Arafat: From Defender to Dictator - Hardcover

Aburish, Said K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582340005 ISBN 13: 9781582340005

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 1998

Synopsis

In this meticulously researched and iconoclastic work, Said Aburish, the internationally respected Palestinian political analyst and writer, turns the popular western perception of Yasser Arafat upside-down. Far from being the benign heroic freedom fighter who has kept the hopes of his displaced people alive, Arafat is revealed as a narrow-minded operator, out of touch with reality, whose personal ambitions and lack of understanding of democratic principles have made him a deterrent to real peace in the Middle East.

Aburish exposes the unsound foundations of Arafat's leadership, and shows that his PLO has never been a revolutionary movement; rather Arafat and the PLO have always represented an elite group of Palestinian families who have grown ever more rich. Moreover, Aburish has discovered from hitherto silent but impeccable sources that since 1963, when Arafat first established contact with the CIA in Beirut, the PLO has conducted a secret dialogue with the US, amounting to a betrayal of its people- in effect an agreement to avoid military or economic confrontation with Israel.

Aburish goes on to demonstrate that, in his current role as President of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat has created one of the ugliest expressions of absolute dictatorship, even by Middle Eastern standards, in the world today. He concludes with a stimulating analysis of the likely future for Palestine and of the crucial world implications.

About this title

About the Author:

Said Aburish's previous books include Children of Bethany, Cry Palestine, and The House of Saud. He holds an American passport, and lives in London, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

Aburish, a London-based journalist and American citizen who calls himself "a loyal Palestinian," has written a scathing political biography of Yasser Arafat. He characterizes Arafat as a masterful strategist who gained worldwide recognition of the existence of a Palestinian people and who, since the early 1970s, has sought a peaceful settlement with Israel. But Aburish charges that Arafat?whom he views as a consummate opportunist, master of double talk and builder of a personality cult?has become a dictator as president of the Palestinian National Authority. The author portrays Arafat as a traditional Arab tribal chief who surrounds himself with yes-men, bribes followers, threatens rivals and punishes dissent. Aburish blasts away at Arafat's self-mythologizing, including the fabrication that he became a self-sufficient millionaire by working as a civil engineer in Kuwait in the 1950s. Advancing his own agenda, Aburish, who considers the Oslo agreements as vehicles by which Israel can attain more territory as well as hegemony over the Palestinians, urges Arafat's ouster. He argues that Arafat should be replaced by a triumvirate of Palestinian leaders and an interim administration that would negotiate a better deal with Israel (the book was completed before the most recent agreements), and he calls for the replacement of Arafat's corrupt flunkies with technocrats. In the process, Aburish delivers an engrossing, if partisan, biography that is as interesting for what it says about Palestinian unhappiness with Arafat as for what it says about the man himself. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1582340005
• ISBN 13: 9781582340005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256