ROAD TO MIDEAST PEACE : From Life on the Lam to a Desk Job: a Changing Arafat : Leadership: Instead of sending agents to kill him, Israel is now signing agreements with the PLO chairman. He jokes about the transition from ‘terrorism to tourism.’

The look has changed very little in the 15 months since he returned from decades of exile and armed struggle to rule a beachfront strip of land fenced by barbed wire.

Yasser Arafat still wears the olive-drab uniform, the stubbly beard and the black-and-white headdress folded in a triangle to represent the map of Palestine--the revolutionary garb that helped make him the symbol of the Palestinian fight for a homeland.

But in fact, much has changed for the 65-year-old Arafat in the transition from globe-trotting revolutionary to on-the-ground governor, from politician in exile to the administrator of a pseudo-state that he hopes to turn into a sovereign country.

Now, instead of sending agents to kill him, Israeli leaders are signing agreements with him.

And gone are the days when Arafat jetted frantically about the world seeking recognition for his cause, changing safehouses as often as most people change socks. The president of the governing Palestinian Authority has exchanged guerrilla war and life on the lam for a desk job and a routine that includes sleeping in the same bed each night.

“He comes to the office every morning and leaves at the same hour,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for Arafat. “His door is open. It’s not difficult to meet with him. He has two or three visits every day.”

The leader of the Palestinian people receives heads of government such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister John Major. As the administrator of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho since July, 1994, he also has toured a center for the disabled, handed out awards to young Palestinians who memorized the Koran and given the signal to start Gaza’s first marathon.

Even as he governs, Arafat tries to preserve the image from his days in Lebanon and Tunisia as the mythical figure who has survived multiple assassination attempts and life-threatening accidents to champion the Palestinian cause. He is the ascetic married to all Palestinians.

Arafat negotiated the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying army, and for most Palestinians that has earned him a place in history as a liberator, Gazans say.

“Israeli soldiers are gone, and he has brought us security,” said Sami Musa, a 16-year-old boy from the Deir al Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “He has a lot to deal with, and he’s trying his best. . . . He is only one man.”

But increasingly, Palestinians judge him as people judge any government leader--on how well he is able to deliver. And there the record is as checkered as his famous headdress.

Many Palestinians say Arafat is an autocratic leader, disorganized, manipulative and only mildly tolerant of dissent. They complain that he is building a state on the model of King Hussein’s Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt: a limited democracy with limited rights for citizens.

Palestinians and foreigners alike say Arafat keeps the same tight hold on power and purse strings that he maintained through more than 30 years at the helm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, making even the smallest decisions himself. They tell of a time four months ago when Arafat heard complaints of corruption in the distribution of new telephone lines and decided to approve all new phone lines in Gaza personally.

Arafat has established a tremendous government bureaucracy and police force, which means that tens of thousands of Palestinians are beholden to him for their jobs. And in high-ranking posts, he often puts two people in charge of the same task, provoking infighting that only he can resolve.

“Arafat is still very popular. He is a father figure,” said Dr. Iyad Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Clinic. “But now people realize there is a government, there are problems--and they blame him or the people around him.”

Sarraj argued that Arafat has given too much ground in peace negotiations with Israelis and that, like all Gazans, the PLO chief is a kind of prisoner who needs Israeli permission to leave the narrow strip. “People feel he is helpless like the rest of us,” he said. “Some people see the political process as a whole as very humiliating. They are sad their leader is accepting this humiliation.”

And yet, inside and out of the Gaza Strip, among Palestinians and Israelis and others involved in the peace negotiations, most conversations about Arafat conclude with this: There is nobody else.

After fighting him for 35 years, Israeli and American officials have decided Arafat is an insider. He and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands over a peace accord on the White House lawn in September, 1993, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. Arafat and Rabin are putting their names to a second agreement in Washington today that expands Arafat’s rule throughout much of the West Bank territory that Israel captured in 1967 and more than doubles the population under his authority to about 2 million Palestinians.

It’s not that the Israeli and American governments have come to love Arafat; rather, they have made their bed with him and are tossing about trying to get comfortable.

“There has been quite a transition in the man in the last year,” said Edward E. Abington Jr., the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and the Clinton Administration’s point man on Arafat. “He has accepted that if the peace process is to move forward, he has to move on security. . . . He has become convinced elections are important. He has made the mental shift to being inside Gaza and the West Bank with the Palestinian people.”

Terje Larsen, the U.N. special coordinator for Gaza, is in almost daily contact with Arafat and says the Palestinian leader has grown increasingly confident in his new role.

“He is more reflective, more open-minded and flexible than before. It is much easier to talk to him about substantive issues,” Larsen said. “I have to tell him things he doesn’t like. Previously he could be very angry. Now he is much more rational and less emotional about being countered. If he disagrees, he will argue, but he will not throw you out of his office.”

Arafat is aware of the change in the way he is perceived and plays off it with humor. Larsen recalls a recent moment when, remarking on the boom in beachfront restaurant and hotel construction, Arafat said, “Gaza is moving from terrorism to tourism.”

But to many Israelis, especially the political right wing, Arafat will always be a terrorist. He is, in their eyes, the murderer with Jewish blood on his hands, no different from Hamas extremists who plant bombs on buses. He is a front man, trying to have his peace and terrorism too.

To prove their point, these critics have shown tapes in the Israeli Parliament and on television of recent Arafat speeches to Palestinian audiences in which he continues to speak of the jihad, or holy war, against Israelis. “We all seek a martyr’s death on the road of truth and merit, the road to Jerusalem, capital of the Palestinian state,” Arafat says in one speech.

An embarrassed Arafat tried to explain to Israelis who saw these tapes last month that he meant a political and spiritual battle, not a violent one. His supporters argue that he is speaking to his constituency in such language to win support away from the violent militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Clearly there is a difference between Arafat and the Islamic extremists. Their bombs are meant to kill the peace accord that Arafat signed. Arafat acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and expects the Jewish and Palestinian states to live side by side. He is a devout Muslim, but he does not seek to establish an Islamic government.

Arafat, however, has not given up the goal of ruling an independent Palestinian state that encompasses the Gaza Strip, all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Those who follow Arafat and Palestinian politics say his frequent contradictions and doublespeak--as well as his tireless work schedule--are all directed toward that end.

“The struggle continues, and he is still in the fight,” said Danny Rubenstein, a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and author of the book “The Mystery of Arafat.”

“Whatever he says, it’s all calculated to get to his goal to take over the West Bank and Jerusalem, and all [nonviolent] means are kosher,” Rubenstein said.

Arafat appears to have decided that the road to an independent Palestinian state is pragmatism. Despite criticism at home, he remained open to compromise throughout negotiations for the second-stage agreement to expand Palestinian self-rule in pursuit of his larger objective: to gain control of a significant portion of the West Bank.

To ensure an Israeli troop withdrawal and Palestinian elections, Arafat largely accepted Israel’s “red lines,” or limits on the area he will rule, according to a U.S. official familiar with the talks. “It is what he can get now,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

When Arafat was criticized for failing to stop the bombing of buses and Rabin threatened to halt the peace negotiations, the PLO chief began a crackdown on Islamic militants in April. His police stepped up intelligence-gathering, confiscated weapons and arrested Hamas leaders. All the while, Arafat engaged in quiet negotiations with Hamas.

Although Arafat has been accused by more radical Palestinians of doing the Israelis’ dirty work, the two-pronged strategy apparently is paying off: The group is losing some of its support to the well-heeled Palestinian Authority.

As a result, Hamas leaders have said they are considering forming a legal political party.