Middle East: Missing a Rare Chance

Arafat's "no" to Hussein hinders Reagan 's plan

Like a jet-age symbol of the Palestinian diaspora, Yasser Arafat seemed to be at home only inside the fuselage of an airplane last week. As diplomats on several continents tried in vain to understand the latest political maneuvers in the Middle East, the shrewd survivor who runs the Palestine Liberation Organization jetted from South Yemen to North Yemen to Sweden and then to Tunisia, supposedly to attend a high-level P.L.O. policy meeting. But soon after arriving in Tunis, he left for a quick trip to...

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