Over the few last weeks, the sight of gun-toting Palestinians has become commonplace. Still, it was kind of a surprise to see one particular Palestinian carrying a sub-machine gun in Gaza on Monday. Because that individual was none other than PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The Palestinian leader later explained that when he heard that Jewish settlers had blocked the road linking the airport with Gaza City, he decided to grab the gun to protect himself. He failed to mention that the settlers, who were protesting the loss of their dear ones in Palestinian shootings and car-bombs, were removed by the Israeli police, following the decision of the Israeli government to make life a little easier for the Palestinians during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. But that is beside the point. What struck many Israelis was the sense of d?j? vu: Arafat strutting his old stuff

On November 13 1974, Arafat was treated by the United Nation as a head of state and given a rare chance to address the world's most auspicious forum. His appearance in the UN is remembered not only for its content - he demanded a Palestinian state - but for the fact that he was allowed to deliver his speech with a gun strapped to his waist.

"I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun," he said, with a barely disguised hint of threat. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands."

Since then, he has made more use of his gun than of the olive branch. If in the late sixties he introduced the hijacking of airliners (using Jordan as his base), in the seventies he tried to turn Lebanon into a launching pad for his return to Palestine. In both cases he managed to attract a lot of world media attention, but the actual results for the Palestinians were meager: first the PLO was kicked out of Jordan and later from Beirut. With all the rhetoric about armed struggle being the only way to liberate Palestine, nothing of the sort happened.

Then, in the late eighties, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza initiated the Intifada. It caught Yasser Arafat by surprise as much as it did the Israelis, but he was quick to hop on the bandwagon. Again, the stone-throwing Palestinians were the darlings of the world media, but they remained disappointed when it came to achieving their ultimate goal - to have a state of their own. In 1988, Arafat declared a Palestinian state, but the declaration was nothing but an empty word. Even that declaration lost all meaning with Arafat's next display of belligerence. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the PLO chief rushed to Bagdad to embrace the Iraqi dictator. One kiss, and all the blood, sweat and tears of his fellow Palestinians during the Intifada went down the tubes. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been working in the Gulf states were driven out, and the generous contributions of the oil-producing states to the PLO stopped. So much for the results of armed struggle against Israel.

Only when Yasser Arafat chose to wave the olive branch rather than the gun, did the Palestinians seriously gain something. When in 1993 he signed the Declaration of Principles with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he opened the road to true Palestinian sovereignty. Only his choice of the path of negotiation brought him back to Gaza, not terror, not the hijacking of planes, not even the Intifada.

Today Arafat goes around carrying a sub-machine gun, and it seems that he has dropped the olive branch completely. When in July, at Camp David, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered him what no other Israeli leader would have dared to offer, he said no and set off the second Intifada. The fact that he had promised, on behalf of the Palestinian people, to solve disputes only through negotiation, doesn't seem to bother him. He is equally unimpressed by the fact that violence never brought the Palestinians anything but suffering.

In his appearance at the UN 26 years ago, Arafat carried both the gun and the olive branch. It took him years to understand that only the latter could bring him any results. Today it seems that he hasn't really learned anything.

Uri Dromi is the publications director at the Israel democracy Institute in Jerusalem.

Back to the Culture page