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 Vol. 8 / Oct. 2005 / Tishrei 5766              A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

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BOOK   REVIEW

David Bukay's

Yasser Arafat and the Politics of Paranoia:
A Painful Legacy
The Edwin Mellen Press, iv + 403 pp.

 Book review by Christopher Barder

Yasser Arafat was entirely open about his determination to end the State of Israel’s existence and about the role of violence in his strategy. The same traits are entirely apparent among the PA personnel now. Somehow, by some hideous forces of self-deception and other pathologies, Israelis in large numbers came to believe the reality was otherwise, and accepted Arafat’s propaganda about “the peace of the brave” as if it was true. Thus did the march of folly engulf a nation that had spent its entire existence resisting and trying to deter terror and the very causes Arafat espoused.

No greater proof of the pertinence of this book need be sought.

Many academics outside Israel have professed puzzlement at Arafat’s apparently paradoxical political nature, and have even denigrated the Israeli picture of the man of violence as too simple and crude a representation of the political realities. In this way, for example, Professor Glenn Robinson takes issue with Efraim Karsh, and with Barry and Judith Rubin,1 saying that they regard Arafat’s evil as the source of Palestinian violence since he believed in “the absolute glorification of violence”. The learned Professor Robinson simply points out that all nationalist movements have resorted to some degree of violence and the PLO is really like others. So he comprehensively misses all the important points including those about the barbarous cruelty and disregard for women, children and civilians – which have been deliberate PLO targets. Dr. Bukay goes far further into the psychological dimension of Arafat’s politics than does someone like Professor Robinson, who wants to find Israel’s security policies responsible for the kind of horror which erupted after the Camp David talks during Ehud Barak’s premiership. The internal dynamics of Palestinian attitudes and violence have far deeper causes than class and economic group struggles for social and political mastery within Palestinian society, Dr. Bukay demonstrates.

However, non-Israeli commentators are frequently wide of the mark and full of wishful thinking for, as Jeff Jacoby pithily observed, “Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.”2 This truth is a major reason why Arafat’s modus operandi needs a thorough exploration, and it also goes some way towards explaining why such has not been successfully achieved by most scholars or more popular analysts. The importance of the man and his psychology and political style have been recognized by informed Israeli academics but have been carefully side-stepped by most Western commentators who have wanted to read into his behavior something reflecting a desire for peace or a justifiable liberation movement (rather hard to demonstrate given the disastrous state of economic, educational and medical development since the PA was created).

One expert study, among its many conclusions, advised,

It would be advisable to deal with Arafat respectfully and to demonstrate gestures of goodwill toward him that have a bearing on his personal status. Such gestures have an effect on his state of mind and feed his desire to be honored and to receive recognition. At the same time, he will not make concessions on essential issues in return for such gestures.3

So one is entitled to ask why he should be allowed to benefit from such massaging of his ego. Nor would David Bukay necessarily recommend it.

It is possible to read Dr. Bukay’s analysis and adopt a different and far less conciliatory tone, while explaining the machinations, which caused the deep sense of frustration that Arafat engendered among all those who wanted a bold and sincere desire for reconciliation and conflict resolution. It was such a desire that those who so disastrously gave him the Nobel Peace Prize fancied they saw in him. Reading Dr. Bukay’s account, one can adopt an intellectually informed appraisal of a case for greater realism and caution. It is a pity that Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, for examples, were not briefed by use of Dr. Bukay’s material. They and the Israeli Left have been left without a resolution of the conflict and without a genuine peace process, and should study Dr. Bukay’s exposition for a better understanding of why. Alas, Condoleeza Rice and the personnel in the Bush second term appear still to believe in the dream, but Dr. Bukay teaches that Palestinian politics and society are dangerous even without Arafat, an essential insight considering the many and continuous, but forced, appreciations of Abu Ala and Abu Mazen.

At the end of this rewarding and powerful book, there is clear warning concerning what the author anticipated we would see today. “The result [of a PLO state] would turn into an irredentist, aggressive, violent entity, unsatisfied with its fate, and would wish to change the status quo by violent means,” writes Dr. Bukay (p. 375). It is an informative book, not merely because it is accurate and detailed in its documentation, but also because it provides tools for analysis and for the understanding of political processes at work within the PA and Palestinian society. 

It is the ability to explain and interpret current events and contemporary history that makes the reading of this book so important, but also it is the unflinching boldness that characterizes the writer, and which makes his portrayal of political reality so valuable.

The Associated Press reporter in the Gaza Strip on August 23, 2005, wrote from Raf[I]ah,

In a military training camp run by the ruling Fatah movement, hundreds of young Palestinians marched in formation Monday and sprinted across a sandy lot. Nearby, hundreds of Islamic Jihad gunmen in black ski masks paraded in the streets, some riding in jeeps, raising AK-47 assault rifles and posing with rocket launchers.

Yet a third militant group, Hamas, boasted on its website that it has killed more Israelis in more Gaza attacks than any of its rivals – and that it alone deserves credit for Israel’s historic pullout from the Mediterranean strip.

Competition among armed Palestinian groups over control of Gaza’s lawless towns intensified Monday as Israeli settlers cleared out the last of 21 Jewish settlements.

The jostling for position has raised tensions as well as concerns about armed conflict.

