by Mike Wallace
[ 114 ]
T H E M I D D L E E A S T
W A L L A C E : Why would Jimmy Carter want to betray the Palestinians? Because that’s what you’ve said.
A R A F A T : I think he is a— He’s looking for the votes.
W A L L A C E : So, he’s just doing this for votes?
A R A F A T : I am sorry to say.
W A L L A C E : He will betray the Palestinians—
A R A F A T : I am sorry to say that what he is doing is only for some votes for the new election.
W A L L A C E : And you— By “some votes,” you mean Jewish votes in the next election.
A R A F A T : Maybe. Votes—the Jewish votes or other votes.
W A L L A C E : Well, then, other votes?
A R A F A T : But mainly it is Jewish votes.
W A L L A C E : I see.
A R A F A T : I am sorry to say it.
In 1982, I returned to Beirut and interviewed him again, shortly before pressure from Israel’s invading forces drove the PLO out of Lebanon. Following that expulsion, Arafat moved his command post to Tunis, and when I sat down with him there in 1989, he vigorously defended the intifada, the Palestinian uprising of riots, mayhem, and violence that engulfed the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank in 1987 and persisted over the next four years. We also talked about his more conciliatory positions, for Arafat had recently renounced terrorism and had formally acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, a diplomatic step that reversed twenty-five years of PLO policy. That olive branch helped create the climate for direct negotiations with Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1993
Oslo Accords, he set up his headquarters in Gaza City, where I visited him twice. My seventh and last interview with him was in 2002
at yet another site, Ramallah on the West Bank.
[ 115 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
Throughout most of the quarter century that had elapsed since I first met him in Cairo, Arafat’s PLO guerrillas and Israel’s armed forces were at each other’s throats, and the depressing history they shared was mostly one of destruction and bloodshed. But on at least two occasions, Arafat came tantalizingly close to resolving the PLO’s major disputes with Israel in a way that would have brought peace and stability to the region.
The first time was in 1993, when the two foes signed the Oslo Accords. The key elements in that historic agreement called for official recognition of the state of Israel, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and a plan to implement Palestinian self-rule in those territories over a five-year period.
Arafat’s counterpart in the agreement was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had long been revered as one of Israel’s great patriots. He had been a field commander in the 1948 War of Independence and the military chief of staff during the Six-Day War in 1967, and his towering reputation as a war hero gave him the stature and clout he needed to sell the Oslo Accords to skeptical Israelis. At the formal signing ceremony with President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn, Rabin shook hands with his longtime enemy, and although he did so with some hesitation, that gesture of goodwill sig-naled the dawn of a more tranquil era in the Middle East. Like Sadat and Begin fifteen years earlier, Arafat and Rabin were showered with praise for their diplomatic triumph. Like those previous leaders, they went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor they shared with Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who had played a critical role in the long and difficult negotiations.
But the high hopes generated by the Oslo pact were abruptly shattered. Inthe fall of 1995, as plans were moving forward to implement the agreement, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli fanatic, a terrorist who bitterly opposed the concessions
[ 116 ]
T H E M I D D L E E A S T
that were being made to the Palestinians. His motive for killing Rabin had beento derail the peace process, and to a large extent, he succeeded. Moreover, that deadly assault was a sad reminder to all of us that acts of terrorism in the Middle East were not confined to Israel’s Arab enemies.
The second golden opportunity came in 2000, when Israel’s new prime minister, Ehud Barak, set out to revive the harmonious spirit of the Oslo Accords. This time around, President Clinton became an active participant in the negotiations. In July 2000 he summoned Barak and Arafat to meet with him at Camp David, where he hoped to pull off the kind of diplomatic coup that Carter had achieved there in 1978. Clinton was then in the final months of his presidency, and a Carteresque mediation of a long-standing Middle East dispute would have been an impressive capstone to his eight years in the White House.
Barak assured Arafat that he was committed to all the provisions that had been set down in the Oslo agreement, and with a sharp nudge from Clinton, he went even further. In addition to relinquish-ing all of the Gaza Strip and over 90 percent of the West Bank for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Barak said Israel would be willing to give the Palestinians control over parts of East Jerusalem. That concession went well beyond any previous proposal to Arafat; never before had an Israeli leader offered to compromise on the status of Jerusalem, a city that both Jews and Arabs steadfastly claim as their capital.
Although it was a remarkably generous offer, Arafat rejected it.
And in spite of intense pressure imposed on him by Clinton, he declined to make a counteroffer. The president was furious at Arafat and all but accused him of sabotaging the talks at Camp David, which he had convened with such high expectations and at which he had put his own reputation on the line.
[ 117 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
For Arafat, pressure from Bill Clinton was not nearly as threatening as pressure from Hamas and other radical Islamic groups that were challenging his authority. Their growing influence within his own community was now so strong that Arafat did not dare to defy their unrealistic demands, which went far beyond anything the Israelis could accept. When I interviewed Arafat in Gaza City three months after the Camp David meeting, I asked why he had refused Barak’s generous proposal. Arafat replied that if he had accepted, he would be “drinking tea in heaven with Yitzhak Rabin.”
