At first Yasser Arafat refused to speak with journalists. When he finally granted an interview to the Saudi Arabian newspaper Asharq al Awsat, a bile of irritation coated his words. He was never consulted before King Hussein cut Jordan's links with the West Bank last month, he complained. Yet that move dumped into his lap the responsibility for administering the occupied territory and for trying to recover it from Israel.
But if Arafat was initially stunned, the Middle East was abuzz last week with speculation that Hussein's shove may finally push the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization into doing the...
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