UPDATED: HOW ARAFAT DESTROYED "PALESTINE"

IN A RUINED COUNTRY: How Yasir Arafat destroyed Palestine by David Samuels (Atlantic Monthly)

During several months in the Middle East, David Samuels spoke with Arafat’s bodyguard, his friends, and his adopted daughter; with his head spymaster and his money-launderer; with high-ranking Palestinian and Israeli officials; and with Western diplomats who had worked closely with him over the years. The result, “In a Ruined Country”, traces how Arafat became both the father and the destroyer of Palestine. It is a complex portrait of an infinitely complex man whom Samuels sees as both the “most accomplished liar in the Middle East” and one of the greatest chess masters of world politics.

The amounts of money stolen from the PA and the Palestinian people through the corrupt practices of Arafat's inner circle are so staggeringly large that they may exceed one half of the total of $7 billion in foreign aid. The biggest thief was Arafat himself. Arafat hid his personal stash, estimated at $1 billion to $3 billion, in more than 200 separate bank accounts around the world. What followed Arafat's return [to the territories] was a decade-long thieves' banquet at which Fatah's old guard divided up the spoils of Oslo and treated ordinary Palestinians as conquered subjects. Palestinians were subjected to the extortion and violence of Arafat's overlapping security services, which competed for payoffs, arbitrarily arrested people, and seized their land.

In the cafes and apartments in Ramallah where we met, some of the leading members of Fatah's young guard spoke openly of their anger and disappointment at what had happened in Palestine since Oslo. They reserved their bitterest denunciations not for the Israelis but for Arafat's cronies, who had used state jobs to get rich, and showed little interest in their revolutionary progeny.

Dennis Ross: "The first time I went to complain to [Arafat] about the bombing - the first set of bombings were, I guess, in April '94, in Hadera and Afula - and I'm with him, and he leans over like this and he whispers, 'You know, it's Barak. He's got this group, the OSS, in the Israeli military, and they're doing this.' And I said to him, 'Don't be ridiculous.' I said, 'You know the Israelis are not killing themselves.' This was classic Arafat, never wanting to be responsible."

Terje Roed-Larsen, the most visible representative of the UN in the Middle East, met weekly with Arafat for more than a decade:Q: "What was it like when he lied to you?"A: "He lied all the time. And he knew it. I'd say, 'Abu Ammar, cut the crap. Let's talk serious.' And then he could either talk serious or not talk serious. He'd say nonsense....'It's not me - it's al-Qaeda.' 'It's the Iranians.'...'It's the Syrians.'...Of course everybody around him knew he was behind it."

Iyad Sarraj, a human-rights activist and director of a mental health organization in Gaza, concluded: "Palestinians have lost the battle because of their lack of organization and because they have been captives of rhetoric and sloganeering rather than actual work....I believe that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in one way or the other is between development and underdevelopment, civilization and backwardness. Israel was established on the rule of law, on democratization, and certain principles that would advance Israel, while the Arabs and the Palestinians were waiting always for the prophet, for the rescuer, for the savior."