The Prognosis for Arafat

...Then, in the face of threats from the Syrians and the extremists in the Palestinian camp-plus, presumably, Israel's negative attitude-he got frightened and rejected the notion of negotiations by proxy...

...visit, and by talk of a de facto alliance from President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz...

...Most Israelis, however, including those in a position to know, were extremely skeptical...

...pressures for real discussions on the implementation of the second half of the Camp David agreements...

...In short, old suspicions, like old mentalities, die hard even among the best of friends...

...How important-and effective-this will be in the long run is something else...

...The Pentagon also has spurned Israel's offer of highly successful, and inexpensive, pilot-less real-time reporting reconnaissance planes...

...But reports reaching Israel left the distinct impression that there were still influential elements in the Administration eager to maintain the traditional operative distances, lest the delicate sensibilities of Saudi Arabia and other "moderate" Arab countries be offended...

...Predictably, both the Soviet and Arab media declared this was proof of U.S.-Israeli collusion against Syria and "the Palestinian revolution...

...Actually, it is a result of the June 1982 experience, which reinforced the old Israeli belief that one goes to war only for vital self-defense reasons...

...The fact is, though, that not everybody here is extremely upset about this aspect of the courtship...

...This seemed a repetition of the pattern following the truck bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut, when U.S...

...The toughest one involves deciding whether the time has arrived to recognize that two peoples must live in the same land, and to seek an accommodation with the Palestinians...

...American planes finally took off from the Sixth Fleet carriers to bomb terrorist and Syrian gun positions inside Lebanon just a day after Prime Minister Shamir's return from Washington at the end of last month...

...Arafat was never as independent or enterprising as his followers believe...

...It prefers to have the Sixth Fleet use manned aircraft until American unmanned miniplanes are put into operation-four or five years from now...

...what mattered was that it seemed to be "theirs"-independent of the wills of the Arab states that always used the Palestinian cause to promote their own interests...

...And all the more so in the case of old enemies, like Yasir Arafat...

...and then, especially in the field, there was Arafat's Fatah, the main body of the PLO, and the small or splinter outfits, some of them holding fast to their "original" extremist ideologies, others more or less openly subservient to Syria or Libya...

...At the same time, it has to make clear to Lebanese President Amin Gemayel that independence from Syria cannot mean complete disregard of the new demographic realities in his country, or of some of Syria's more reasonable security concerns...

...What seems to have happened is that, thanks to the impact of Syria's Soviet-supplied guns and tanks, a majority of the "fighting" PLO in Lebanon has repudiated Arafat's leadership and joined units that were already under Damascus' direct control...

...What are the political implications for the Middle East of Arafat's latest, and clearly most disastrous, defeat...

...For them, the murderous terrorist nature of the PLO was unimportant...

...If the older generation of Palestinians took Arafat's beating less emotionally, their concern was similar...

...It is currently engaged in two intertwined efforts: to reassert its domination over Lebanon (which it sees as part of "Greater Syria" and has never recognized as a fully independent country), and simultaneously to bring its forces to parity with Israel's in the hope of forcing Jerusalem to relinquish the Golan Heights...

...Hussein, who was not eager to get involved again in the murderous Palestinian in-fighting, appeared quite relieved...

...Israel, too, is confronted by some very hard questions...

...Many Israeli commentators added a political factor...

...The beginning of the end came, of course, in Beirut...

...they are expected to continue the alliance they forged with Damascus against Arafat, but sooner or later, it is felt, they will try to escape Syrian domination...

...Why do most Palestinians appear to retain a loyalty to Arafat, given his repeated failures...

...As for Arafat, it may very well be that he has nine lives...

...Jerusalem perhaps also wanted to make clear that its new, closer relationship with Washington notwithstanding, it has no intention of giving up any freedom of action...

...Over half the Palestinians alive today were probably born after Arafat became the established head of the resistance...

...The feeling was underscored by the situation surrounding the loss of the two American aircraft to Syrian missiles in the first U.S...

...It may not seem too rational, but few Israelis were surprised that young Palestinians in the West Bank reacted to the slaughter of Arafat's men by the Syrians with an outburst of violence against patrolling Israeli troops...

...He survived Jordan's merciless destruction of his terrorist state-within-a-state during the notorious Black September of 1970...

...Lastly, there is a lingering feeling in Israel-eflected in both the government and the media-hat the urge to disengage from Lebanon may be stronger in Washington than U.S...

...generals they are still in the mistress, not the legal spouse, class...

...To avoid even the shadow of cooperation with Israel, they said, the Pentagon failed to benefit from Israel's experience...

...Further, his popularity is bound to safeguard his Palestinian leadership status in Arab League councils...

...It is much easier to understand why the average Palestinian goes on demonstrating support for Arafat, whether in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria-where he risks tear gas and truncheon attacks by Assad's riot police...

...Nevertheless, he is a symbol of hope that cannot simply be cast aside...

...Because the Palestinians remain impressively faithful to him, he will almost certainly continue to receive financial support from oil-rich countries as well as contributions from PLO sympathizers...

...Getting involved with Syria at this point would be a sharp reminder that Shamir was Menachem Begin's very acquiescent foreign minister when the Israelis were hoodwinked into "Operation Peace for Galilee...

