At an early stage of his life, Yasser Arafat became an icon. That's
how he survived politically, despite his personal limitations. He
wasn't necessarily the brightest of the young Palestinian activists
at the end of the 1950s, and his deficiencies were known to all of
his colleagues. But as happens frequently in history, he was the
only one who agreed to devote all of his time to the new
organization, Fateh, while the others preferred to develop their
own personal careers. His friends in Fateh and the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) were aware of his periodic lack of
credibility, and his occasional tendency toward embarrassing public
appearances. The Palestinian public was not always inspired by his
speeches, but no one could compete with the fact that his image
became a national symbol. His symbolic standing was built upon his
image as a struggler/warrior. His image as a warrior received
expression in his clothing: a military suit with all its badges,
the pistol that was always close to him when he felt his life was
in danger, the stressing of the jihad motifs, self-sacrifice and
martyrdom in his speeches. Arafat was perceived in the eyes of the
Palestinian public as someone who was sacrificing his life for the
Palestinian revolution.
Even his deficiencies became national property. The maneuvering,
the manipulation, the divide-and-rule method, the bringing close
(patronage) and the rejection, together with the delays, the
hesitation, the preference for improvisation and the taking
advantage of tactical opportunities rather than strategic planning,
the use of false argumentation and empty slogans, the tendency to
satisfy the listener, to use double and ambiguous meanings, were
perceived by the Palestinian public as a means of survival in a
hostile and alienating world. He projected a lack of credibility:
yes and no at the same time. His awkward speechmaking, his tendency
to repeat key sentences over and over to compensate for his oratory
weaknesses, his tendency to appear like a helpless unfortunate who
doesn't understand why people are asking of him something beyond
his abilities - expressed the situation of the Palestinian nation
after the 1948 defeat. Alongside these phenomena, he also had
expressions of forcefulness, aggressiveness, and a readiness for
extended struggle that symbolized the Palestinian determination to
correct the historic distortion of 1948.
The construction of this symbolism was aided by the fact that
Arafat was frequently expelled from the Arab countries that hosted
him, and he even survived a number of assassination attempts and
accidents. If Arafat hadn't become a national icon, his invented
biography, which said he was born in Jerusalem rather than Cairo,
would have been a joke.
Arafat's Unique Leadership Style
Arafat's leadership didn't stem from an extraordinary personality,
from tradition or religious authority, or from the fact that he was
the head of a prominent family or tribe. He was not the type of
person who could develop an ideology that would be the basis of his
leadership. As an icon, Arafat was not a charismatic personality.
He wasn't Che Guevara, and he didn't symbolize the romance of the
Palestinian revolution. He also couldn't be imagined as a sex
symbol. On the contrary, his image projected asexuality. The
romance of the Palestinian revolution came from the abstract,
idealistic messages of the revolution - justice, freedom,
self-determination, struggle against the occupation and
imperialism, and the correction of an historical injustice. In the
1970s and 1980s, many in the West were captivated by the charms of
these idealistic messages, but not by the physical image of the
person who personified them.
Arafat wasn't a leader who caused all to melt in his presence, or
to be paralyzed with fear. On the contrary, the Palestinian
leadership always argued with itself and with Arafat. Among his
colleagues in the leadership, alongside his underground name Abu
Ammar, he was also known as al-Khit'yar (the old man) and al-Waled
(the father). Those names expressed the fact that he was about five
years older than his founding colleagues in Fateh, as well as his
status as a father and as the one who gave birth to the Palestinian
revolution. In essence, among his colleagues he was always
considered the first among equals. That is why Arafat had to build
coalitions, and to convert his dependence upon coalitions and the
agreement of his colleagues into a symbolic value. Thus the
arguments in the organization were another form of struggle,
alongside the fact that they served as a means for building a
national consensus around the leader. From a symbolic point of
view, Arafat was not seen as someone who forced himself on the
movement, but as someone who expressed the national consensus on
its behalf.
Arafat's watch always showed the same time: five minutes to
midnight - a time of emergency that called for a closing of the
ranks against external threats. To justify the time and to create a
reality that justified his symbolic status, Arafat created a sense
of disquiet, of bureaucratic chaos and tactical maneuvering. A
constant dispersal and reassignment of authority generated an
ongoing sense of instability, the fear of losing status and a
multiplication of competitors that reinforced his position as the
one at the top. These tactics provoked internal criticism, but they
also confirmed his status as a symbol. His leadership style also
upset many, who protested against his one-man rule, and the
personal element - in the decision-making processes and because his
policy periodically strayed from the consensus.
