The Peripatetic Yasser Arafat : Does the PLO chairman equate statesmanship with perambulation?

Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization couldn’t meet their Dec. 13 deadline to begin transferring authority in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho into Palestinian hands, and all signs indicate that their disagreements are unlikely to be resolved even by the end of the year.

That impasse leaves Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat with little to talk about at the meeting they had projected for later this month to measure progress, so that tete-a-tete will almost certainly be postponed as well. None of this represents an irrecoverable setback to the peace process. But it does eat up time, and delay is the ally of distrust.

The key sticking point in the talks now is who will control border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and between Jericho and Jordan. The PLO says it must do so as proof of Palestinian sovereignty. Israel says keeping control over the borders is crucial to its security and it will not compromise on that point.

Security, of course, always has been and will remain Israel’s top priority, and whatever territorial adjustments and political compromises Israel makes will be shaped first and foremost by national security assessments. The first few years of what’s supposed to be a five-year process leading to Palestinian self-government are vital precisely because they offer opportunities for confidence building, not least regarding security. If those chances are wasted, the process is doomed. Something for the PLO to think about.

It doesn’t help matters, of course, that Arafat’s insistence on maintaining a monopoly over virtually all PLO decision-making has acted as a drag on the negotiations, even as it has led a number of his talented aides to quit in frustration. It doesn’t help either that Arafat equates statesmanship with perambulation, dashing from country to country to revel in receptions and salutes. Someone ought to remind him that he is not yet the head of a state, and that in fact there may not be a state for him to head unless he can stop gallivanting long enough to focus seriously and pragmatically on what the current negotiations are trying to accomplish.