Washington (JTA) — Nobody spent more time with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat during the years of the Oslo peace process than I did. But I didn’t see that he was incapable of ending the conflict with Israel.
Yet there always were reasons to question his credibility. Initially, he would deny Palestinian responsibility for terrorist attacks in Israel, even when groups like Hamas claimed credit.
To accept responsibility meant Arafat would have had to act against Hamas or Islamic Jihad — and he sought, he said, to divide them rather than confront them.
That was not acceptable to the Clinton administration or to Israel’s then-prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. So Arafat began to make arrests in 1994; but those arrested typically were released soon after.
Beginning in 1995, after a double suicide bombing killed 20 Israeli soldiers, Rabin asked me to tell Arafat that if he did not act against those responsible, Israel would.
For a time, Arafat became more serious, and Rabin was impressed. That partly explains why Arafat was taken seriously as a partner.
But that’s only part of the explanation. Just as important, Arafat was the leader of the Palestinians and the symbol of the Palestinian cause, a symbolism he sought to preserve at all costs.
Moreover, Arafat had signed the Oslo deal and recognized Israel, receiving assassination threats from some Palestinian groups.
Maddening style
Arafat did conclude five limited interim peace deals with Israel. He always followed the same negotiating pattern: He would hold out until the last possible moment, and then, when it was clear that further delays might cost him any gains, he would conclude the deal.
While his style was maddening, every time I would tell those closest to him that I had had enough, they would say only Arafat had the moral authority among the Palestinians to make concessions.
Those closest to Arafat, who had lived for years with his lies, equivocations and betrayals, still believed he would make the tough decisions and end the conflict.
They and we were wrong. None of us understood that the “cause” defined Arafat; he could not live without it.
Arafat could conclude limited agreements because they didn’t require him to make irrevocable commitments — and Arafat has never made an irrevocable commitment to anyone and never will.
He will never close the door on any option or foreclose the possibility of a one-state solution — that is, a single state over all of historic Palestine. With Arafat, a modus vivendi is possible, but peace is not.
When we presented the Clinton ideas in December 2000, it was the moment of truth. They were the best we could offer, and we were out of time, with Clinton due to leave office four weeks later. Moreover, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was likely to lose the coming Israeli election if there were no agreement and the offer would then be lost.
Arafat knew this. Still he said no.
But is it fair to say there were no other ways to test Arafat? Clearly there were.
First, we should have made it clear that we would not deal with Arafat if he failed to delegitimize terrorism. In fact, he never did so.
Second, we should have insisted that Arafat had to prepare his public for compromise by declaring that neither the Palestinians nor Israelis would get 100 percent of what they wanted.
His unwillingness to do this would have told us he could not settle the conflict. We then could have altered our strategy and aimed to contain the conflict until Arafat passed from the scene.
In truth, we should have imposed this condition on both sides. Ultimately, responsibility must be the hallmark of any process of peacemaking. Palestinians and Israelis must be accountable for the commitments they make. One failing of the Oslo process was that neither side was held to its obligations.
Since 2001, there has been no peace process, only a war between Israelis and Palestinians. Given that legacy and the lack of belief in peacemaking, the first order of business must be stopping the war.
We will need to be much more active in shaping diplomacy — ours, the Egyptians’ and the Europeans’ — so that the Palestinians see the cost of not assuming real responsibilities, including security responsibilities, in the areas from which Israel withdraws.
Should we succeed in getting the Palestinians to establish a rule of law and good governance, we may be able to construct a way station to peace.
That way station would provide the essential prerequisites for getting back to peacemaking: freedom for Israelis from the threat of daily terrorism, and freedom for the Palestinians from Israeli control.
Dennis Ross, Ziegler Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was President Clinton’s envoy to the Middle East.
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