Prisoners of Their Pasts: Arafat, Sharon Battle On

This is not the first time that Ariel Sharon has squared off with Yasser Arafat in a fight to the death. The two old warriors battled in the streets of Lebanon, a country then-Defense Minister Sharon invaded two decades ago in a bid to destroy Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization.

Arafat today is once again in Sharon’s cross hairs. He has been pushed into one of the most perilous crises of his long tenure as leader of the Palestinian nationalist cause, facing Israeli and U.S. pressure to crack down on militants and domestic pressure not to.

Sharon is determined to bring about the end of the Arafat era, but beyond that he seems to have no discernible long-term political strategy. And Arafat’s only strategy now seems to be survival.

Neither the hamstrung Arafat nor the uncompromising Sharon is offering a way out of the crisis that will avoid more bloodshed, experts here say. It is the sad fate of Palestinians and Israelis, they say, that the two peoples are led by men who are in many ways trapped in their pasts, fighting old wars with old skills and bereft of the political vision, or the statesmanship, to build a peaceful future.

“They are prisoners of their anxieties, their biographies, their psychologies, their histories,” preeminent Israeli author David Grossman said in an interview, referring to Sharon and Arafat. “I don’t see a way out without the rise of a second generation of political leaders on both sides. The only other way is a miracle or a catastrophe. And I don’t foresee a miracle.”

Grossman was among a group of Israelis and Palestinians who made a rare joint demonstration for peace Monday. About 20 Israelis and 40 Palestinians--politicians, intellectuals and activists--crossed a heavily fortified Israeli army checkpoint outside the Kalandia refugee camp on the main road that leads from Jerusalem northward to the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

In a no man’s land where most Palestinians are refused entry and Israeli soldiers are busily digging up the road and erecting more barriers, the two groups met in a symbolic show of alternative thinking that really only underscored the despair felt by both sides.

The road used to be a quick route between Israel and the West Bank. Now, it is a chaotic crossing choked by Palestinian traffic and pedestrians attempting to thread through the Israeli soldiers’ blockade.

“It is an atrocious situation; we are on the brink of total war,” said Salim Tamari, a Palestinian academic who specializes in Jerusalem issues and joined the group demonstrating for peace.

Tamari said that although Sharon and Arafat are hidebound in their attachment to conflicting ideologies, the key difference is that Arafat is acting from a position of weakness whereas Sharon has the clear upper hand.

Bombing Palestinian Authority institutions, police headquarters and the symbols of Arafat’s power at the same time that the Palestinians are being asked to arrest suspects is a self-defeating practice, Tamari said. And assassinations of militants--such as the one attempted Monday in the West Bank city of Hebron, which killed two children--further tie Arafat’s hands.

“Arafat has some control on the ground, but to consolidate he needs to be able to show some hope, some ability for Palestinians to move around. Now you see how we are totally sealed off,” he said, pointing to the frustrated throngs at the checkpoint. “The Israelis have to let the Palestinians breathe, or it will only create more sympathy for the militants.”

Israel argues--with broad U.S. and international support--that Arafat must exert what power he still has to jail the potential suicide bombers and their masters; he has failed to arrest more than a handful of suspects named by Israel.

Sharon was elected on a promise of restoring peace and security to his people, and he has brought neither. Nevertheless, he continues to enjoy overwhelming backing among Israelis. Polls last week had three-quarters of the public rating him favorably. But the polls also show lasting support for such solutions as peace talks and the establishment of a Palestinian state, which Sharon only nominally favors.

“What people are asking for from their gut and what they say in their heads are two different things. The way you bridge the difference is with leadership, and the leadership just isn’t there,” said Didi Remez, a leftist activist with the Peace Now movement who helped organize Monday’s demonstration.

“The leadership is bankrupt on both sides,” he said.

Sharon, the son of Jewish pioneers who immigrated to what became Israel, has frequently said he believes Israel is still fighting its war of independence. He has opposed most peace agreements that Israel has signed and is said by insiders to thrive on the kind of armed conflict that has raged for the last 14 months. He prides himself on having fought in all of Israel’s wars, and now this one.

It appears that Sharon’s immediate strategy is to weaken Arafat to where he collapses or is overthrown by his own people, making way for a more pliable leadership. But most experts say a period of chaos is more likely, with Islamic extremism gaining even more ground.

Sharon’s proposal for a future Palestinian state envisions a truncated patchwork of land, not much more than what the Palestinians currently control. Most Jewish settlements--illegal under international law but cherished by Sharon as strategic outposts guaranteeing Israeli security--would remain intact. The concept is a nonstarter as far as the Palestinians are concerned.

Diplomats and a number of Israeli analysts say Sharon dreads actual political negotiations because they would spell the end of his coalition government.

Sharon’s aides reject the criticisms--which have come from no less a figure than Foreign Minister Shimon Peres--that he lacks vision and is fighting the wars of his youth.

“Given his personal history, where he has seen all the horrors of war, he more than any other politician, here and abroad, knows exactly the price of war,” said Sharon diplomatic advisor Daniel Ayalon. “He has a vision, a clear vision, but he will not put it down on the table with specifics because then it becomes the starting point for the other side in negotiations.”

Arafat too often reigns like an anachronism. In many ways, he remains a guerrilla fighter leading a national liberation movement, as he did for decades. His leadership style is paranoid, evasive, autocratic. He has shown contempt for working democracy. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in the Palestinian Authority that Arafat established with his return from exile in 1994; a judicial system is virtually nonexistent, most media are state-controlled and the legislature is powerless.

Arafat is increasingly threatened by the rising influence of the radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad, having failed to grasp the threat they would pose, or having thought he could control them after he granted them wide room to operate at the start of the current intifada.

Yet he remains the embodiment, the symbol, the father of the Palestinian dream of independence.

Today Arafat is essentially grounded: Sharon, having destroyed the Palestinian leader’s helicopters and international airport, says he does not want Arafat leaving town. Arafat on Monday shelved plans to attend an emergency conference of Muslim nations that he himself had sought, in part because he feared Israel would not allow him to return, aides said.

Sharon and his government have succeeded in humiliating, isolating and demonizing Arafat (some of this with Arafat’s help) to the point where they have completely redefined the debate. In Washington, mention of Palestinian national aspirations is gone. Among many Israelis, Arafat is a terrorist and the only question is how, not whether, to get rid of him.

Many Israelis have accepted Sharon’s argument that Arafat is not a partner for peace and that he might just as soon be deposed because things can’t get any worse.

The voices that were raised Monday in the demonstration at Kalandia, however, couldn’t disagree more. But they are minority voices, what one Israeli reporter called the last gasp of the remnants of the left.