“This huge military presence among people in Gaza will lead to more chaos, will weaken the Palestinian Authority and will create more violence in society,” said Talal Okal, a political analyst in Gaza. “Fatah is losing control and Hamas is rising up.”

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wants to see carefully orchestrated victory marches under the Palestinian national flag. However, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a few tiny Palestinian Liberation Organization factions have ignored his appeals, already parading their gunmen in a show of force and planning parades once the last Israeli soldiers leave in the coming weeks...

This is some small and early notification of the menace that supporters of a Palestinian state have created for the world on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. It is a small hint at the forces starting to rehearse afresh for the Jihadist war against Israel until finally the Jewish state is expunged and replaced by an Arab Palestinian one. Insofar as this is what Arafat was directly aiming at, Israelis and all who care about “peace in the Middle East” need to grasp the mechanics and psychology of the forces working against Israel, that is “first the Saturday people and then the Sunday people.”

Dr. Bukay describes the important role of terrorism and violence, the “fleeing forward” (p. 267), which Arafat used and what emerges clearly from the book is the deep-rooted violence in the Palestinian society which was one of the main features which Arafat cultivated and passed on. The recent violent death after a 30-minute gun battle of Yasser Arafat’s cousin, Moussa, is ample illustration of this. The basic role of terrorism is shown to be a core role, perhaps above any other, and to be embedded in the socio-political framework that “...wherever they go, Palestinian children are exposed to one directing, purposeful trend, namely the destruction of the State of Israel” (p.287). This is, of course, accompanied by a lack of reciprocity in every sphere and in the first year after the Oslo Accords, Israel suffered from the worst terror casualty statistics in its history.

Arafat was not simply an extraordinary survivor diplomatically and physically, he was also a deviser of strategies and policies filled with hate and corruption of minds as well as financial corruption. In the end, he emerges as not only an evil and monstrous figurehead and calculating Machiavellian (of a kind traditional in European literature, without morality and scruple), but also, almost paradoxically in a macabre way, as a builder – but of a sick society reflecting his ethos and lack of ethics. “He [Arafat] cares nothing for the social, economic and living standards of the Palestinians” (p. 358). And yet, by virtue of tolerating no rival political power foci, Arafat has ensured that the Oslo process, which in most ways restored him and the PLO, has made the Palestinians less willing and able to accept peace with Israel and less genuine about the necessity of an accommodation than before, if that is at all possible.  

It was clear from the very start that the PA was going to use all means for transportation of “wanted men, weapons and ammunition, and money”. How dangerous this was, was largely ignored by “the Wise Men of Oslo”(p. 128). In highlighting attitude differences between the cunning deceiver, Arafat, and the foolish, gauche naiveté of the Israeli pro Oslo political elite, Dr. Bukay is arguably original as well as disarmingly (to his political opponents) ironic, certainly at his least “politically correct”, and perhaps at his most bold and penetrating. He is devastating on the way blindness leads to folly, as in his comments about Ehud Barak’s insight that every Palestinian policeman was one less possible terrorist, a fresh, new man with a tabula rasa, beginning life over again (p. 131). The dreadful refusal to grasp the scale and seriousness of the “mafia state” and kleptocracy, the sheer lawless violence and mindless brutality of the entity they had helped create, was perhaps not even brought home to the Israelis by personal tragedies on a huge statistical scale.

There were perhaps many (but not enough) Palestinians who secretly might have voiced what is recorded of a senior Palestinian personality, shortly after the Oslo signing, who burst into the room of the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories and shouted (p. 122):

How could you? You fools, idiots, blind men such as you are. To sign with that crook, that corrupt character...he will screw you just as he screwed everybody who made an agreement with him in the past... In five years he will bring the blood, the corruption and the filth to the doorway of your house, meanwhile he will destroy our hopes. This is a Mafia; this a syndicate of terrorism.

Dr. Bukay’s book is not merely an analysis of the mechanics of politics within Palestinian society, although it is this, nor a penetrating study of Arafat’s leadership style, although it accomplishes this too. It also unfolds the diplomatic relations between the Palestinians and the other Arabs involved in the struggle to destroy Israel, and shows the complexities of their relations and strategies. Unlike many biographical accounts and chronological ones of similar events, this has many of the more reflective traits of the political philosopher about it, and demonstrates a range of sources on which the author has drawn, in order to better explain and understand the singular and vicious political and violent phenomena which Arafat and the ruling Palestinian echelon represent. This learning helps to explain what is beneath the surface in animating Palestinian society and it may take, in the academic climate which is prevalent in Western and in Israeli academia, courage and deep acquaintance with Islamic societies and political culture to produce an unflinching account.

In many respects, this terrible truth is one of the proofs of the book’s immense value: that it is dangerous to say such things and be unpopular as well. Those who know Dr. Bukay’s other works will know he is simply an expert in his field and is willing to footnote his sources and cite Arabic concepts in support of his interpretations of what really shapes the reality behind the diplomatic facade which Israel faces and the world connives to believe in; but which cloaks a policy of determined genocide towards the Jews.

 Endnotes

1

Review Essay, “Being Yasir Arafat, A Portrait of Palestines [sic] President”, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003, pp. 236-241.

2

 “Arafat the Monster”, Boston Globe, November 11, 2004.

3

Shaul Kimhi, Shmuel Even, Jerrold Post, “Yasir Arafat Psychological Profile and Strategic Analysis”, The International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, IDC, Herzliya, June 25, 2003.