Ceau-escu was not a prophet. Rather, he was just a shrewd dictatorial leader who knew how to use image, propaganda and the repetition of the same information over and over again until his viewpoint became the accepted one.
In Pacepa's narrative, Ceau-escu and Arafat were very close. Arafat saw Ceau-escu as a model and this model set the tone for the next more than two decades of Arafat's leadership of the PLO after their secret March, 1978 meeting in Bucharest. This meeting is so very important to understanding the development and history of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority from Oslo to the leader's death in 2004.
While agreeing with Ceau-escu on the methods of dealing with opponents, he was opposed to declaring a PLO government in exile. Arafat wanted the PLO's struggle to remain a revolution and not become a country. He claimed that the Palestinians lacked the ability to become a formal state, including the traditions, unity and discipline to do so. He said that a Palestinian state would be a failure from day one.
In confidence to Ceau-escu, he said that this would be something for a future generation. Ceau-escu then said that he could work through associated terror organizations that were not directly associated with him. This included furtively and effectively taking over Abu Nidal's "Black June" operation. He would maintain a pristine record and could maintain plausible deniability (ibid, 28).
One marvels at how effectively the Soviets handled the PLO leader, compared to his relative difficulty in handling by the West. Perhaps this had something to do with Arafat's alleged homosexuality, as documented by Pacepa's wire taps (ibid, 36). If this was so, this would provide incredible insights into the close, intimate and seemingly short leash that the Eastern Bloc seemed to have on the PLO leader who would definitely have wanted to keep this secret deeply in the closet to maintain his support in the ultraconservative societies of the Islamic world. If one were to engage in counterfactual historical speculation, one would really wonder what would have happened during say the al-Aqsa Intifada had the Palestinian people knew information about PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's potential closet homosexuality (Shindler 2008, 284).
Oslo:
As the Second Intifada and he became less directly involved in the peace process. Effectively, from 2002 and on for more than two years, Arafat was confined to his Ramallah compound by the Israeli army. Gradually, he became more and more marginalized. For this reason and the short length of this discussion, the essay's examination of Arafat's life will not go beyond the Taaba talks. The Shindler text is excellent, but is much best with regard to the PLO and Yasser Arafat in the period since the beginning of the Oslo process and will remain the primary source for this section of the essay. This is why it is used as the primary text for the period of time from the early 1990's until Arafat's death in 2004. As Professor Shindler points out so many precious opportunities for peace slipped through the grasp of the participants in the peace process.
Because of the low key and unofficial nature of the Madrid conference, we will not consider it because it reflects little directly upon Arafat because he did not take part in it. However, the decisions at that 1991 conference had a direct impact upon and set the agenda for the later Oslo accords (ibid, 222-226). At Oslo, the most difficult problems were left off of the discussions. These included the right of return for the Palestinians and Jewish settlements. The excluded issues were left to be addressed in so-called permanent status talks.
In spite of the piecemeal nature of the talks, several breakthroughs were made. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat both agreed to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an interim self-government in the Gaza Strip and in parts of the West Bank. In return for the PLO's recognition of Israel's right to exist and the promise not to conduct armed attacks (the disconnect between promise and reality will be considered below), Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
In terms of armed struggle, this continues against the State of Israel, despite PA promises. Rather than noting this glaring violation of the Oslo Accords and praising Israel's efforts to uphold a lack of violent activity, every U.S. administration from Bill Clinton's to Barack Obama's has pushed Israel to continue to try to negotiate with an increasingly rejectionist Palestinian Authority, first under Arafat now under his former...
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