. I never met Arafat, yet applied for five
interviews with him, none of which ever materialized. The first was
in mid-2001, before his siege in Ramallah, during his meeting with
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Arafat had to leave London on the
day that I arrived. The next three attempts were on his scheduled
visit to Damascus, which for reasons unknown until the present,
never materialized. The last was in March 2002, during the Arab
Summit in Beirut, when both his advisor Nabil Abu Rudayneh, and
bureau chief Dr Ramzi Khury promised me that he would attend and
meet me. I went to Beirut, awaiting the Palestinian President, but
Abu Ammar never showed up. Ariel Sharon did not let him. The next
morning, Sharon invaded Ramallah and raided Arafat's compound, in
response to the peace deal proposed at the time by Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah, which was backed wholeheartedly by Arafat. Although
I never met him, I always felt close to Yasser Arafat. I always
sympathized with him. I felt that he was a friend. Yes, Yasser
Arafat was my friend. I knew I could rely on him when all else
failed in the Middle East, to keep the struggle alive. He was the
last embodiment of defiance and Arab nationalism to my generation of
Middle Easterners. I knew he would never let me down when I needed a
patriot to look up to, to believe in, and to follow. I had a lot of
admiration for my old friend, because he was a patriot. I like
patriots. Abu Ammar was a friend who never ceased to impress and
inspire me, and who never let me down. Because I considered myself a
friend, I wrote him an emotional open letter in the summer of 2002,
called "With Love and Regrets from Damascus," asking him to step
down from office, to prove to the world that he was not the problem
hindering the creation of the State of Palestine. I then retracted
my words, when they were echoed by President George W. Bush the
exact following day. I did not want my speech to resemble that of
George Bush and started to insist in my articles that Arafat must
stay in power, claiming that he was part of the solution, as Jacque
Chirac said, and not part of the problem. This article is to pay
tribute to Yasser Arafat the man, the friend, and the leader.
Arafat and I had many things in common. Both of us wanted to see
Palestine liberated. Both of us were secular. Both of us believed
that only through peace, coming after armed resistance, could
stability be achieved in the Middle East. Both of us respected the
ideals of democracy preached by the USA, and both of us were greatly
opposed to 9-11. Likewise, both were opponents of the radical
policies of the Bush White House towards the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
We found much in common to maintain our friendship. I cried on the
day Arafat was announced dead in France. I do not shed tears for
people I don't know, but I cried for Yasser Arafat. He too was
sentimental, as he was leaving Ramallah, weary with illness, he
managed to put on a brave face, and blow kisses to his people. He
knew that this was the final goodbye. He knew that he wasn't coming
back alive. That is exactly why he brought Mohammad Dahlan with him.
First, to prevent him from launching a coup d'etat in his absence,
and so that when he dies, Dahlan can use his considerable influence
with the Israelis to allow his corpse to be buried in Palestine.
This opportunity for farewell between a leader and his people is
golden, and great leaders can only dream of having a chance to bid
farewell to the masses. Nasser did not get a chance to say good-bye
in 1970, nor did Hafez al-Asad in 2000. Yet, one asks, are these
people really dead? Or, do they live on in the minds and hearts of
their peoples, and in the history of their nations that they
created? Is Nasser dead for the Egyptians? Is Khomeini dead for the
Iranians? Is De Gaulle dead for the French? Surely, the answer is
no! Twenty years from now, history will barely remember Ariel
Sharon. He was neither the founder David Ben Gurion, nor the
peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin. He lacks the military skill of Moshe Dayan,
the cunning of Menachem Begin, or the diplomacy of Golda Meir. He
will not go down in Israeli history as one of the great makers of
his country's past. Yet, Arafat will live long in Palestine. In
fact, Sharon knows only too well that Arafat "will live long--longer
certainly, than his executioner." The statement was originally used
by Libyan freedom fighter Omar al-Mukhtar in addressing his
executioner General Rudolfo Gratsiani in 1931, and is very
applicable to Arafat today, who although dead, will live longer than
Ariel Sharon. Every Arab remembers Salah al-Din, 800 years after his
death, and every Palestinian will remember Yasser Arafat.
