Wizblog

The Arafat Model

Iraqi leaders seem to be practicing what Michael Rubin calls "The Arafat Model"...

While U.S. diplomats and Washington advisers continue to facilitate compromise among Iraq’s disparate sectarian, ethnic, and political groups, the reality emerging outside Baghdad is directly challenging Iraq’s aspirations to constitutionalism. The U.S. government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring outside experts to Baghdad for a period of a few days or a few weeks, but Iraqi powerbrokers dismiss their advice as naïve or irrelevant. Massoud Barzani in the Kurdish north and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Moqtada al-Sadr in the Shiite south have rejected the experts’ academic proposals, and have chosen instead a model perfected by Yasir Arafat, the late PLO chairman.

Standing in front of the White House on September 13, 1993, Arafat, Bill Clinton, and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands. Western diplomats could hardly contain their optimism as Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles, upon which they pledged to build Arab-Israeli peace.

But we now know that this optimism was misplaced. While Clinton fêted the Palestinian leader at the White House, cajoled him with aid, and turned a blind eye toward his corruption, Arafat broke promises habitually and, until the last years of his life, without consequence. He encouraged incitement, refused to prepare the Palestinians for compromise, and ruled by militia even as European and American agencies trained Palestinian police.

From an Arab perspective, Arafat’s strategy looks successful. He extracted blood from the Israelis and treasure from the Americans, all the while consolidating his position. His concessions were limited to pledges whose fulfillment was never required. The result is now clear. Even as drafting-committee members debated Iraq’s future, pan-Arab satellite stations broadcast Palestinian celebrations amid what anchors and commentators uniformly described as Israel’s defeat in Gaza.