The collapse of the Camp David negotiations had a devastating effect on the peace process. When I visited Gaza in the fall of 2000, guerrilla attacks and similar uprisings were an almost daily occurrence there and on the West Bank. The new wave of violence had all the earmarks of the 1987 insurrection; indeed, it soon became known as “the second intifada.” As for Ehud Barak, he had staked his career and reputation on being able to reach an agreement with Arafat, and his failure was political suicide. As the violence escalated that fall, he had to prepare for new elections, and in February 2001, Israeli voters veered sharply to the right and chose the notorious hard-liner Ariel Sharon as their next prime minister.
The last time I interviewed Arafat was in February 2002, in Ramallah, where he was a virtual prisoner in his own presidential compound. For the previous two months, Sharon had kept tanks positioned on the streets outside the compound and had vowed to confine Arafat to his quarters until he arrested a number of Palestinians the Israeli government had identified as terrorists. Among other things, the show of force underscored how much Sharon detested Arafat. I asked the PLO leader about that personal enmity, which stretched back over two decades or more.
[ 118 ]
T H E M I D D L E E A S T
W A L L A C E : Why does Ariel Sharon hate you so? He wanted you killed.
A R A F A T : He has tried to kill me thirteen times.
W A L L A C E : Right. Why does he hate you so?
A R A F A T : You have to ask him.
W A L L A C E : No, no, no, no. You have your own opinion. Why?
The only answer Arafat offered was that he was a man of peace, as he had demonstrated at the time of the Oslo Accords, and that Sharon had always been a staunch opponent of the peace process.
Arafat then launched
into his favorite litany about the Israeli occupation—which he called “the siege”—and how grievously the Palestinian people had suffered during the decades of Israel’s military oppression. I had heard it all before, too many times before.
Throughout our last encounter, Arafat struck me as a rather pathetic figure, and not just because he was being subjected to the humiliation of virtual house arrest. He was seventy-two and looked considerably older, no doubt in part because of the Parkinson’s disease he suffered from. Beyond advancing age and failing health, Arafat seemed to have lost the passion and fire I remembered from earlier visits. I saw him as a spent volcano, a lion in the depths of winter who had been declawed and could no longer roar.
Toward the end of our interview, I brought up a recent column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Under the headline “Dead Man Walking,” Friedman wrote that “few Americans, Israeli or Arab leaders believe anymore that he will ever lead his people into a peace deal with Israel. Everyone is just waiting for Mr. Arafat to pass away.”
Arafat’s reply was to remind me that he had been “elected from my people” and that he was still the leader of the Palestinian cause. I then quoted another comment that had come to my attention.
[ 119 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
W A L L A C E : Ahmed Abdul Rahman, close friend, yes? He said recently, “At this moment, Arafat is the Christ of the Palestinian people.” Christ died for his people. Correct? You’ve said fairly recently that you want to be a martyr for Jerusalem, for the Palestinian people.
A R A F A T : Yes, yes. I hope that I will die in Jerusalem. I had lived there when I was a boy, so I would like and I hope that I will have the opportunity to die there with my mother.
Arafat did not get his wish. His health continued to decline over the next two years, and when he became mortally ill in the fall of 2004, he was still languishing in confinement at his compound in Ramallah. Ina desperate attempt to stay alive, Arafat flew to a military hospital outside of Paris, where he lapsed into a coma and died on November 11. His body was flownback to Ramallah for burial the next day. In accordance with his longtime desire, a request was made for his burial inJerusalem, but Prime Minister Sharonrefused. When the time came for his burial in Ramallah, thousands of Palestinians swarmed through the compound inanoutpouring of grief.
The emotional outbursts at Arafat’s funeral were a strong reminder of how deeply he was revered by the Palestinian masses, who had ample reason to regard him as a hero. His dynamic leadership over the years had restored the Palestinians’ sense of honor and pride in their own identity. Largely because of him, they had come to believe in the promise of a brighter future, one that would lead eventually to independence and nationhood.
Arafat also had a reputation for being fearless, especially during the early years, when he led the PLO in campaigns of guerrilla warfare. Those repeated attacks on Israelis made him a prime target for assassination, and in my first interview with him in 1977, I asked if
[ 120 ]
T H E M I D D L E E A S T
he was concerned about that. “No,” he replied, “my life is nonsense.”
That was his way of saying that he had become accustomed to living in constant peril and had reconciled himself to the likelihood of a violent death, no doubt sooner rather than later.
The valor of those early days did not extend to his role as peacemaker. When push came to shove in his negotiations with Israeli leaders, Arafat did not have the courage of his convictions. He allowed himself to be intimidated by terrorists within his own movement, and, cowed by their threats to dispatch him to an afterlife of
“drinking tea with Yitzhak Rabin,” he refused to take the bold steps necessary to achieve a firm accommodation with Israel. Time and again he squandered opportunities to lead the Palestinian people to the nationhood he had promised them, and that failure, I suspect, is apt to be Arafat’s most enduring legacy.