The icon of total dedication to the national liberation struggle
was based on the blurring of the borders between the personal and
the national. This was epitomized by Arafat's dress, his place of
residence, his lifestyle and his work habits. In all of them, the
personal and the national were one. The formal position became
personalized, and the specific person underwent a process of
symbolization. The same was true of his personal space, which
became public space. His home served as a public space, as both a
reception center and an office where Arafat and the Fateh
leadership worked. Arafat's burial in the courtyard of his
house-office-prison expresses this very well, as it expresses the
fact that he was a fighter who struggled. As an icon, Arafat
continues to struggle from the grave, until he is transferred to
the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif. In other words, the final resting
place of Arafat, the leader, will not be realized until one of the
highest goals of the national movement is achieved.
Work patterns that for Europeans, Americans, Israelis and some
members of the Palestinian elite seemed problematic, like
patronage, lack of delegation of authority, difficulties in
managing systematic work procedures with institutions that function
in a way that are open to external regulation, all stemmed from the
identification of the personal with the national, and they
converted his image from a burden into an advantage. As external
criticism of his work patterns and pressure to change them
increased, so did his symbolic image as a fighter who struggled
against external forces. However, the development of the symbol was
not the only dimension of Arafat's public image. During the past
few years, Palestinian criticism of his flaws as a leader also
increased. Paradoxically, the more he became a target of Israeli
and American pressures, the more his image as a symbol grew. But
his image as an effective leader at the head of a system providing
services to the Palestinian public and bringing it closer to a
realization of its national goals decreased.
From Abu Ammar to the Ra'is
Before the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established, Arafat's
underground name Abu Ammar was preferred to his real name. His nom
de guerre had a meaning that was connected to the symbolization of
Arafat. In the seventh century, Abu Ammar was a Muslim warrior in
the Prophet Mohammad's army. Beyond the identification with an
early warrior, the name creates a connection between the symbolic
warrior and the religious tradition. Arafat was a religious man who
had a basic knowledge of the Koran which he gained during his
childhood in Cairo. He succeeded to symbolically channeling his
basic religious education and his deep religiosity by means of
passages from the Koran that he inserted into his speeches. That is
how religion was mobilized to serve Palestinian nationalism, and to
give legitimization to the icon. After the PA was established, the
title ra'is (president) replaced the name Abu Ammar. The title
expressed not only his symbolic standing, but also the struggle for
national self-determination. At the time that the Oslo Accords were
being formulated, Israel opposed the idea that the head of the PA
would be called "president," because it had a political
significance. The compromise was the use of the Arabic term ra'is,
which also means "chairman." The insistence on the use of the title
"president" in all of the languages was part of the symbolization
of the role and the man.
As long as Arafat was outside of the Palestinian territories, he
was careful to maintain his people's financial dependence on him,
as well as written and verbal contact, mainly by means of the
telephone. This helped him overcome the physical distance from the
territory and the public living in it. It also reinforced the
symbolization of Arafat as the personification of the collective.
He was perceived as a consulting leader, who loved to be among his
people and to grant a sense of equality without any patronizing or
formal mannerism toward his aides, his guests and his bodyguards.
His folksiness blended in with the chaos and disorder of his work
patterns and the organization of his bureau. He was always
surrounded by many people and every meeting with him became a
symposium within which many things would be occurring
simultaneously. Many people came and went with their many different
requests, demands, complaints and suggestions.
He was surrounded by dozens of advisers, family members and
visitors, and telephone calls frequently interrupted any
conversation with him. This flawed functioning of the Palestinian
establishment and Arafat's work patterns were converted into
symbolic capital. They were perceived as popular leadership,
without any elitism, that was responsive to hardships. The creation
of the PA as an establishment removed Arafat from the public, and
his contact with it was no longer direct as it had been in the
past. In the beginning, Arafat used to travel through the districts
under his authority, but he soon gave this up. Alongside the
national symbol, a consciousness arose that some of the branches of
the establishment were suffering from corruption, and that it
wasn't as efficient as it should be. Arafat, the symbol, could not
be separated from these phenomena. The siege that Israel placed on
him and the destruction of the Palestinian governing mechanisms by
Israeli forces cut the thin physical threads that tied him to his
people. What remained was the symbol, which burst forth at Arafat's
funeral. The contrast between the hundreds who came to bid him
farewell when he left for medical treatment in Paris, and the
hundreds of thousands who burst into the Muquata'a area to disrupt
the funeral arrangements gave powerful expression to this. The
masses wanted to physically touch the symbol. The funeral released
the symbol from the constraints of the establishment, and turned
Arafat into a shahid (martyr), someone who sacrificed his life for
the nation, who continued to struggle from his gravesite. The
widespread public belief that he didn't die, but was killed,
poisoned by the Israelis, is not only a product of a natural
suspicion of Israel and of the conspiratorial thinking prevalent in
broad levels of different Arab societies, it also suited the fact
that Arafat was an icon. The icon doesn't die, melt or evaporate.
