Yasser Arafat boosted in the Arab world

By Paul Taylor

JERUSALEM (Reuters): Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has boosted his stature with his people and in the Arab world with three weeks of anti-Israeli violence, but wrecked any prospect of an early peace with the Jewish state.

The question "is Arafat in control?" has been on the lips of diplomats and analysts ever since riots erupted on Sept. 28 after hawkish Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited an ultra- sensitive Jerusalem holy site sacred to Muslims and Jews.

The answer is almost certainly "yes", Palestinian and Israeli officials say, although not in total control.

The initial explosion may have been spontaneous, reflecting Palestinians' despair at seeing no improvement in their lives after seven years of peacemaking with Israel. The escalation that followed was partly a reaction to Israel's use of force.

But the movement was led by Arafat's Fatah organization and fanned by the Palestinian media controlled by Arafat.

The tactics of using armed militants to fire on troops and Jewish settlers while crowds of youths hailed stones on soldiers were also almost certainly his, the experts say.

"Arafat has all the people and groups he needs in Fatah, whatever he chooses to do," said political analyst Ghassan Khatib.

"If he needs moderate, articulate people for international conferences, he's got them. If he needs dirty business deals, he has the right people for that. And he also has people who can be the strongest on the street," Khatib told Reuters.

"His control has loosened a little in the last three weeks, but I think Arafat is genuinely in harmony with the young people in the street," he added.

Arafat has forced Arab leaders, under pressure from their own angry public opinion, to convene a rare summit in Cairo on Saturday to express solidarity with the Palestinian cause, to which most had long paid only lip service.

The 71-year-old former guerrilla leader, who has had chequered relations with many Arab states over the years, will be the undisputed star of the summit.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, spearheaded by Islamic militants who are the main domestic opponents of conservative Arab rulers, have caused jitters in Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, prompting a crackdown.

"We feel we have made a difference in the Arab world. They will now have to take more seriously the slogan that the absence of a solution to the Palestinian problem can cause instability throughout the region," Khatib said.

Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian foreign affairs think-tank PASSIA, said: "We have awakened sleeping horses in the Arab world. Amman is burning, Cairo is burning."

Neutral diplomats say Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, while publicly supportive, applied strong pressure on Arafat at this week's Sharm el-Sheikh summit to accept a ceasefire with Israel.

The moderate rulers feared that hardliners would otherwise radicalise the Arab summit and demand they sever all ties with the Jewish state and restore an economic boycott of Israel.

Palestinian sources say the turning point in Arafat's strategy came at the Camp David summit in July.

He understood there that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak would not accept a final peace based on a withdrawal from all land captured in 1967, especially Arab East Jerusalem and the holy site venerated by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) and by Jews as the Temple Mount.

The Palestinian leader told U.S. President Bill Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac he would have been killed by his own people if he had signed the deal on offer at Camp David.

Arafat's decision to spurn an accord he found unacceptable and return to what Palestinians call "struggle" has led Barak to declare Arafat is "no longer a partner for the difficult and courageous decisions needed for peace".

Israelis say no future prime minister is likely to offer as many concessions as Barak, especially after the collapse of trust in the last three weeks of large-scale violence.

They ascribe Arafat's rejection of the peace deal to a lack of realism and an obsession with rhetoric and myth. Some also say Arafat would never be willing to declare an end to the Palestinians' conflict with Israel.

Abdul Hadi said that, prior to Camp David, many people in the West Bank and Gaza had lost confidence in Arafat because of perceived corruption and abuses among the ruling elite he brought back with him from exile in Tunis in 1994.

Most "inside" leaders who had lived under Israeli occupation were sidelined when Arafat's so-called "Tunisians" took over the running of the Palestinian Authority and legislative council.

But Palestinians of all stripes had rallied behind Arafat's steadfastness in refusing a sell-out in the peace process.

Abdul Hadi said a younger generation of field commanders who cut their teeth in the first Intifada (uprising) in the occupied territories in 1987-1993 had taken the lead in the latest unrest.

Most prominent has been Marwan Barghouthi, 41, an Intifada graduate from Ramallah who is leader of Fatah in the West Bank.

But neither Abdul Hadi nor Khatib saw Barghouti as posing a challenge to Arafat and his generation of leaders.

"Arafat is the symbol of the Palestinian national movement. There are dozens of good regional field leaders like Barghouthi, but they are not yet national leaders," Abdul Hadi said.

Palestinian sources noted that Arafat remained a past master at reshuffling and sidelining aides who became too prominent.