I think Steven Den Beste is right when he says that Yasser Arafat is now in a no win situation and Arafat will be lucky if he survives to see 2003. And the main reason I think Arafat is doomed is that the Israelis no longer find him useful (in fact, pushing the Palestinians to a point where they kill Arafat may be the best outcome Israel can hope for at the moment).
There have always been hardliners in Israel who wanted to kill Arafat outright, but at least in recent years the government has ruled out attempts on Arafat’s life, largely on the grounds that a) the alternatives to Arafat are even worse and b) killing Arafat would likely result in a total war between Israel and the Palestinians, possibly involving other Middle Eastern countries.
Neither of those conditions hold anymore. Arafat may be on the moderate end of the Palestinian political spectrum, but he no longer can keep the extremists in line. The Israelis now have a situation where Hamas or some other group carries out a suicide bombing and commentators around the world rush to say that Arafat’s not responsible because he can’t possibly control every terrorist within the Palestinian Authority. Exactly.
Second, if Israel is not already in a state of total war, it is increasingly obvious that it will be in such a state very soon. Every time a suicide bomb goes off in an Israeli mall, there’s one more bit of evidence that the Oslo accords were a horrible mistake. Using means both covert and overt, I suspect that the Israelis are going to begin the process of undoing that agreement.
How — by backing Arafat into a corner where he cannot survive. As Den Beste notes, if Arafat gives in to Israeli and American demands and actually starts an earnest crackdown on Palestinian terrorism, his days are numbered. On the other hand, if he doesn’t, he provides cover for continued Israeli incursions into territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which also helps hasten his end.
So what’s the best way out for Israel? Palestinian hardliners finally get angered enough at Arafat and successfully assassinate him. After a couple of additional terrorist attacks, Israel declares it has had enough and sends in its military to renew the occupation and deal with the terrorists in its own way. Sure it will receive international condemnation, but it will be much more blunted with the Palestinian Authority devolving into chaos.
The only real obstacle to this scenario would be U.S. objections. At some point, however, the Israelis might just realize that American politicians are more than ready to urge Israel to “restrain” itself right into non-existence as a viable political entity (in fact, you have to think that many Israeli politicians likely think their single biggest mistake was ever becoming so excessively dependent on U.S. aid, which constrains their range of action. Sure Egypt is constrained in much the same way, but it doesn’t face the same sort of problems that Israel does).