It fights on. The belief that he was poisoned revives the symbol
within the Palestinian consciousness and discourse.
Arafat in the Eyes of the Israelis
The formulation of the reports on Arafat's death in the Israeli
mass media and the graphics in the tabloid press expressed
deep-felt wishes rather than hard facts. "Finished" shouted one
tabloid paper. A few days later, it declared with a sigh of relief:
"Buried." The reports weren't based on medical bulletins, but
rather on a mixture of suppositions, leaks, expectations and
emotional positions. As Arafat's medical condition worsened, Israel
declared he had died. It was an ongoing death, almost like a wish
for the confirmation of a kill. And, as expected, those in the
Palestinian establishment who found it difficult to digest the very
fact of Arafat's hospitalization because of his difficult and
unclear illness, announced from Paris that Arafat had been revived,
and was joking with his doctors. This was a war between two
opposite symbols and a struggle between two emotional and cultural
systems over Arafat the symbol. Ever since the renewed outbreak of
the intifada in 2000, Arafat became once again a demonic icon
within the Israeli political culture, at both its elite and its
popular levels.
The same characteristics that turned Arafat into a positive
national symbol in the eyes of the Palestinians turned him into a
demonic icon in the eyes of the majority of the Israelis. His
Muslim beliefs were converted into proof of the identification
between the ultimate national goals of his movement and those of
the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements. This demonizing granted a
damaging, sneaky and cruel power to Arafat the symbol and the
movement he led. His personal traits were melded with his work
patterns in the melting pot of Israeli symbolization. They became
the proof that he was a permanent revolutionary.
As the symbol of Palestinian nationalism, Arafat was perceived as
someone who, via cleverness and terror, aspired to replace Israel
by means of an actual return of the 1948 refugees to their homes,
and via the demand to recognize the principle of their right of
return.
Arafat's lack of readiness to accept Israel's demand for
sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the harsh rejection of any
historic Jewish connection with the place served the shapers of
opinion as a justification for his image as a demonic Palestinian
icon. The Palestinian side seeks the moral and political defeat of
Israel, because it doesn't recognize the national existence of the
Jewish people. The Palestinian insistence on the Temple Mount and
the way that Arafat and his colleagues expressed their position
reflect the fact that Israel is immersed in a confrontation with a
fundamentalist national-religious culture.
No Demonization without Alienation
There is no demonization without alienation. Arafat's work habits
were perceived by Israelis as expressing a non-Western and
non-modern essence - the lack of a readiness to adjust to the
Western cultural norms of telling the truth, delegation of
authority and acceptance of public criticism, democratization and
transparency. The Palestinians would have to become Finns before
this demonic label could be removed and it would become possible to
achieve a political settlement with them. At the least, it would be
necessary to wait one or two generations, until the passing of the
generation that experienced 1948 as the shaper of its personal and
collective experience. Making something strange is a means in the
struggle against evil forces. The demon has to be marked, isolated
and removed, its passing must be yearned for and its death,
expulsion or disappearance from the arena will remove the problem
and protect us. The determination by ministers at the end of 2000
that Arafat had finished his historical role and the decision by
Ariel Sharon's government that Arafat was no longer relevant should
be viewed as the creation of a charm to expel the demons. But in
actuality, the Arafat icon continued to preoccupy Israel.
Sometimes Personal and Sometimes Collective
The demonization in the Israeli discourse was sometimes personal
and sometimes collective. The movement between the negative
symbolization of Arafat and the negative symbolization of the
entire Palestinian leadership or generation was rapid and simple.
The framing of Arafat's satanic image since the summer of 2000
wasn't done by right-wingers alone, as they did throughout the Oslo
period, but by the entire establishment: prime ministers,
ministers, heads of the army and intelligence, shapers of public
opinion, senior officials and even academics. They all took part in
the framing and promotion of Arafat's demonic icon. Arafat is a
terrorist and a revolutionary, who refused to part from the
original means and goals of the revolution. He misled Israel and
the world, pretended to be moderate and fraudulently received a
Nobel Peace Prize, until his mask was removed. In the narrative
developed by Ehud Barak, he was the one who courageously, at great
personal risk, revealed Arafat's true face, with his generous peace
offer that Arafat couldn't evade. The bloody intifada was the
answer that came from the depths of Arafat's being, and from the
authentic realms of the national movement. According to Barak, the
mask wasn't an instrumental tool of the Palestinian essence, but
rather the expression of a society in which lying and falsehood are
the norm. This is another facet of demonization - the mask can
serve both as a means of camouflage and as an authentic expression.