Yet in an irony that Arafat would not have appreciated, his death had the effect of reviving prospects for a peace agreement. Mahmoud Abbas, the man elected to succeed him as president of the Palestinian Authority, was known to be a moderate who had long been committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Israel.
His election in early January 2005 by a clear-cut margin (he garnered 62 percent of the vote) was widely hailed as a strong and positive step in the right direction. Even Ariel Sharon praised Abbas as someone Israel could negotiate with in good faith, and Abbas responded in kind. Sharon, he said, was now “speaking a different language to the Palestinians,” and that raised hopes for “a real peace.”
Nor did it take long for the two leaders to confer in person. Just one month after Abbas’s election, he and Sharon shook hands at a summit meeting in Egypt where each of them gave his pledge to a cease-fire that would bring an end to four years of violence in the region. Their agreement had all the earmarks of a fresh start down the
[ 121 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
road to a permanent peace, and as I write in the spring of 2005, there are signs that this latest initiative might possibly succeed where so many previous ones failed. An independent Palestinian state living in harmony with a secure Israel is, of course, a consummation devoutly to be wished, but as a longtime observer of the savage desert politics of the Middle East, I’ve learned to be prepared for the worst even as I fervently hope for the best.
T h e S h a h o f I r a n
T h e A y at o l l a h K h o m e i n i D U R I N G T H E 1 9 7 0 S , W H E N I was spending so much time in the Middle East that it seemed almost like my second home, the Arab-Israel conflict was not the only story from that region getting big play in the U.S. media. A far more urgent concern for most Americans was the sudden use of oil as a weapon against the United States and its allies. In late 1973 the world’s largest oil producers drastically increased the price of their shipments to the West, and the Arab members of the oil cartel imposed an embargo on those shipments. These actions drove a spike of inflation into the U.S. economy and created a gasoline shortage at pumps from Maine to California. Motorists had to adjust to long lines at the filling stations, and to make matters worse, there were days when no stations had gas to sell at any price.
The world’s two largest exporters of petroleum were Saudi Arabia and Iran, and in early 1974, I did 60 Minutes stories on the leadership in both countries. That was when I had my first interview with the autocratic ruler of Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah was punctilious about his royal status, and before he would deign to be in-
[ 122 ]
T H E M I D D L E E A S T
terviewed, my producer, Bill McClure, and I and the members of our camera crew had to line up in an appropriate pecking order and pay our respects to His Majesty, as though we were newly arrived diplomats presenting our credentials to the Peacock Throne.
In spite of his imperious manner, the shah turned out to be what we like to call “good copy.” I was not given any ground rules or other advance restrictions as to questions, and as long as I observed the protocol and took care to address him periodically as “Your Majesty,”
I could ask him just about anything. In fact, he seemed to welcome questions that had an edge to them, and most of his answers were refreshingly frank. The more time I spent with him, the more I came to realize that he truly enjoyed the give-and-take of a spirited argument and would even go out of his way to instigate some friction.
There was, for example, anexchange that took place early inour 1974 interview. The shah was aware that I had flown to Iran directly from Saudi Arabia, and when I alluded to that previous visit, he seized the opportunity to give me a little lesson in geographic nomenclature.
W A L L A C E : As you know, I have been across the gulf, the gulf that you call Persian and they call Arabian—
T H E S H A H : Why do you call it that? You have been to school, haven’t you?
W A L L A C E : Yes.
T H E
S H A H : What was the name that you have read during your school days?
W A L L A C E : Persian Gulf.
T H E S H A H : All right. That’s—
W A L L A C E : (Laughs) But they do call it the Arabian Gulf.
T H E S H A H : Well, they can do many things.
[ 123 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
We talked at length about the huge hike in oil prices, and he insisted that the major oil companies in the United States were profit-ing almost as much from the increases as were the countries that exported the petroleum. I challenged him on that assertion, but he stuck to his guns, and he may have been right. What I did know was that the shah had beena longtime critic of Westernoil companies and their governments, and he had even chosen to couch his grievances against them in ethnic or genetic terms. I asked him about that.
W A L L A C E : You have said that the blue-eyed Europeans—the blue-eyed people of the United States—have plundered your country. Do you really believe that?
T H E S H A H : I do, because just only take this oil thing, among others. For fifty years they were taking the oil and flaring the gas.
W A L L A C E : That is, burning it?
T H E S H A H : Just burning it. What name would you give to this action?
W A L L A C E : Well, it was uneconomical, they said.
T H E S H A H : Obviously, because they didn’t care. . . .
W A L L A C E : And you do believe that we in the United States and the European nations—the blue-eyed ones—in a sense discriminated against brown-eyed oil?