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A Lion in Winter
Ehud Ya'ari

The Jordanians and the Egyptians seek to persuade Sharon not to wait for the morning after Arafat, but to exploit this twilight period

IT IS QUITE FASCINATING TO WATCH YASSER ARAFAT these days. His mood swings careen � sometimes within a matter of minutes � from black depression to surges of elation. He zigzags between vibrant optimism and angry despair, between aggressive belligerency and conciliation. At times, it appears to this armchair psychologist, at least, that the rais is showing symptoms of actual mental instability.

He only has two speeches left in his repertoire. One is for the audiences of Jewish leftists who make the pilgrimage to his Ramallah compound, and for other foreign purveyors of goodwill. It�s a cloying speech about the �peace of the brave,� about the late Yitzhak Rabin, about his commitment to the cease-fire in the face of the wild rampages of the Israeli army.

The other speech is for the Palestinian audiences that gather daily in the courtyard of his headquarters or in one of the inside halls. That speech is saturated with Islamic motifs; with quotations from the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet; with talk about Arafat�s longing to die a martyr�s death close to Jerusalem; about how one martyr there is worth 70 others; and about the �hell for the infidels.�

He repeatedly delivers these two speeches by heart at every opportunity, and is careful not to add anything new. He lights up radiantly when he hears words of encouragement, and is overwhelmed by an oppressive tiredness immediately afterwards.

Arafat�s rapid mood changes have become the main topic of conversation among his close circle. More and more, they are confiding in others � and among them, former president Clinton � their worries about their leader�s unpredictability. They try to whisper in his ear. Sometimes they even take the microphone out of his hand. More and more, he regales high-level visitors � most recently the Spanish foreign minister, Josep Pique � with delusional, libelous claims such as the one about Israel�s Dolphinarium bomb conspiracy, or the Israeli ownership of the Karine A weapons ship. And when he is required to provide answers to relevant political questions, he launches into interminable historical lectures.

Yet he is still in command, as dangerous as that sounds. In sole command. Arafat has so far managed to block the attempts by some of his senior aides and advisors to steer him toward a showdown with Hamas and the end of the intifada, without having come into confrontation with a single member of his entourage.

He has done so by means of a very simple maneuver: He has surrounded himself anew with PLO veterans, like Abbas Zaki and Hakam Bala�awi, who had been pushed to the margins ever since Oslo, and who had disappeared from his court, in order to create a new balance of forces around him. Another exercise has been the organization of street demonstrations and solidarity marches with the assistance of the more radical elements of the Tanzim, to make clear to Abu Mazen and Abu Ala, to Jibril Rajoub and Muhammad Dahlan, the pretenders to the succession, that they had better remember their real, relatively puny weight in the eyes of the Palestinian public.

These two tricks have worked. If there had been any thoughts circulating in Arafat�s court about how to wrest his authority from him, for example by appointing a prime minister and turning Arafat into a ceremonial president, they have quickly dissipated.

Now Arafat�s envoys are saying that it is preferable for Israel to try to reach a settlement with him, and not without him: to force the chairman to be the one to bury the intifada, and afterwards, to extract from him the concessions that will serve his heirs, with his stamp as a guarantee and an alibi.

The French, typically, are stretching that approach all the way to proposing a call for new Palestinian elections, and thereby determining the legacy equation in advance. The Jordanians and Egyptians have also woken up lately with efforts to persuade Ariel Sharon and the U.S. administration not to wait for the morning after Arafat, but to exploit this twilight period, and now.

And so, despite the consensus about Arafat, an agreement is emerging that the political strangulation of the Palestinian leader must not reach the point of actual elimination. Only one thing remains unclear: whether Arafat is prepared to play the role destined for him.