A Palestinian friend brought to my attention the resemblance between
Arafat and Joseph the Prophet, in the much controversial poem of
Mahmud Darwish. The poem reads: "I am Joseph, father, and my
brothers do not love me. They do not want me among them. They attack
me and throw rocks at me. They want me to die so they can eulogize
me. They shut me out of your house. They kicked me out of your
fields. And they were the ones who poisoned me, oh father." Like
Joseph, Arafat was despised by his brothers in the Arab World. Like
Joseph, they tried to kill him, then hurried to his eulogy. Why do
the Arab leaders hate him? Mainly, because he wrestled the
Palestinian Cause from their control, after the fiasco of 1967,
saying that Palestine will only be liberated by the Palestinians
themselves. It was this defeated generation of Arabs that fell in
love with the Palestinian commandos who promised to achieve what
Nasser had failed to do in 1967: justice for the Arabs, and
liberation of Palestine. Arafat emerged in the 1960s from the defeat
of 1967, at a time when the world (Arabs included) had forgotten the
Palestinians. After 1967, the Arab regimes were too occupied with
their own respective defeats to mind the core of the problem:
Palestine. In 1968, Golda Mier remarked: "The Palestinians do not
exist!" Arafat showed her that they did when in March 1968, he led
the battle of Karameh against Israel and achieved victory. By
triumph, Arafat had forced his people's suffering on the world
consciousness. What is now regarded as terrorism after 9-11 was then
considered legitimate warfare, especially throughout the 1970s and
1980s. All was fair in Arafat's war, from plane high jacking, to
embassy bombing, to target assassination of Israeli diplomats. Every
spot on earth was a battlefield for the Palestinians, Arafat would
say, and every Israeli was an enemy. This, and only this, was what
made the world pay attention to the Palestinians: shock therapy! A
master of public relations, Arafat had more countries recognizing
the PLO in the late 1980s than those recognizing the State of
Israel. Arafat appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine as early as
1968, with his kuffieh neatly arranged to resemble the diamond-map
of Palestine, and told the world: "We are still here. Still alive.
Still visible to the rest of the world. And we plan on staying
around for a whole lot longer!"
Arafat received a hero's funeral in Palestine last week, matched
only by that of President Nasser in 1970. He leaves behind a legacy
of "Arafatism" that will dominate Palestinian politics for decades
to come, as strongly as Nasserism dominated Arab politics from 1970
onwards. In retrospect, however, Arafat leaves behind a legacy
greater from that of the giants with whom he is being resembled
today, prime among them being Nasser. While Nasser had a huge army
to rely on in times of war, a secret police in times of peace, and a
charisma unmatched by any leader of his generation, Arafat had
nothing. He had no real army, no dungeons to arrest his opponents
(at least, from 1965 to 1995), and in the age of mass media and
satellite TV, Arafat was a walking, talking disaster. Yet, Arafat
managed to achieve love from his people, and victory in 1968,
something that Nasser was unable to do in 1952-1970. And, Arafat did
that with such limited resources, facing the massive war machine of
Israel. Then, Arafat is resembled to Nelson Mandela. Yet also,
Arafat's struggle was greater from that of the great African leader.
While Mandela spent 28 years of his struggle in prison, Arafat spent
it in chaos and hell, amidst civil war in Jordan and Lebanon, under
siege in Beirut and Ramallah, in exile in Tunis, under shelling,
within a hostile Arab environment, always having to change colors,
and walk the tightrope between Arabs, Israelis, Americans, and
Palestinians. Mandela's prison was bearable compared to the hell
Arafat lived through for 28 years. When Mandela was released from
jail in 1990, he found a state ready for him, while Arafat had to
create it from scratch. He had no infrastructure, no economy, and no
organs of government. He had to bridge the gap between Islamists and
secularists, old-time revolutionaries from Tunis with young
residents of the Occupied Territories, radicals and peacemakers. All
of that was done single-handedly by Yasser Arafat.
Arafat was a man who could take decisions, and bear the
consequences. He would say: "Only this hand (waving his right hand),
can sign a peace treaty with Israel!" If Abu Mazen decides to make
concessions to Israel, and signed a flawed peace treaty, he would
almost certainly by killed by an extremist Palestinian. Precisely by
his death, Arafat has marked the "red lines" of Palestinian
politics. What he did not concede during his own lifetime nobody
will be able to give after his death: abandoning Jerusalem as the
capital of the State of Palestine, and the right of return for the
refugees. Arafat will continue to rule and dominate Palestinian
politics from the grave, there is no doubt about that. Likewise, Abu
Mazen has no authority over the Palestinians, nor does Abu Alaa, or
any other politician in the Occupied Territories. In fact, compared
to Arafat, they lack any skills in stage acting, and are very
colorless figures. As Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist and
Arafat friend wrote: "If you are a Palestinian in Jenin with a
rifle, and you hear their names (Abu Mazen and Abu Alaa), your
reaction is: 'Who are those guys anyway? Who are they to tell me
what to do?' There authority will be superficial." Today, people
might be lining up in rank and file behind them, in mourning their
leader and to show the world that the Palestinian front is united,
but the moment any of these leaders decides to take action vis-à-vis
peace, his authority will collapse. Khalid Meshal, the only living
senior leader of Hamas, once told me that "Yasser Arafat cannot be
discredited nor can his role in the Palestinian struggle be
forgotten or ignored." In reference to Sharon's December 2001
decision to cease all contact with the PLO leader and declare him
irrelevant, Khalid Meshal was clearly not pleased, believing that
these statements were an insult to someone who for long has been a
symbol for Palestine. Although on the surface Arafat seemed to
quarrel with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PPFLP and DFLP, at the end of
the day, they shared a same cause and identical objective. And they
listened to Arafat. The world remembers that in 1999-2000, during
the first year of Ehud Barak's term in office, Israel enjoyed a full
year of peace where not one act of violence was recorded against it,
mainly, because Arafat wanted to portray the Palestinians to the
post-Netanyahu leader of Israel as serious partners in the peace
process. Also, while post-Arafat leaders of Palestine get around in
black-tinted automobiles, and are always surrounded by heavy
security, Arafat always showed up with the masses. While they wear
Western suites, and are always ironed, neat, and clean-shaved,
looking like leaders of Switzerland or Norway, Yasser Arafat had the
looks of a resistance leader. Scruffy, always in khaki military
uniform, and always with a revolver buckled on his side, he was the
perfect mirror of his people's image, revolution, and resistance. In
Jordan, he used to have lunch with his troops in their barracks,
sleep in their camps, and spend quality time with them. In Beirut,
he used to join them in their weddings, funerals, and daily life.
