Spy Games

Despite the mutual recriminations last week over the stalled talks at Camp David, relations between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat have come a long way--from lethal to nonpoisonous, at least. Years ago, blood might have spilled had the two had their hands on each other as they did in the wrestling match they staged upon first entering President Clinton's Camp David cabin, trying to outdo each other in after-you politesse. When Barak introduced his daughter to Arafat over dinner last fall, he recalled that after she was born, in 1971, he, as an army officer, was involved in planning operations to execute the Palestinian leader. "And here I was at dinner with him!" he told an interviewer.

During the pre-peace years of Arafat's exile, the option of assassinating him was debated at the highest levels of the Israeli government four times. In three cases, the vote was no, after officials assessed that Arafat's potential successors as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization--notably Khalil al-Wazir, who was killed almost certainly by the Israelis in 1988, and Farouk Kaddoumi, the P.L.O.'s Foreign Minister--would only be more effective at rallying anti-Israeli opinion. But a hit was approved in 1985, after the P.L.O. attacked a yacht in Cyprus, killing three Israelis. Based on a tip from military intelligence, then headed by Barak, Israel dispatched six U.S.-made F-15s to bomb P.L.O. headquarters in Tunis. Arafat was spared by being late to the meeting he was scheduled to chair there. He was lucky. Fighters demolished the seaside facilities, killing at least 65 people and injuring more than 100.

Is Arafat bothered by dealing with his would-be killer? "Forget it," says Ahmed Qurei, an Arafat lieutenant. "It was war. If Barak had come into our hands at that time, we'd have killed him too." Still, Arafat has lately grumbled that Barak, having tried to dispatch him in the past, was, by holding up the peace process, inciting Palestinian masses to rise up and do the job. On the contrary, when an Israeli legislator recently mentioned to Barak the prospect of Arafat's dying, the Prime Minister replied instinctively, "God forbid." Barak, believing no successor would have the credibility to make the concessions necessary for a final peace, prays for the Palestinian's longevity. The plans he's laying these days depend on it.