Arafat's Strategy
     
By Charles Krauthammer
Wasington Post
Friday, October 20, 2000; Page A33 

"What we have witnessed in the Palestinian territories these 
past few days obliges our negotiators to raise the level of 
demands in the negotiations. . . ." 
-- Hani Al-Hassan, PLO Central Committee, Oct. 12, 2000

Once again, the great sphinx looms over the Middle East. Yasser 
Arafat has everyone baffled. Yes, after Arafat started a war 
just weeks after being offered a generous peace, most Westerners 
awoke to reality. Even the New York Times's Thomas Friedman, 
searching as ever in Arafat for "statesmanship and real peaceful 
intentions," discovered that "Mr. Arafat, it's now clear, 
possesses neither." (This, on Day 16 of the killing.)

But the bafflement remains. What does Arafat hope to achieve 
with this violence? Israel's defeat?

Isn't that totally irrational? How are his rock-throwing mobs 
and newly trained 40,000-man militia going to defeat the 
Israeli military machine?

Well, look what happened this year in Lebanon, say the 
Palestinians. (The best place to follow what Palestinian 
leaders say to their people in Arabic is at www.memri.org, 
where indispensable translations are provided by the 
independent Middle East Media and Research Institute.) 
A ragtag guerrilla army in an almost open field drove the 
Israelis into a retreat so disorderly that they left many 
of their Lebanese allies behind, Saigon-like.

On the West Bank, moreover, the Palestinians enjoy additional 
advantages: a crowded urban battlefield where conventional 
armies are almost useless, an aroused population, and a 
sympathetic world press watching every move.

The Palestinian strategy is open and clear:

* Use violence to bring international pressure on Israel.

* Keep Israel mobilized, draining its resources and 
  exhausting its will.

* Bleed Israel as in Lebanon, but this time in the very 
  suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

* And thus force Israel back to the negotiating table from 
  a position of weakness.

Arafat doesn't oppose negotiations. He just opposes negotiations 
where he lacks the upper hand. The aim of the violence is to gain 
the upper hand, force Israel to sue for peace and then dictate 
the terms of a final settlement.

Among the Arabs, writes defense analyst Ze'ev Schiff, "there 
is an increasing feeling that they have hit on the formula for 
bringing Israel to its knees." How? "Ongoing, low-level war 
that combines massive terrorism, guerrilla warfare and the 
international media. . . . This strategy will expose Israel's 
Achilles' heel; an extreme sensitivity to loss of life and the 
kidnapping of its soldiers."

The current fighting could last for months, even years (as did, 
for example, the Arab Revolt of 1936-39). Gun battles and 
casualties. International condemnation, boycotts and oil threats. 
Suicide bombings, kidnappings, terrorist attacks from Lebanon on 
the northern frontier.

How long before Israel sues for peace? Remember: Israel found 
the first intifada (1987-93) so intolerable that it sued for 
peace with the Oslo accords. And that intifada--rock-throwing 
mobs, but few guns and no suicide bombings--was a picnic 
compared to what Israel faces today.

If Israel is brought to its knees, what terms does Arafat 
dictate? That's easy. He'll demand three things:

First, Jerusalem.

Second, a return not to the 1967 borders, but to the borders 
drawn by the 1947 U.N. commission for the partition of 
Palestine. That Israel is much smaller and barely viable. 
Arafat tried out that demand last year without success. 
Should he gain the upper hand, he will insist upon it.

The third is the coup de grace, to be administered were Israel 
to be totally prostrate. Indeed, it is so devastating that 
Arafat could forgo the first two and accept the terms Barak 
offered him at Camp David--with but a single additional 
provision: the return to Israel of the descendants of the 
700,000 Palestinians who left Israel in 1948-49.

With a million Israeli Arabs already in open revolt against 
the Jews, imagine adding another 3 million to 5 million to 
Israel's population. With fewer than 5 million Jews in Israel, 
that single provision is demographic suicide. It means the 
end of Israel as a Jewish state. Within weeks, such a state 
would be absorbed, like East Germany, by Arafat's Palestine.

No muss, no fuss, no blood. Victory. Most Israelis, at such 
a point shorn of power and the means of self-defense, would 
leave, deciding quite rationally that it is better to live 
as a minority in the tolerant West than as a minority among 
hostile Arabs.

Notice: Just a single line in a new agreement is all it takes 
to liquidate the world's only Jewish state. Notice, too, that 
Arafat and his lieutenants never fail to include the "right 
of return" when demanding their "just rights" as the price for 
peace.

Smug Westerners think Arafat is an old fool. He "never misses 
an opportunity to miss an opportunity," Abba Eban once said. 
Well, Arafat sees his opportunity now--for fulfillment of 
maximal Palestinian dreams. The means is this war, and the 
world is behind him. Only a fool would forgo such an 
opportunity. Arafat knows exactly what he is doing. The fools 
are those who think he doesn't.