Hours after a monthlong siege by the Israeli army ended, a time when tank shells burst through foot-thick walls and Israeli soldiers came so close that he could hear their conversations, Yasser Arafat popped out of his scarred office complex Thursday determined to burnish his own image and that of the Palestinian resistance.
During a fast-paced tour of Ramallah, Arafat was greeted by cries of “God is great!” and children waving plastic Palestinian banners. He flashed “V” for victory and declared: “These children will fly our flag over Palestine.”
Arafat mixed into his message of triumph and defiance an offer to work with the man who had ordered his virtual imprisonment, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Arafat also thanked President Bush for his support of a Palestinian state. In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said preparations were under way for a Middle East conference to take place this summer but no venue or date had yet been set.
Only a month ago Arafat was forced to huddle with advisers by the glow of candlelight, trapped in his offices by a vastly superior army and a rival determined to make him impotent and irrelevant.
But when he emerged Thursday for his latest moment in the sun, Arafat sounded triumphant, armed and ready with a made-for-TV sound bite.
He even coined a word for the occasion and sprang it on reporters as soon as one asked about the controversial battle for Jenin, the West Bank community that suffered the worst destruction in the sweeping Israeli assault that began March 29.
“Jeningrad,” he blurted.
Squinting at a reporter’s confusion, he emphasized every syllable–JEN-IN-GRAD–with a few pokes to the chest.
In a rush of historic license, Arafat likened the siege on the West Bank town to the epic World War II blockade of Leningrad. He paused for full dramatic effect: “You understand?”
Over the next few hours, the diminutive 72-year-old leader would hop from Jeep to Mercedes as he sped through clouds of dust and past crowds of supporters in Ramallah, the battered center of Palestinian life.
He kissed schoolchildren. He prayed over makeshift graves of militants in a hospital parking lot. He spread plaster on a bullet-pocked wall of a police station.
The Palestinian leader was determined to use Sharon’s unprecedented campaign of intimidation and assault to level some damage of his own against Israel.
Before he entered a ravaged office, Arafat urged news photographers to step ahead. He waited a few moments as they got into position and then he crossed the threshold.
Damage called `unbelievable’
“Unbelievable,” Arafat said, looking at a stack of broken computer monitors and looking up to face the popping camera flashes.
Arafat had suffered a sharp drop in popularity before Sharon began restricting his movements five months ago.
The Palestinian leader was effectively marooned in the West Bank after Dec. 3, when Israel destroyed his two Russian-made helicopters at Arafat’s Gaza City headquarters.
With Israeli troops imposing a cordon around Ramallah, Arafat was unable to leave the city. Israel barred him from making his traditional Christmas visit to Bethlehem.
Tanks confined Arafat to his compound. Then troops invaded his offices, confining him to just a few rooms.
Yet the tighter the restrictions became, the more his standing grew among Palestinians. In the last embattled month, his popularity soared as the longtime champion of Palestinian militant resistance became a virtual prisoner to Israeli tanks.
Whether Arafat will remain favored by that crush of sympathy is a question. As a result of the Israeli incursion, Arafat is left with a West Bank that no longer has control over its own security, a deep loss in a society that has long chafed under Israeli occupation. Israel has yet to withdraw from the Palestinian territories–despite its claims to have done so–and Arafat will be sorely tested to rebuild his security forces.
Still in confinement?
Indeed, Arafat wasn’t even sure when he walked around Ramallah that he could chance traveling beyond the borders of the Palestinian territories.
Sharon, in an interview with ABC News, said Arafat had no guarantees and “we’re not going to give any guarantees” that he can travel abroad and return. Because “usually in the past when he left, it was always a sign of a wave of terror,” Sharon said.
Arafat, on the other hand, dropped some of the harshest anti-Israeli rhetoric he had used when he blamed Israeli troops for starting a fire in the Church of the Nativity complex in Bethlehem.
Arafat had referred to the Israelis as “terrorists, Nazis and racists” and wondered, “how can we tolerate them after committing this crime?”
But later Thursday, Arafat told Reuters that he still saw Sharon as a potential peace partner.
“He is the person who has been elected by the Israelis, and we are dealing with him . . . because our partner is the Israeli people,” Arafat said.
Arafat also said he embraced Bush’s vision of an end to the conflict that would see a “Palestinian state that both lives at peace with Israel and lives up to the best hopes of its people.”
Wherever Arafat went Thursday in Ramallah, wherever there was a whisper of Arafat, a crowd gathered. And wherever Arafat appeared, from the chamber of commerce to a small school, there was applause rewarded with a quick hand wave of victory from the leader in the familiar green uniform.
“We are marching to Jerusalem, martyrs in the millions!” one crowd of kids from an Anglican school chanted in high-pitched enthusiasm.
Arafat’s own pronouncements were short, frequent, impassioned and insistent. He spoke to Geraldo Rivera, CNN, BBC or any other television microphone that swung his way, delivering the kind of talk that will surely become part of an international campaign for aid and intervention.
He spoke of massacres, although there is no proof. He looked at weeks-old piles of crumpled concrete and crushed computers and invoked newfound rage at the debris.
Arafat also sent signals that he would not go anywhere until the siege in Bethlehem–which has sealed dozens of people inside the church–was over.
“For me, this is what is important,” said Arafat, who was expected to meet with a papal envoy to discuss the standoff. The Israelis “destroyed three buildings in my headquarters, but, for me, the church is the most important thing.”
Yousef Tamimi, head of the armament division at Arafat’s complex, had stayed with Arafat throughout the ordeal. Thursday, as Arafat began his self-appointed victory tour, Tamimi stayed behind trying to find a way to lock the door of his ransacked agency.
Mixed emotions
“Nobody expected it to last this long,” Tamimi said, weary after a night in which Israeli tanks and troops finally departed the compound. “I’m happy for my freedom but, at the same time, I’m sad for the situation.”
He looked at the ransacked agency, where no weapons, not a single bullet, remained.
“Can you give me a word for what I’m seeing here?” said Smail Tibi, a 40-year-old government clerk who seemed near tears as he looked at a garage full of Jeeps, Mercedes-Benzes and Land Rovers that were smashed, with tires flattened and windshields dissolved into glass pebbles.
“It’s important to see these things,” Tibi said. “What future can we have with these kind of people? What will happen next with them?”
