MICHAEL WIDLA_NSKI
Jewish Renaissance .Media

Jerusalem

0

ne is a defender of Syria and a founder of
Fatah, a violence-prone Palestinian organi-
zation. Another commands the Palestinian
`'security"' forces on the West Bank and has
actively sought to make himself known as a leader of
the new intifada (uprising) against Israel. A third,
based in Gaza, runs counter-intelligence activities. A
fourth is a polished diplomat who has eschewed ter-
rorism in favor of diplomacy as the route to a
Palestinian state. And a fifth, also an activist for talks
with Israel, has built a political base for himself in
the Palestinian legislature.
Each of these men — Farouk Qaddoumi, Jibril
Rajoub, Muhammad Dahlan, Mahmoud Abbas and
Ahmad Qreia — would like to be the leader of the
next generation of Palestinians when Yasser Arafat's 30-
Year dominance of Palestinian life comes to an end.
Many Israelis and Western experts believe that
Arafat, who is 72 and in shaky health, is losing his
grip on his people, partly because of the corruption
and ineffectiveness of his government and partly
because of the popularity of the most militant terror-
ist leaders. Thus, the question of Arafat's successor
has taken on a new urgency.
But Arafat, like most Arab leaders for centuries,
has never designated a successor. And the process by
which one will be chosen will almost certainly be
worked out either in secrecy — or in blood.
Who the next Palestinian leader will be and how he
will be chosen is an issue of vital importance to Israeli
leaders, most of whom have concluded over the last
11 months of violence that Arafat can never bring
himself to reach a true peace accord with the Jewish
state. In public, many say that Israel has to deal with
Arafat — better the devil they know — but in private,
thoughtful leaders are weighing the options for a
number of possible scenarios and outcomes if and
when Palestinian leadership changes hands.
"I don't know if the person who comes after Arafat
will be more convenient for us," says Yossi Beilin, the
former Israeli justice minister who, along -with
Shimon Peres, crafted the Israeli-Palestinian negotia-
tions culminating in "the Oslo Accords."
But Sylvan Shalom, Israel's finance minister and
the man seen as one of the leading powers inside
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Parry, says "the
question is, Can Arafat continue in his position at a
time V,- hen he's responsible for terror?'" That Shalom
— certainly no hard-liner — is now publicly raising
the issue of driving Arafat from office is only one of
the most glaring signs that Arafat's days in power
may be numbered.
As escalating
„. Palestinian terror has been matched
by Israeli "liquidations" of Palestinian terrorists, there
are more signs that Sharon may be more open to
action that would shorten Arafat's days in power.
Sharon has been meeting with former Prime
Minister Ehud Barak, and Barak has been widely fea-
tured in the Israeli and American press as saving that
Arafat is no longer "a partner for peace." If and when
Sharon re-shuffles his cabinet — perhaps substitut-
ing Barak for Peres, it could signal that Arafat's days
AFTER ARAFAT on page 20

Getting Rid Of Arafat

he Israeli security estab-
lishment, in an unusual
display of consensus,
has closed ranks behind
the idea that Yasser Arafat, the
leader of the Palestinian National
Authority, has become a danger to
Israel itself.
Until two months ago, Arafat
was protected by the belief of
some leading Israeli intelligence
officials that he was a force
against Palestinian terror and
total regional chaos.
But within the last few weeks,
the Israeli counter-intelligence
service, the Shin Bet (or
Shabak) abandoned that view.
In several Israeli cabinet briefin-
gs, its director, Avi Dichter, and
Israeli army generals clashed
a with Foreign Minister Shimon
a Peres, the man widely seen as
S
Arafat's guardian angel inside
the Israeli government.
Peres has told the cabinet and
the general public that we

must under no circumstances
attack Arafat." He says Arafat is
a last barrier against total chaos
within the Palestinian Authority
and a collapse into regional
instability and even a general
Arab-Israeli war.
But even colleagues from his
own Labor Party, such as Dalia
Itzik, feel uncomfortable with
Peres' frequent defenses of
Arafat and his meetings with the
Palestinian leader. This has led
to the somewhat incongruous
scene of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon periodically "rescuing"
Peres from caustic criticism
from colleagues.
Peres symbolizes left-wing
support for Sharon's national
unity government and is also
Sharon's main defense against
European critics of Israeli poli-
cies.
Of course, "getting rid of
Arafat.' does not mean having
him killed, the way five leading

