By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Mar 2 2004 (IPS)

A distinguished Israeli writer describes Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a statesman sensitive to the concerns of Israel.

Well-known author Amnon Kapeliouk describes Arafat, the man Israel and the United States are working to sideline in peace negotiations, as the Palestinian equivalent of French hero of World War II and former president Charles de Gaulle.

“Arafat’s name, as De Gaulle’s, is indissolubly linked to the national cause of his people,” Kapeliouk writes in his book ‘Arafat l’irreductible’, the most exhaustive biography yet of the Palestinian leader.

Kapeliouk based his book on some 150 interviews he has had with the Palestinian leader since 1982. Kapeliouk also had access to practically all of Arafat’s aides and friends since the late 1970s.

Kapeliouk told IPS he is not concerned if his book provokes negative reactions in Israel and elsewhere. “I have only done my job as journalist,” he said.

The controversial biography has not quite hit Israel yet. The book has been published in French, and negotiations are still under way on translations into English, Arabic, and other languages.

Several Israeli leaders contacted by IPS had no comment to offer on the book in the meanwhile.

But the biography has deep, if controversial bearings on the Palestinian situation. Most Palestinians, and world leaders, see Arafat as the key Palestinian leader who would be central to a solution.

Kapeliouk dismissed U.S. and Israeli allegations that Arafat maintains a double stand on the peace negotiations. “When Arafat speaks to his people, he does so in Arabic, with the passion typical of that language. But Arafat has never supported kamikaze attacks against Israel, and he insists that they are counterproductive for the Palestinian cause.”

In addition, he said, “only the Israeli and the U.S. governments, and some European groups, lead a psychological war against Arafat and his aides. But the rest of the world sees critically the way how these governments and groups treat Arafat and his people.”

Kapeliouk, a French-Israeli journalist based in Jerusalem, hopes that his book will contribute to spreading the idea that “no equitable solution to the Middle East conflict is possible without the participation of the man who represents, for better or for worse, the Palestinian tragedy.”

Kapeliouk’s journalistic work has been published in newspapers all around the world, including Le Monde in France, Yedioth Aharonoth in Israel, and publications in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere in English speaking countries.

He is one of the journalists who revealed the massacres committed by Israeli Lebanese allies against Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982, in which 600 refugees were killed, and some 1,800 disappeared.

Kapeliouk has written several books, including ‘Israel, the end of Myths’, ‘Sabra and Chatila: inquiry into a massacre’, ‘Hebron, an announced massacre’, and ‘Rabin, a political assassination’.

With access to privileged information, Kapeliouk writes about the numerous Israeli assassination attempts against Arafat since the 1970s. He attributes the Palestinian leader’s survival to his “barakah and prudence” (barakah being Arabic for divine protection).

“For years, he has never slept twice in the same place, and would never hesitate to interrupt a conversation and disappear,” Kapeliouk told IPS. “He has a sort of sixth sense which keeps him from danger.”

The political turning point for Arafat was the first Israeli-Arab war of 1948, Kapeliouk writes. Two events in particular shaped Arafat’s commitment to the independence of Palestine, he says.

“On April 7, Abd al Kader al-Husseini, leader of the Palestinian forces of holy Jihad, was killed near Jerusalem,” Kapeliouk writes. “Two days later, the terrible massacre of Deir Yassin took place. The terrorist Jewish organisations Stern and Irgoun killed 250 Palestinians – men, women, and children.”

Yasser Arafat, then an engineering student at the University of Cairo, immediately joined the Palestinian liberation forces. Together with his close friend Hamed Abou Sitta, Arafat symbolically burnt his books. He never gave up the struggle he took up.

The book has a preface by Nelson Mandela, who says that the Palestinian question is now on the international agenda thanks to Arafat. The Palestinian leader “has transformed the Palestinians’ status from that of refugees to that of a nation in the most complete sense of the term.”

The humiliation heaped on Arafat in Ramallah since 2000 “dishonours more those who are responsible for it, than Arafat,” Mandela adds. “President Arafat will remain a symbol of heroism for all the peoples of the world fighting for justice and freedom.”

Kapeliouk says in the end that the Israeli authorities, especially Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have attempted practically everything to deal with Arafat, with no success. “Sharon has isolated him. He has humiliated him. He has compared him with Osama bin Laden. He has called him a terrorist and an assassin. He has tried to kill him. There is only one thing Sharon has never tried – to respect Arafat.”

Excerpt: