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INTERVIEW: Dennis Ross talks about a Middle East without Arafat
Weekend Edition Saturday: November 6, 2004
The U.S. Role After Arafat
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Yasser Arafat lies gravely ill in a Paris hospital, in a coma, somewhere, say doctors, between life and death. His departure from the world stage will raise new questions, anxieties and, to some, opportunities. Palestinian factions met yesterday in the Gaza Strip to try to project a united front. And while Arafat has never appointed a successor, two top leaders, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Arafat's number-two man in the PLO, appear to be emerging as co-leaders.
Joining us now to talk about all these developments is Dennis Ross, who served as the chief US negotiator in the Middle East for 12 years in the 1980s and '90s. He's the author of the book "The Missing Piece: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace."
Ambassador Ross, thanks very much for being with us.
Ambassador DENNIS ROSS (Former Middle East Negotiator): Nice to be with you.
SIMON: What do you think of the immediate implications for US policy with Mr. Arafat's departure?
Amb. ROSS: I think the immediate implications for us is how do we try to re-energize a process that has been dormant on the one hand, in no small part because of Arafat, and at the same time recognize that his passing is going to create an incredible void among Palestinians, which creates dangers as well as possibilities. If we sit on the sidelines, you can count on the dangers being the ones that tend to materialize. If we get involved, we may be actually able to shape this in a way that is more productive and even hopeful.
SIMON: Is getting involved also a danger at the same time? Might that be seen as meddling?
Amb. ROSS: I think the key is how we do it. I wouldn't suggest that we suddenly leap in and anoint any Palestinians. That would be the kiss of death for them. But what we have to do is begin to talk publicly about the importance of elections. The fact of the matter is, what you're going to go through on the Palestinian side right now is an emotional upheaval.
The father figure of the movement, the emblem of the movement, the symbol of the Palestinian cause is about to pass from the scene. An era will be over. When that happens, there's going to be a great emotional release on the part of the Palestinians. Not because he's so beloved, but because he has been such a symbol of the movement and he was determined never to have anybody else emerge as an alternative or a successor.
So a lot of the feelings that you're going to see is a sense of, `Gee, there's a void here; who's going to fill it?' Great uncertainty about who's going to fill it. And a concern that, in fact, it will be filled by violence, a violent struggle for succession.
Our role is to talk about elections, help to create an international expectation about them and realize that once the Palestinians themselves begin to focus on elections, which they will after Arafat dies. Then that's a time for us to, I would say, organize a three-way conversation between us, the Israelis and the Palestinians, because you can't just say you're going to hold elections, you're going to have to create an environment where they can be held.
SIMON: You knew Yasser Arafat over the years and I think it's fair to say, certainly in your book, you were critical of him.
Amb. ROSS: Yes.
SIMON: Did you ever receive what you thought of as an insight or a glimpse into his powers as a leader, that made him a leader for 40 years really, in a process that's often fractious and violent and has dispatched many other people?
Amb. ROSS: People have often asked me `Was he intelligent?,' and I would say, `Street smart, cagey.' What I saw in him was someone who knew how to maneuver it between factions. And I would see it when we would be sitting alone and I would try to get him to do something, and I could sort of see him thinking about how would he present this in a way that would still give him a way out. Arafat was someone who never closed a door, never foreclosed an option. So every decision was not supposed to be definitive. It was still supposed to leave him a way out. And it was part and parcel of his style of maneuvering.
Bear in mind, Arafat put together the PLO, put together all these disparate factions and every one of the factions was an instrument of a different Arab leader. So he maneuvered between the factions. He maneuvered between each of the Arab leaders. And maneuvering became a way of life for him and I saw it repeatedly throughout the course of the negotiations.
SIMON: Mm. When you say that he always kept his options open, you recollected once--I guess that moment was in December 2000--he couldn't bring himself to say yes...
Amb. ROSS: Right.
SIMON: ...to the peace plan that the Clinton administration cobbled together. In fact, you say, he didn't say yes or no.
Amb. ROSS: Right. It was a typical Arafat answer, `lanam.' Which is `no and yes' in Arabic. Which, by the way, I had--many Arab leaders would say to me, `Well has he given you his "lanam" yet?' And I would say, `Well, I've heard it more than once. Yes.'
SIMON: How do you think he'll be remembered?
Amb. ROSS: He made the Palestinian national aspiration something that was respected and legitimate before the world and no one else had succeeded in doing that. And for that, he'll get great credit from Palestinians. Obviously, on the Israeli side, they'll see him as someone who was not only incapable of making peace but basically used violence as his instrument, at great cost to Palestinians as well as Israelis.
I will remember him in terms of not only his capacity to put the cause on the international stage, but his inability to take it from an abstraction and turn it into a reality, because ultimately the `cause' defined him and he couldn't--he simply couldn't give it up. Ending the conflict meant giving it up. We might have thought that fulfilling the cause should have satisfied him. But he was so used to being a victim as a strategy that he couldn't give that up either.
SIMON: Dennis Ross was the chief US negotiator in the Middle East for 12 years, author of the book "The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace." Thanks very much.
Amb. ROSS: My pleasure. Thank you, Scott.
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