Arafat's Bonus Round

By Romesh Ratnesar/Jerusalem

For a man supposedly under siege, Yasser Arafat seems to be enjoying himself. As the TV crews and diplomats came calling last week at the Muqata'a, Arafat's tattered Ramallah compound, his aides festooned the courtyard with streamers and draped posters of the grinning Palestinian leader on copper pipes left exposed by previous Israeli assaults. A motley collection of supporters--including Palestinian schoolchildren, a marching band and a dozen members of Arafat's Fatah Party on horseback--rallied outside the quarters, chanting Arafat's nom de guerre, Abu Amar. President Bush has declared Arafat a "failed" leader, the Israeli Cabinet has vowed to "remove" him, and Israel's Deputy Prime Minister has called for his assassination, but the 74-year-old is walking as tall as ever. "I feel good," he told a visitor.

Arafat's public standing has been elevated by Israel's latest effort to neutralize him--the Cabinet announced this month that it intends "in principle" to expel him. Muqata'a insiders say Arafat is making the most of the situation. Having engineered the ouster of his rival, Mahmoud Abbas, the Prime Minister handpicked by the U.S. to supplant him, Arafat last week reasserted his claim as the undisputed leader of the Palestinians and positioned himself to control the makeup and direction of the new government of the Palestinian Authority, headed by Abbas' replacement, Ahmed Qurei. In a meeting with Fatah leaders last Thursday, Arafat shouted down anyone who dared to question his choices for the new Cabinet. As Arafat blustered, a senior Palestinian official says, Qurei sat in articulate silence. "Arafat is determined to make this Cabinet his own," says a Fatah official. "Then he can go to the U.S. and show them he holds all the cards."

The Bush Administration doesn't want to play along. A Jordanian official told TIME that Arafat asked Jordan's King Abdullah to implore the U.S. to reopen the lines of communication that it severed last year in response to Arafat's failure to crack down on militant Palestinian groups. But at a press conference with the King last Thursday, Bush dismissed Arafat as a potential partner and blamed him for sabotaging peace efforts by undermining Abbas. "That's why we're now stalled," Bush said.

Arafat's aides acknowledge that he did indeed subvert Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, who was once Arafat's first lieutenant. "He felt that Abu Mazen was going to take his crown," says a senior Arafat aide. Arafat exploited Palestinian anger at Israeli military operations in the occupied territories to cast Abbas as a tool of Israel. For Abbas, the final straw came in early September when Fatah militants confronted him as he entered the offices of the Palestinian Legislative Council and accused him of treason. A shaken Abbas resigned the next day. An aide says he plans to go abroad as soon as a new government is formed. "Arafat's morale is high," says a top Palestinian official, "not because of Israel's threat against him but because he got rid of Abu Mazen."

Actually, it's both. The show of public support for Arafat has clearly fueled his vigor. When a group of top security officials began squabbling at a recent meeting at the Muqata'a, Arafat exploded. According to one participant, he barked, "Get out! I don't need you. The masses are outside, and I need only the masses." At another meeting attended by Qurei and other party leaders last week, an insider relates, Arafat angrily rebuked critics of his proposal to create a 23-person national-security council that would control all Palestinian security forces and answer to him, not Qurei.

Many top Palestinian officials believe Arafat's strategy is to eviscerate all credible alternatives to his leadership, leaving the U.S. no choice but to prod Israel to resume peace talks with him. U.S. and Israeli officials say they have no interest in giving Arafat another chance. Palestinian insiders think it is unlikely that Qurei, a former peace negotiator and longtime ally of Arafat's, will try to emerge as an alternative to him. "Qurei is no one's man," says Abdul Jawad Saleh, an independent member of the Legislative Council, "but as long as Arafat is in power, he's not going to cross the boss's red lines."

Qurei's caution may also have strategic motivations. Former Israeli peace negotiator Yossi Beilin recalls a conversation with Qurei earlier this year. "Imagine we were to walk out of this room and announce to the Palestinian people that we had concluded an agreement but that there would be concessions on the Palestinian side," Qurei told Beilin. "The people would stone us. But if Arafat were to go out and say the same thing, people would applaud him." For now, however, Arafat seems too enthralled with the plaudits he's getting for obstinacy to even contemplate compromise. --With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Ramallah

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Ramallah