DOES HE BELIEVE HIS OWN STORIES - 19-Sep-95

(Commentary by Danny Rubinstein, "Ha'aretz", Sept 19, 1995, p.B3)

DESPITE ARAFAT'S REPULSIVE, UNRELIABLE, AND OCCASIONALLY EVEN GROTESQUE SIDES, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ARGUE WITH THE FACT THAT HE IS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION TO HIS PEOPLE. IS THERE SOME SECRET CODE WITH WHICH IT IS POSSIBLE TO DECIPHER THE INNUMERABLE STRANGE DECLARATIONS OF THE PALESTINIAN LEADER?

The publication of the tapes with Yasser Arafat's unpleasant declarations has become a matter of routine. Since the Palestinian Authority Chairman was taped in a Johannesburg mosque, about two years ago, speaking about continuing the jihad against Israel, an additional series of tapes have been collected in which he makes statements that are inconsistent with the peace process.

Arafat's biographers (at least ten biographies have been written about him, and he has been featured in dozens of books), as well as the journalists who have covered him over the years, have always understood that his speeches are characterized by numerous contradictions. More than once, he has been capable of making contradictory statements at the same appearance, of being moderate and extreme at the same time. In the tape that was published last week, he spoke about the path of peace, and in the same breath, also added that there are other paths, and that the Palestinians are ready to fight until the last boy and girl so that the Palestinian flag flies over the walls of Jerusalem. He has been nicknamed "the man of a thousand faces" by his critics over the years, and the American psychologist Herbert Kelman, who spent long hours with him, wrote that it is strange to reveal that in most cases, the contradictions in his statements the exaggerations and even the lies seem true.

Is there some mysterious key, or secret code, that will make it possible to decipher the innumerable strange declarations of the Palestinians' leader?

A quick scan of Arafat's speeches will uncover many expressions which in the best case can be described as strange. Up until a few years ago, for example, he used to repeat the claim that a map of Israel, extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, hangs on the Knesset wall. He even saw the blue stripes in the Israeli flag as a symbol that the Egyptian and Iraqi rivers are the borders for the Zionist state's expansionist aspirations. The fact is that the millions who have visited the Knesset building have not found any such map. The blue stripes on the flag were chosen as an allusion to the tallit (prayer shawl) that too is a fact. Arafat's aides certainly told him not to repeat such nonsense, and indeed, in recent years he has stopped saying this.

The stories about the map on the Knesset wall and the Zionist flag, are spread throughout the Arab world even today, and many Arab personalities make these claims. But Arafat added something new and interesting to them. In his appearances during the intifada, during his trips to Europe, he held an Israeli 10 agorot coin which is stamped with a menorah up to the television cameras. Arafat brought enlarged photographs of the coin, and in them, a blotch appears in the background around the menorah, similar in his words to a map of the Middle East, again from the Nile to the Euphrates. On the basis of this discovery, Arafat then declared that he held in his hands further proof of Israel's aspirations for conquest (the background blotch around the menorah on the coin was engraved according to an ancient Hasmonean coin, of course without any geographic context).

Yasser Arafat made an especially odd statement last year when he arrived in Gaza and Jericho, and the first Israeli he received for a meeting was Jerusalem Rabbi Moshe Hirsch. After the meeting, Arafat announced that he was appointing Hirsch a member of the Palestinian Authority, as the minister in charge of Jewish affairs. Hirsch is well known in the Israeli media as an eccentric figure and publicity hound, from the margins of the anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox community; it is doubtful that he has more than a handful of followers. And here was Arafat, embracing and kissing him, being proudly photographed with him, and giving him an unclear ministerial appointment in the first Palestinian administration. Regarding such expressions and actions by Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres once said, in a September 1994 Yediot Ahronot interview: "Arafat is astounding, both in his wisdom and his stupidity."

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once reacted with very blunt speech, upon hearing such statements by Arafat. This was after the terrorist attack at Beit Lid, last winter. Several weeks after the attack, Arafat granted many interviews to journalists and non-journalists, and explained to them that Israeli security elements right-wing supporters were behind the Beit Lid attack. He even had proof: according to him, those who carried out the attack were Palestinian collaborators who came through the Dehaniye camp on the Israeli-Egyptian border (this is an Israeli installation that shelters collaborators from Gaza, who receive Israeli protection). According to this story, in Dehaniye, they received IDF uniforms and explosives, and the Israeli security services passed them through the checkpoints, to the site of the attack. Arafat said that he had witnesses for this, and compared the Israeli security elements who, in his words, had planned the attack to the people of the Algerian OAS, who acted against the French withdrawal.

As long as Arafat made these statements to journalists and other visitors who were in his office in Gaza, the statements were received relatively quietly. Many were amazed, and argued with him, but he resolutely stuck to his opinion. After a short time, Arafat met with Rabin at the Erez checkpoint, and when Rabin complained that the Palestinian Police were pursuing terrorists, Arafat explained to the Israeli Prime Minister his theory regarding the Beit Lid attack. Rabin did not let him finish his statements, and exploded in a rage, breaking up the meeting.

Since Arafat's first public appearances in the spring of 1968, in which he described the battle against the Israelis at Karameh (which lasted less than a day) as a war that rivaled the battles at Stalingrad in World War II, there has almost not been a single speech of his without remarks of this sort. His aides, who never correct him, interpret his remarks, and try to soften the negative impression that the statements cause around the world.

One of his aides told me once, that he asked him why he had proclaimed a continuation of the jihad against Israel in the mosque in Johannesburg (in the same speech, Arafat also cited examples of the Prophet Muhammad's dealings with the Jews, from which it is possible to understand that the agreement with Israel is a stage in a continuing struggle). Arafat answered him that, first, he did not know his statements were being recorded, and second, there were Islamic fanatics in the mosque, and he wanted to show them that he was no less pious a believer than they. Afterwards, from his bureau, statements were issued with religious Islamic commentary, according to which, he meant the "great jihad", which is the believer's internal struggle, and that there was no intention regarding an obligatory war against the Jewish state.

Arafat continues to proclaim a continuation of the jihad, even in his latest appearances; the tapes that have been recently published testify to this fact. He even continues to make other strange statements, for example, that Jesus Christ was a Palestinian (in a letter of greeting he sent to the Pope last Christmas), and that Spartacus the leader of the slave revolt in Rome was a Palestinian (in an interview with a German newspaper, following the outbreak of the intifada).

The key to understanding these distortions and strange comments, is that these statements are accepted by his listeners, mainly his people, as long as they serve the Palestinian national goal. The remarks sound ridiculous, distorted, and even frightening, usually to foreign listeners, and to audiences hostile to Arafat, in Israel and in western countries. Among the Palestinians, on the other hand, all of these remarks have a different meaning. To them, they sketch the outlines of the struggle.

The Palestinians are struggling against Israeli occupation and expansionism, even if there is not exactly a map on the Knesset wall of the Nile and Euphrates borders. This is not a struggle against all Jews, and not against the Jewish religion, because there are also pious Jews, like Rabbi Moshe Hirsch and the followers of Satmar Rebbe. His nonsense about those who carried out the attack at Beit Lid was designed to emphasize the fact that Hamas' terrorist actions, in practice, serve the interests of the Israeli right-wing, which is exploiting the attacks in order to mobilize public support against the continuation of Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank. The Palestinian myth which Arafat is fostering adopts figures such as Jesus and Spartacus in order to indicate the historic continuity of the struggle for the Holy Land, as well as the heroic resistance to oppression. The slogans of jihad and the willingness to sacrifice every boy and girl, are intended to make it clear to all, in decisive language, that the Palestinians are determined not to give up the idea of an independent state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

In retrospect, despite all the sides of Arafat's personality, and in his appearances, which seem repulsive, unreliable, and occasionally grotesque, it is impossible to argue with the fact that he is a source of inspiration to his people. The late Professor Yehosafat Harkabi defined him