Yasser Arafat's ambitions seem more distant than ever 20 years after his death

The PLO chairman and first president of the Palestinian Authority leaves a complicated legacy

Fatah members commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. EPA

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Late on Monday night, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly declared 2025 “the year of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state”.

The comment by Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Abu Rudeineh, which was reported in Hebrew media, came in response to religious Zionist and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declaring earlier in the day that “with God’s help” Israel would apply sovereignty over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in 2025.

Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader under whom peace between Israel and a Palestinian state seemed once possible, Mr Abu Rudeineh's comment echoed with a sad hollowness.

Mr Smotrich has far more reason to believe his ambitions will be realised than the Palestinian spokesman. The minister's ultranationalist settler movement is going from strength to strength, as a key part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

They are rejoicing at the recent victory of US president-elect Donald Trump, who in his last term broke decades-old norms in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that massively favoured Israel – although it remains to be seen what approach Mr Trump will take on his second time around.

On the other hand, Mr Abbas’s government, in which Mr Abu Rudeineh sits, is in a catastrophic position. More than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza War, which shows no sign of ending. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is powerless to stop the carnage, as well as relentless Israeli military raids and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Israel, still waging war after more than a year of fighting, seems more against the prospect of a Palestinian state than ever.

Peace prospects

Born in 1929 to an affluent family that included members who opposed Zionism, Mr Arafat became the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1969, recognised by the UN as the sole legitimate representative of Palestinians, and then the first president of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, which became the governing body in autonomous Palestinian areas in 1994. He died in Paris on November 11, 2004.

Mr Arafat’s biggest achievement was getting the Palestinian issue and the prospect of a state to the forefront of global affairs. He then became a crucial part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the diplomatic effort that, to date, most clearly outlined a Palestinian state that could be tolerable for both sides.

The Palestinian cause had been driven internationally at the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987 and a victorious US seized its newfound influence at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 to make peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

The path towards the Accords was morally complicated but ultimately effective. Mr Arafat used armed resistance as a central means to bring his people's demands for freedom and representation to the world, fighting for decades against a powerful enemy before signing a peace treaty.

By 1974 he was a statesman addressing the UN General Assembly, causing outrage in Israel. “The question of Palestine is being re-examined by the United Nations, and we consider that step to be a victory for the world organisation as much as a victory for the cause of our people,” he told the audience.

“It indicates anew that the United Nations of today is not the United Nations of the past, just as today's world is not yesterday's world.”

He was called a terrorist by Israelis throughout his career. For Palestinians and those who cared about their plight, seeing Mr Arafat address the nations of the world and eventually shake hands with then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the lawn of the White House, was proof enough that a label that simple and damning was misplaced.

It was the most significant evidence of compromise between Palestinian and Israeli leaders since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Mr Arafat was also a charismatic figure who could galvanise his own people. He would give those who helped him AK-47s as gifts. He was secular but devout. During the siege of Beirut, he used to read the Quran for hours a day. These quirks are all the more striking given how often official Palestinian politics and its many factions can be complicated, slow and meaningless.

Fractured movement

He also had failings. Palestine is still an issue at the top diplomatic tables, but a deadlocked one. The early promise of the Oslo framework has become increasingly unworkable and an unconvincing model for peace after so many years during which Israel has consolidated power over an increasingly fractured Palestinian national movement.

How distant Mr Arafat’s world seems only 20 years after his death has much to do with forces beyond his doing. There is the corruption and ineptitude of current Palestinian officials that makes its people despondent, experts say. There is also counterproductive and often brutal Israeli policy that entrenches hate, as well as the general unpredictability and turbulence of a conflict that has run for so long and so deep.

But, according to many who knew Mr Arafat, today’s bad state of affairs also has a great deal to do with his own mistakes.

Nimrod Novik, a close foreign affairs adviser to former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, knew Mr Arafat for years. He told The National that the seeds of a corrupt Palestinian Authority were “planted under Arafat”.

“We [the Israelis] made the mistake of tolerating [Mr Arafat’s] practice of buying loyalty by allowing corruption and not calling him out for violation of trust and mutual confidence,” Mr Novik said.

“We said to ourselves that Arafat was deprived of the instruments of governance in any normal society. He was governing under occupation. He had no monopoly over the use of force. His budget was restricted,” Mr Novik added.

“Therefore, we could understand why he used corrupt practices. We were short-sighted on that and wrong. The end result was that the Palestinian Authority was a corrupt entity that contributed substantially to its loss of credibility with its own constituents.”

Hazem Ayyad, a prominent Jordanian researcher specialising in Palestinian affairs, said Mr Arafat brought about “disaster upon the PLO and the Palestinian people” when he signed the Oslo Accords.

“He was a victim of Oslo, which created a deep schism [in Palestinian society]. He ended up being neither in the reluctant camp nor in the moderate camp,” Mr Ayyad said.

The PLO that Arafat led emanated from the Palestinian diaspora, but Oslo ended up undermining the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who became refugees after the 1948 war. This caused “resentment” among Mr Arafat’s core constituency.

The refugees started feeling “betrayed” by him in the 1980s and many of them who held senior PLO positions started defecting from the organisation. This schism was compounded when the PLO monopolised the Palestinian Authority as soon as it was created.

“The schism became institutional and it remains until this day: the PA on one side and the rest of the Palestinian people on the other. Arafat found himself alone at the end,” Mr Ayyad said.

For the Israelis, Mr Novik said there was an even more fundamental problem with Mr Arafat’s approach: his strategy of “combining diplomacy with terrorism as a means for accomplishing objectives” in the run-up to the Second Intifada, the five-year eruption of violence between Palestinians and Israelis between 2000 and 2005 that remains a scar for both sides.

“In Israel there are two schools of thought about this period. One is that he never made the transition from a revolutionary leader to a nation builder. Others say he made that transition but reached the conclusion that Israelis don’t respond to diplomacy, only to force,” said Mr Novik.

In 2001, right-wing prime minister Ariel Sharon placed Arafat under house arrest, where his health began to deteriorate. During this time, radical Palestinian groups stepped up their attacks on Israeli targets and civilians, resuming a cycle of violence that continues today.

Mr Arafat died an isolated death in Paris in 2004 after heading to the city for medical treatment.

The hope of his work and the frameworks he helped hash out remain diplomatic talking points. With so much at stake, it is possible that a concerted global push could bring them closer to realisation.