Yasser Arafat's centrality to the Middle East equation is hard to deny. An impressive survivor, he continues to command considerable power and clout despite the countless times his adversaries have declared him irrelevant. With this in mind, Rubin and Rubin have done students of the Middle East a great service with this able biography, by far the most complete of the five so far published. The authors track Arafat from his student days in Egypt, through his transition from one of the founders of modern terrorism to a leader commanding considerable respect on the world stage. The authors offer considerable analysis of his most fateful and often disastrous decisions, from attempting to overthrow the king of Jordan that led to the so called Black September Massacre, to his decision to back Saddam Hussein in the first gulf war. Through all of this a telling portrait of Arafat emerges, though not one that his acolytes would necessarily appreciate.
Arafat's ability to play world powers off each other, first the Soviets off the US and now the Europeans off the US, is justifiably legendary. The authors do an excellent job explaining how he does this, understanding the essential goals of each and inserting himself into their strategy. What emerges is a man whose greatest concern is not his people, but his role in history and that he should never be seen as "the traitor who made peace with the Jews." Indeed, he is quoted when he rejected the Camp David Accords that he did not want to be the man who was seen as accepting the Jewish States right to exist. The Rubin?s do not seek to turn Arafat into some sort of evil monster, but rather to put him in the context of his culture, his times, and his values. From this perspective, his motivations and actions become not only clear, but quite calculating and shrewd.
The most interesting of the authors' conclusions is that through out his long career, Arafat may have changed tactics, but that his strategy and goals remain virtually unchanged. Going back to the early 70's Arafat freely spoke of the idea of establishing a presence on some portion of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan by any means and then using it as a base from which to attack, demoralize, and eventually destroy the Jewish State. Given recent events it seems the world would have done well to listen to what he had to say.
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