Leadership was a tragedy for Arafat's people, too
Yasser Arafat's effect on global politics is one of the most extraordinary stories of modern history. Arafat is the godfather of this era of global terrorism and radical Middle East movements. As leader of a numerically small people without a state or material resources, his international impact is remarkable.
Using the Arab states as a force multiplier has magnified his importance. Arafat claimed he could control the policy of Arab states, that those who crossed him would face their wrath and those who pleased him enjoy their largesse. The power of oil money and the growth of Islamic-oriented politics seemed to reinforce this power.
On one level this was pure bluff. The Arab regimes held him in low regard. They did not consult him on their actions or heed his threats. When it suited their interests they cut off his money and killed his men. Yet in a sense Arafat's claim was partly true because the Palestinian issue was indeed useful for the regimes. It was the great excuse of Arab politics, used to explain why the Arab world failed to progress politically, economically and socially.
Arafat's brilliance at public relations allowed him to reinvent himself periodically, to avoid responsibility for his defeats and intransigence. As early as the 1970s US officials called him the Teflon terrorist. He took advantage of others' wishful thinking that peace could be obtained or their vanity that they might be the one to solve the great Middle East problem if only they were nice to Arafat. He showed how easy it was to fool the well-intentioned West.
He also utilised from the 1960s onwards the power of terrorism as a systematic strategy.
By targeting Israeli civilians he thought he would bring about Israel's collapse. He grabbed the headlines, making the rest of the world feel it was urgent to resolve such a violent issue.
But if Arafat had not been fighting Jews the impact would not have been the same. He avoided direct anti-Semitism, instead transferring traditional anti-Semitic feelings and stereotypes to Israelis. Fighting in a land with which the world was obsessed guaranteed attention.
Arafat's deeper impact was in proving some key principles that were learned by imitators.
Terrorism is an effective tool for mobilising people if they are willing to overlook the moral issues and rejoice in the deaths of other ethnic groups. Terrorism had been used many times before in history, but not really as a populist revolutionary tool for building a movement. Arafat proved how politically profitable a terrorist strategy could be.
He showed terrorism could be carried out without paying a price for it. For years Western politicians have warned of the terrible punishment awaiting terrorists. In fact, few of those who killed under Arafat's command were jailed, and many of them were sprung from jail by further attacks, hostage-taking or political deals. Arafat proved that being a terrorist was much less riskier than it seemed.
He made the Palestinian cause a central concern of the world through terrorism, propaganda, courting sympathy, threatening to unleash the wrath of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and ensuring that the conflict would not go away.
He showed how much can be achieved through intransigence, the power of saying no, and the constructive use of weakness. When Arafat refused to make peace or stop terrorism he showed how he could make his adversaries and bystanders give him more concessions.
Arafat played a big role in the contemporary renewal of anti-Semitism to its high traditional level. By constantly portraying Israel and, albeit more subtly, Jews as evil, Arafat returned this stereotype to international acceptance.
Equally, he succeeded in spreading anti-Americanism globally. While it is easy to attribute Arafat's hostility to the United States to its support for Israel, it was in fact part of his revolutionary ideology from the beginning, going back to the early 1960s, long before the US even gave any aid to Israel.
Perhaps the single most powerful wider political effect of Arafat was his contribution to maintaining the status quo in the Middle East. By fomenting terrorism and anti-Western sentiment, and especially by refusing to make peace in 2000, Arafat helped destroy the incipient trend towards moderation in the Arab world. He gave Arab dictators the perfect rationale to crack down. With the Arab-Israeli conflict continuing, Arab rulers could explain that reform was a Western trick and democracy an unaffordable luxury.
Arafat has been catastrophic for Israel, which has lost hundreds of lives to terrorism after taking risks and making concessions for peace, and for the Palestinians, who might long have enjoyed peace and an independent state under a more moderate leadership. That is a tragedy.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Centre and co-author of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography.