The Middle East After Arafat... by Fareed Zakaria

April 9, 2001, Atlantic Edition

The Middle East After Arafat
The Palestinian leader cannot bring peace. What can be done without him?
By Fareed Zakaria

We have grown accustomed to his face. Yasir Arafat's unshaven visage, wrapped with a checkered head scarf, is the most enduring image of the long conflict between Israel and the Arabs. In substantive debates as well Arafat remains at its center. The Clinton administration was criticized for being too close to him. The Bush administration is being berated for keeping its distance from him. Presidents and pundits are constantly urging him to accept plans, denounce terrorism, make speeches, as if this one man's actions can end 50 years of fighting. But it should now be clear that this one man will not--or cannot--bring peace in the Middle East. A realistic strategy for the region must look beyond Yasir Arafat.

In an interview last week, Dennis Ross, until recently the perpetual negotiator between the Palestinians and the Israelis, finally concluded that Arafat was not capable of negotiating an end to the conflict: "What is required of him is something he is not able to do." It is not that Arafat could not give up a few acres in the West Bank. It is not even that he could not abide the partitioning of Jerusalem. What Arafat could not do at Camp David and still cannot do is abandon the founding claim of the PLO--that Palestinians displaced by Israel in 1948 be allowed to return home.

From its beginnings in the late 1940s until 1987, the Palestinian cause meant one thing and one thing only--the right of return for its refugees, who number about 1 million and now live scattered around the Arab world. The PLO was created as a vehicle to represent this Palestinian diaspora, and Arafat was the leader of the exiles.

It was an all-or-nothing struggle and--since Israel has never accepted the right of return--by the early 1980s it looked more like nothing. Battered by Israel's growing strength and its quarrels with other Arabs, the PLO had literally nowhere to go. Then in 1987 everything changed with the uprising (intifada) in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians living under Israeli occupation began demanding independence. They caught the world's attention.

They also caught Arafat off guard. The PLO had always treated the Palestinians in the occupied territories as second-class citizens, docile folk who conveniently presented the world with suffering images for the cause. Scrambling to take control of a movement that threatened to get away from him, Arafat took the reins of the protest and, for the first time, began negotiating seriously with the Israeli government in Oslo.

Ever since Oslo, Arafat has had a choice; he could shift from an unattainable demand (the right of return) to an attainable one (Israel out of the occupied territories). The switch would give his people a state, national independence and the beginnings of normalcy. But he couldn't do it. The leading scholar of the region, Fouad Ajami, explains, "Arafat could not say to his people, 'I bring you peace but the dream of Palestine is gone. Jaffa is gone, Haifa is gone.' He preferred the language of heroic resistance to a painful compromise."

By refusing to sign away the dream and accept a reduced reality, Arafat has retained his hold on Arab hearts. But symbolics aside, this makes him a marginal figure in the region's future. Arafat's power came from his potential to make peace or make trouble. The former we now know he will not do; the latter Hamas and other terror groups do better than he can. Without his credibility as a peacemaker the world has much less need for an ailing 72-year-old revolutionary who seems content to die the virtual leader of a virtual state.

The attitude of benign neglect adopted by the Bush administration toward Arafat may not work but it is worth trying. Certainly the other approach--White House visits, American handholding, security cooperation--has been exhausted. It was a noble effort but it did not work.

Perhaps a cold shoulder will force Arafat into adjusting his strategy. But I doubt it. Instead the Israelis and Palestinians should begin a process of separating their two nations. Israel could annex the small contiguous pockets of the West Bank that house 80 percent of its settlers. The PLO should declare independence and go about the business of turning its corrupt kleptocracy into a functioning state. Richard Haass, one of Colin Powell's chief aides, outlined such an approach in an article in Newsday last October.

The United States must recognize that its core interest in the Middle East now--outside of Israel--is to stabilize the moderate Arab states that are its longtime allies. Countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been rocked by the recent terrorism and counterterror attacks in Israel. The Arab populace in these lands, frustrated by the regimes that rule them, have always latched on to the romance of the Palestinian cause.

In this climate America must show its unequivocal support to these countries (and not just their regimes). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has apparently made a decision--until now unreported--to draw down American troops in the Sinai. (When he sprung this on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the latter reluctantly acceded to the demand.) This would be the wrong withdrawal, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Now is also the right time to begin rethinking the unworkable and morally obtuse sanctions policy toward Iraq. Moderate Arabs would be relieved not to have to defend two unpopular American policies simultaneously.

It is even possible that a different Palestinian leader--rooted in the West Bank not the diaspora--could make a genuine accord with Israel. But to do that he (or she) will also have to trade dreams for reality, image for substance and, to coin a phrase, land for peace.