Why Israel Targets Arafat

By Matt Rees/Jerusalem and Massimo Calabresi/Washington Sunday, June 09, 2002
    • Yasser Arafat looked as if he couldn't believe his bulging eyes. Inspecting the damage to his living quarters caused by the latest Israeli assault on his Ramallah headquarters last week, the Palestinian leader checked out the new window in his bathroom, courtesy of Israeli firepower; a broken mirror hanging above a photograph of him with his daughter, now 6 years old; the scattering of debris covering his exercise bike and bed. "I was supposed to sleep here last night, but I had some work downstairs. Everybody knows this is my bedroom," he told reporters, suggesting that the Israeli troops had tried to kill him.

    In fact, they hadn't. The Israelis had warned Arafat in advance that they were coming. Their orders were to destroy half the buildings in Arafat's compound (called the Muqata'a), which they did over the course of a six-hour onslaught, but to leave Arafat unscathed, just as they had in a similar raid starting in late March. This new attack was payback for a bombing the day before that killed 17 Israelis. But the bombing had been claimed by Islamic Jihad, a radical Palestinian group that does not answer to Arafat and, moreover, opposes him. So why did the Israelis level their retaliation at him?


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    The Bush Administration would certainly like to know. "We went to the Israelis and said, 'What's going on?'" says a senior State Department official. "Their answer was, 'We're going down to the Muqata'a, and we're going to blow up some buildings.' They haven't given us a particularly cogent reason why they decided to do this."

    In part, the Israelis struck at Arafat because they could. Israeli military officials acknowledge that though they knew Islamic Jihad was to blame, they didn't have specific intelligence immediately available enabling them to hit directly at the group. In that sense, rocketing Arafat's compound was a bit like being angry at your spouse and therefore kicking the dog. Beyond that, the Israelis insist that Arafat is responsible for all Palestinian terrorism, not just the attacks carried out by the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is part of his Fatah organization. Their argument is that Arafat does not seriously go after terrorism's practitioners and that his rhetoric has tended to condone their actions. Since the Israelis released Arafat from de facto house arrest in the Muqata'a on May 2, his Palestinian Authority has consistently condemned attacks on Israeli civilians. But the Israelis say that despite those comments, they still see no evidence that Arafat's forces are moving against the militants.

    When the Israelis stormed Arafat's headquarters last week, they harbored no expectation that the incursion would provoke him to confront terrorism. Rather, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hopes that harassing Arafat will diminish his status, persuading other Palestinians and the world that he is no longer a relevant power. Sharon thinks Arafat is beyond redemption. He has made clear that his preference would be to kill or exile him. However, he promised President Bush he would not do the former, and he feels bound by the pledge, even though, by his own account, he regrets making it. Last week, continuing to operate on recent advice from security advisers who say Arafat would make more trouble abroad than at home, Sharon refrained from expelling the Palestinian leader. And so the Israeli leader was left with the choice of humiliating his counterpart, an option with which he seems to be quite comfortable.