...The Kremlin's Pavlovian reaction is particularly surprising since, except for Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, Assad is the sole Arab leader siding with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iran-Iraqi war...

...It is the reasonable assumption of most Middle East specialists here that the Palestinians, until the latest developments essentially divided into two categories, will split into three...

...More tellingly, they have never attached much significance to the question of whether Arafat, left to do what he really wants to do, would or would not be a moderate...

...acts of hostility toward Syria and of friendship toward Israel indicate...

...They, too, see him as representing international recognition of Palestinian nationhood...

...Should Assad so much as hint at a willingness to retreat and help Washington save face, this could prove an irresistible lure regardless of the price Israel might have to pay...

...But Damascus would be wrong to read this as battle-weariness...

...But things are very unlikely to be the same ever again in the Palestinian movement...

...Moreover, they have joined many Western politicians in weaving a promising aura of "moderation" around his brow...

...To accomplish these objectives, President Hafez al-Assad urgently needs the image of "the only frontline Arab country battling Israel...

...Yet he lacked the guts to draw the obvious political conclusions from his predicament and agree to the American peace plan, put forward in September 1982, urging him to let King Hussein of Jordan negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians in the West Bank...

...Syria's position is probably hardest to fathom...

...And a PLO run by Damascus is the most effective-as well as the safest-means of keeping tensions high...

...He is, Israelis learned long ago, a weak leader and therefore always bends to the demands of those who are stronger...

...The splinter groups, such as Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Naif Hawatme's Democratic Front, remain a separate entity...

...AFTER LEBANON The Prognosis for Arafat BY ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Avtv Yasir Arafat and some 4,000 of his remaining Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) supporters left Lebanon December 20 courtesy of Israel...

...Military experts attributed the downings to out-of-date aircraft and inadequate combat training...

...That at least appears to be part of the message Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir and Defense Minister Moshe Arens were telegraphing to the rest of the world during the preceding 10 days when bombardment by Israeli gunboats delayed the departure operation...

...All of this raises three central questions: Why did Damascus set out to diminish Arafat, even at the cost of the lives of hundreds of Palestinian refugees, PLO troops and local civilians...

...To Israelis, such a posture shows that in the eyes of Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and the U.S...

...In backing Syria, the Kremlin is in fact backing Khomeini-and earning the hostility of all the other Arab countries...

...The United States and France saved him and his Israeli-besieged fighters by evacuating them from Beirut in August 1982...

...It was apparent that Arafat could never fully recover from his humiliating military defeat by the Israel Defense Forces...

...A related issue is precisely what weight to give the latest positive turn in U.S.-Israeli relations...

...attack...

...After the unveiling of the Reagan peace plan, Arafat half-heartedly entertained the idea of authorizing King Hussein to negotiate with Jerusalem through Washington about the fate of the Palestinians...

...commanders turned down Israeli offers to hospitalize the surviving victims in expert facilities in nearby Haifa and instead flew the wounded all the way to Germany (with three men reportedly dying en route...

...For one thing, little enthusiasm exists in Israel for resuming the war in Lebanon or starting a new one with Syria...

...And according to the Israeli press, the American commander in charge abstained from requesting-and may have declined-Israeli air cover for the U.S...

...In these circumstances, the larger implications of Arafat's defeat are fraught with question marks...

...Past performance holds out little promise...

...This enabled Israel to evade U.S...

...True, Shamir and Arens were greeted by outpourings of friendship and support during their U.S...

...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...Secondly, while the Shamir-Arens government wants to demonstrate its closeness to Washington, it especially wants to distance itself from responsibility for the Begin-Sharon government's Lebanese adventure...

...Israelis, remembering the dozens of children, women and old men murdered by the PLO, and the gun sported by Arafat on the UN General Assembly rostrum, do not share this naive picture...

...More immediately, with Arafat off the scene in Lebanon, Washington has to decide how much additional blood and treasure it is willing to invest to show that terror does not pay...

...In addition, it provided an opportunity for Damascus to turn bitter criticism of Arafat into a full-scale rebellion aimed at making the PLO an instrument of Syria's anti-Israel and in-tra-Arab intrigues...

...Nor, indeed, was Jerusalem very happy with the timing of what proved to be only the beginning of the Sixth Fleet's direct participation in the war...

...For remarkably, he still finds that tension with Israel is a sure-fire way of obtaining new, ultramodern weapons from Moscow with few questions asked...

...Perhaps most important, though, note the specialists, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians-including the refugees in Lebanon and Jordan as well as the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gazawill, for the foreseeable future, maintain a real or sentimental loyalty to Arafat and to the old PLO...

...There used to be the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, functioning under Chairman Arafat and embracing a score or more groups of differing importance and loyalty...

...And now Greek ships flying the United Nations flag have rescued him from annihilation in Tripoli at the hands of Syrian-supported PLO rebels...

...mission...

...Efforts to revive the Reagan plan are already under way, and the PLO Chairman's response to them should soon indicate what impact, if any, his military trouncing will have on his future political actions...

...For its part, Damascus will have to make up its mind whether the "strategic parity" with Israel planned by next spring-when Russian pilots and missile men will have handed over the new Soviet gadgets to their Syrian pupils-is really worth the risk of another bloody defeat...