These are demonic qualities and not flaws in the logic of the
speaker. On the contrary, Barak should be praised because he was
able to understand this, while others were blind to it. Not only
did Barak reveal Arafat's demonic face, he also served the good of
his people. He awakened us from our illusions and forced us to
understand that our national home is a villa in a jungle, and not
an apartment in a building in which all of the tenants have begun
to behave toward each other in a reasonable manner, as the
innocent, mistaken and misleading leftist architects of Oslo
believed.
During the years of the cheap "enlightened occupation," the Israeli
experience totally denied the existence of the Palestinian "Other."
Arafat symbolized the unseen occupation. The change came when
Israeli self-confidence began to waver following the
Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack in 1973, and it continued with
Arafat's first appearance before the UN General Assembly in 1975.
Palestinian terrorist actions struck over and over again on the
door of Israeli consciousness. Israel even found it difficult to
ignore the strengthening of the support for the PLO in the Occupied
Territories and among the Arab states. The disappearing occupation
became the present occupation. Arafat's presence in the Israeli
consciousness was reinforced by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon
during the year they prepared public opinion for the 1982 war, with
its original far-reaching goals. Begin called him the man with the
hair on his face, the Hitler sitting in his Beirut bunker, thus
granting him a demonic visage in all its glory. The failure of the
war to lock the demon in his basement was a turning point.
Geographically Arafat was exiled to Tunis, but his reach extended
to the Occupied Territories. The first intifada forged him as an
icon at the forefront of the Israeli consciousness.
A demon can be dealt with by reduction, by describing it in all its
ugliness, weakness and absurdity. Reduction of the demonic icon
neutralizes its negative potency and converts it into something
under control. This method was used in the years following Oslo.
The desire to pacify the demon and to domesticate it was behind the
shaping of the Arafat puppet on the "Chartzufim" satirical puppet
show - an old, sick and naïve man, whose bite wasn't so bad.
Humor was used as a weapon to neutralize the demon. It's hard to
see such expressions as a humanization of Arafat. The failure of
the Camp David summit, the government propaganda and the
psychological pressure of Palestinian terror converted the farcical
puppet image into something that hid the previous demon. For a
brief period, the previous image of the old, sick, harmless man
from the Oslo period returned when Arafat was filmed in pajamas and
a woolen hat when he was taken from the Muquata'a by helicopter to
the hospital in Paris. Arafat's hospitalization became the
inspiration for jokes on the popular Yatzpan TV show. The
deterioration in his health turned that strategy into a very brief,
passing episode that was replaced by the hope that the icon would
disappear.
The Symbiotic Connection with the Palestinian 'Other'
The struggle with the Palestinian demon is not carried on with a
being that is outside of the collective self, but rather with the
dark, repressed side of the Israeli experience. The attitude toward
the Other as a demonic icon is an opposite discourse with the
collective self. The demonized Other is created by the collective
self to enable it to be destroyed over and over and to cleanse the
Israeli self.
The subject helps this process because it is not free of flaws upon
which it is possible to build a satanic image. This is another
variation on the theme of the symbiotic connection with the
Palestinian Other that has existed since the beginning of modern
Zionism. Zionism tried to cope with the Palestinian side of its
self-identity in a number of ways, i.e. the struggle between the
native who is competing with the immigrant who wants to become a
native. Sometimes Zionism assumed the role of educator and the
civilization domesticator of the Arab Palestinian (and also of the
Oriental Sephardi Jew), and sometimes it converted the Other into
an object of imitation, as it drew upon elements of its spoken
language and popular culture, and sometimes it even saw it as a
preserved, ideal model for the ancient Hebrews. In each of these
instances, Zionism created an antithesis to the Palestinian Other,
and built a hierarchal relationship with it. Even when it drew from
it culturally, Israeli Zionism placed itself higher on the values
ladder. Empowerment, imitation and borrowing are strategies that
contain elements of identification, alongside elements of envy,
mockery, admiration and anger. However this demonic foreignness
expresses the difficulty of trying to become liberated from the
Other within ourselves. The mental wall that Israeli society has
built between itself and the Palestinian Other, and its current
expression in a physical fence/wall, are expressions of an attempt
to resolve the dilemma of the self via an act of redemption.
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