Every single Palestinian I know has some story to tell about his/her
encounter with Yasser Arafat. When Israeli shelling became terrible
in the Lebanese Civil War, Arafat would flee his place of residence,
and hide at the homes of ordinary Palestinians, knowing that he was
welcome wherever he went. A brave man, he sometimes slept so close
to Israeli bases that they wouldn't think he would be mad enough to
venture so close. Even as head of state in Ramallah and Gaza, he did
not change colors with the Palestinians. He would show up at
hospitals to visit the wounded, and in one televised encounter, bent
over to kiss the foot of an injured Palestinian boy. No leader would
do that, not even in any democracy! His critics argue that these are
theatrical stunts, no different from him donating blood to the
victims of the 9-11 attacks in New York. True, they may be stunts,
but they had a magical spell on his people.
True, Arafat was too centralized, and true, he was a narcissist,
often referring to himself in third person as "General Yasser
Arafat." Yet, walk throughout the Occupied Territories and you won't
find one statue of Yasser Arafat. He was the only head of state who
granted interviews to anyone wishing to see him. He was the only
Arab leader who went to the homes of his bodyguards to pay his
respects if a family member is dead, or a newborn is laid. During
his interviews, he let his aides interrupt him, help him with ideas,
and even, correct his English. Had a presidential aid done that in
Baghdad, Saddam Hussein would have had him shot. Very informal,
Arafat liked to grab his guests by the hand, to make them feel
welcome, pat them on the shoulder, kiss them, treat them with great
courtesy, and often, feed them with his own hands. "Its damned
difficult to leave Arafat without, literally, having eaten out of
his hand" remarked one British diplomat. Can you imagine Husni
Mubarak or King Abdullah doing that? A gentleman, he would bend and
kiss the hand of every lady he encountered, learning that a long
time ago from Charles de Gaulle, ranging from Madeline Albright, to
female journalists, and his secretaries. In Beirut, he would play
with little children, and offer them candy from his pockets. Arafat
led a simple life, and a Palestinian woman who knew him in Beirut
recently described his life as frugal and monastic, saying: "You
should have seen his home. It was more simple than that of any of
his junior officers. Two sofas, and a 'military bed' that was small
and rough. He enjoyed this lifestyle, and continued to live like
that when he became head of state in Ramallah." Avnery adds that
once a European reporter asked him about Arafat's hobbies, about
what he does when he is not busy with the Palestinian Cause. "I
answered that he has no hobbies, and that there is not a single
moment when is not busy with the Palestinian Cause. He has no other
life."
Final Words
I wrote about Yasser Arafat for 5 years, and never imagined that I
would write about his passing. He was too much of a myth, too much
of a living legend. Many in the Middle East, perhaps as foolishly as
me, thought that he would live another 10 years. We had every reason
to believe that. He survived the army of King Husayn in 1970, the
Syrian Army in 1976-1982, the Israeli Army in 1982 and in 2000-2004,
the Phalange Party of Lebanon in 1975-1982, along with 18
assassination attempts over the years, and an air plane crash in
1992 that nearly killed him. He lived for 40 years in the shadow of
the hangman's noose, and yet, he survived. He was then arrested at
his compound in Ramallah, and we as Arabs left him lagging there,
wasting away with age and sickness, both unable and unwilling to
help him. Our greatest mistake in this part of the world is that we
did not invest in Yasser Arafat. Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush,
the two men who claimed that Arafat was "irrelevant" in 2002, are
soon to discover that this "irrelevant" man will not re-occur during
their lifetime. This "irrelevant" man has captured the world's
attention through his death in as much as he did when he was alive.
For thirteen days, he was front page news in every media source
around the globe, from Washington to Tokyo, creating a global
emotional outburst. In looking back and saying farewell to my friend
Yasser Arafat, I can only wish that I had the chance to meet him
before his passing. Had it occurred, either in Beirut, London,
Paris, or Damascus, I would have asked many things. I would have
asked him how he believes history will judge him? I would have told
him that I think he was a great leader, and that he did something
for his people that no other Arab leader has done, not even Nasser.
I would have told him not to worry, and to smile in his final hour,
since although he did not achieve his dream of a state in Palestine,
it would surely be created sometime in the future. At least,
hopefully, in our lifetime, the generation of Arabs who grew up
under Yasser Arafat's towering influence. I would say "farewell
leader, mentor, gentleman, friend!"
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
Damascus,
Syria.
November 17, 2004.