A Hardy Perennial

urviving is nothing new for
'Yasser Arafat, who is 72.
In the 1980s and
early 1990s, before the
Oslo Accords, death stalked him
and his entourage like a long
afternoon shadow on a partly
cloudy day — alWays felt but not
always seen. Yet, Muhammad
Rauf al-Quda, Arafat's real name,
managed to crawl our from
under the shadow of death.
He walked away from the
Israeli siege of his Beirut head-
quarters and the destruction of
his military base in southern
Lebanon in 1982, when Prime
Minister Menachem Begin per-
sonally ordered that Arafat not
be killed by Israeli sharp-shoot-
ers who had gotten the
Palestinian leader in their sights.
He moved north, and in 1983,
he survived attempts on his life
by Syrian President Hafez Assad,
who had set up a rival Palestinian
o leader, Abu Musa, to try to liqui-

dare Arafat in northern Lebanon.
Arafat took his command post
to distant Tunisia. From there he
was taken by surprise by the
1987-88 uprising in Gaza and -the
West Bank. That intifada was led
by a new generation of local lead-
ers who were as disappointed with
Arafat's leadership as they were
angry with Israeli military rule.
Despite his surprise, Arafat not
only recovered his composure but
also his leadership role, climbing
on the intifada bandwagon back
to political prominence, watching
as his old nemesis King Hussein
(whose country he had triedto
conquer in the "Black
September" of 1970) ignomin-
iously withdrew all Jordanian
claims to the West Bank.
Even the United States
renewed its courtship of the
PLO, beginning a dialogue in
December 1988.
But in his distant base in
Tunisia, "Abu Amar" —

Hamas leaders were killed last
month. Rather, it means forcing
Arafat to flee his Palestinian ter-
ritorial base by launching an
Israeli military attack that
makes Arafat's continued direc-
tion of the Palestinian
Authority untenable.
But for many leading Israeli
officials and former officials,
this approach is like radical can-
cer surgery at a time when "less
invasive approaches" may still
be applied.
"Like it or not, Mr. Arafat is
the only Palestinian leader with
the power to curb violence and
work out an enduring cease-
fire, let alone a peace accord,"
says David Kimche, the head of
the private Council on Foreign
Relations. "It is in Israel's inter-
ests to encourage the United
States to help Mr. Arafat rise
from the ashes of his failed
intifada and ravaged economy,"
Kimche, a former director of
Israel's Foreign Ministry, wrote
in a July 6 opinion piece for the

New York Times.
— Michael Widlanski

Arafat's kunya or nickname —
was far from safe.
In the span of three years, his
two deputies and closest friends,
"Abu Iyad" (Salah Khalaf) and
"Abu Jihad" (Khalil al-Wazir),
were liquidated, the first by his
own bodyguard and the second
by Israeli commandos led by
Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon, the cur-
rent deputy army chief of staff.
And in 1991, the hand of fate
struck as Arafat's plane crashed
in the Libyan desert. Both pilots
died, but not Arafat, although
he bears scars from the incident.
Today, the septuagenarian
Abu Amar talks with a strong
tremble in his lips, and his
hands shake all the time.
Dr. Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli
Arab gynecologist who has long
been an advisor to Arafat, says
the PA leader suffers from sub-
cranial bleeding from the plane
crash, but other observers sug-
gest Arafat has Parkinson's dis-
ease and other debilitating and
life-threatening ailments.

lti

— Michael Widlanskz

8/1 7
2001

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