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Arafat failed to meet challenge of peace

by davd c. rapoport

Former terrorists win Nobel Peace Prizes more often than one thinks. Yasser Arafat followed Israel’s Menachem Begin, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela as a recipient. At the award ceremony in 1994, Arafat described his violence as “an adventure, and peace as a challenge.” But as events later showed, he was the only one of the four who ultimately failed to meet that challenge.

No terrorist has ever achieved his ultimate political objective. Since the 1870s, hundreds of campaigns have been fought; only three achieved victorious settlements, albeit partial ones. Michael Collins (Ireland), Begin (Israel) and Georges Grivas (Cyprus) each got much less than they fought for.

Complete revolutionary victories occurred, but significantly, terror was either absent or combined with other violent activities. Castro used guerrilla tactics. Vietnamese and Algerian terror were elements of larger military campaigns.

Only small groups used terror alone, and they achieved their successes in a few years because normally indiscriminate tactics continued over time keeps hardening the opposition. Arafat struggled much longer than all his terrorist predecessors did, leading the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for 40 years, declaring it “my woman, my family, my life.”

The PLO originated as a confederation of terrorist organizations usually linked to different Arab states, including several that claimed for themselves the territory the UN reserved for Arabs after the 1948 war. The PLO began without a popular base and had to function abroad. Its long struggle induced the Arab League in 1979 to finally recognize it as the sole legitimate heir to the promised territory, and the UN immediately followed suit.

Arafat created the most powerful and wealthiest terrorist organization known up to that time. No terrorist group inspired and cooperated with foreign terrorists more or carried out as many foreign attacks as the PLO. It alone achieved a UN observer status. Nonetheless, in the end, there was no Palestinian state, but there was, crucially, a Palestinian identity, and that was Arafat’s greatest achievement.

Israel did not negotiate with the PLO until the organization’s violent capacity declined or when it fled Lebanon to locate in Tunisia, where it could not carry on significant terrorist activities. When Arafat finally announced a commitment to a two-state solution and renounced terror, the Oslo Accords made it possible for the PLO to go home to Palestine.

It is not clear why Arafat rejected the Israeli peace offer (2000) or then did not try to stop the current and most deadly Palestinian terrorist campaign yet, one that devastated the Palestinians. Abu Iyad, his trusted intelligence chief, wrote in his memoirs that when difficult decisions had to be made, the most belligerent elements normally prevailed. Perhaps that is still the best explanation.

Arafat’s struggle involved two peoples living in the same territories, making the complete destruction of one or the other a permanent nightmare.

While the Palestinian identity seemed inseparable from Arafat, the irony was that he could not lead it in a more productive direction.

Rapoport is professor emeritus of political science and founding editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence. His latest book is “The Democratic Experience and Political Violence.”