Between You and Me (16 page)

Throughout our last encounter, Arafat struck me as a rather pathetic figure, and not just because he was being subjected to the humiliation of virtual house arrest. He was seventy-two and looked considerably older, no doubt in part because of the Parkinson’s disease he suffered from. Beyond advancing age and failing health, Arafat seemed to have lost the passion and fire I remembered from earlier visits. I saw him as a spent volcano, a lion in the depths of winter who had been declawed and could no longer roar.

Toward the end of our interview, I brought up a recent column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Under the headline “Dead Man Walking,” Friedman wrote that “few Americans, Israeli or Arab leaders believe anymore that he will ever lead his people into a peace deal with Israel. Everyone is just waiting for Mr. Arafat to pass away.”

Arafat’s reply was to remind me that he had been “elected from my people” and that he was still the leader of the Palestinian cause. I then quoted another comment that had come to my attention.

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W A L L A C E : Ahmed Abdul Rahman, close friend, yes? He said recently, “At this moment, Arafat is the Christ of the Palestinian people.” Christ died for his people. Correct? You’ve said fairly recently that you want to be a martyr for Jerusalem, for the Palestinian people.

A R A F A T : Yes, yes. I hope that I will die in Jerusalem. I had lived there when I was a boy, so I would like and I hope that I will have the opportunity to die there with my mother.

Arafat did not get his wish. His health continued to decline over the next two years, and when he became mortally ill in the fall of 2004, he was still languishing in confinement at his compound in Ramallah. Ina desperate attempt to stay alive, Arafat flew to a military hospital outside of Paris, where he lapsed into a coma and died on November 11. His body was flownback to Ramallah for burial the next day. In accordance with his longtime desire, a request was made for his burial inJerusalem, but Prime Minister Sharonrefused. When the time came for his burial in Ramallah, thousands of Palestinians swarmed through the compound inanoutpouring of grief.

The emotional outbursts at Arafat’s funeral were a strong reminder of how deeply he was revered by the Palestinian masses, who had ample reason to regard him as a hero. His dynamic leadership over the years had restored the Palestinians’ sense of honor and pride in their own identity. Largely because of him, they had come to believe in the promise of a brighter future, one that would lead eventually to independence and nationhood.

Arafat also had a reputation for being fearless, especially during the early years, when he led the PLO in campaigns of guerrilla warfare. Those repeated attacks on Israelis made him a prime target for assassination, and in my first interview with him in 1977, I asked if

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he was concerned about that. “No,” he replied, “my life is nonsense.”

That was his way of saying that he had become accustomed to living in constant peril and had reconciled himself to the likelihood of a violent death, no doubt sooner rather than later.

The valor of those early days did not extend to his role as peacemaker. When push came to shove in his negotiations with Israeli leaders, Arafat did not have the courage of his convictions. He allowed himself to be intimidated by terrorists within his own movement, and, cowed by their threats to dispatch him to an afterlife of

“drinking tea with Yitzhak Rabin,” he refused to take the bold steps necessary to achieve a firm accommodation with Israel. Time and again he squandered opportunities to lead the Palestinian people to the nationhood he had promised them, and that failure, I suspect, is apt to be Arafat’s most enduring legacy.

Yet in an irony that Arafat would not have appreciated, his death had the effect of reviving prospects for a peace agreement. Mahmoud Abbas, the man elected to succeed him as president of the Palestinian Authority, was known to be a moderate who had long been committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Israel.

His election in early January 2005 by a clear-cut margin (he garnered 62 percent of the vote) was widely hailed as a strong and positive step in the right direction. Even Ariel Sharon praised Abbas as someone Israel could negotiate with in good faith, and Abbas responded in kind. Sharon, he said, was now “speaking a different language to the Palestinians,” and that raised hopes for “a real peace.”

Nor did it take long for the two leaders to confer in person. Just one month after Abbas’s election, he and Sharon shook hands at a summit meeting in Egypt where each of them gave his pledge to a cease-fire that would bring an end to four years of violence in the region. Their agreement had all the earmarks of a fresh start down the

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road to a permanent peace, and as I write in the spring of 2005, there are signs that this latest initiative might possibly succeed where so many previous ones failed. An independent Palestinian state living in harmony with a secure Israel is, of course, a consummation devoutly to be wished, but as a longtime observer of the savage desert politics of the Middle East, I’ve learned to be prepared for the worst even as I fervently hope for the best.

T h e S h a h o f I r a n

T h e A y at o l l a h K h o m e i n i D U R I N G T H E 1 9 7 0 S , W H E N I was spending so much time in the Middle East that it seemed almost like my second home, the Arab-Israel conflict was not the only story from that region getting big play in the U.S. media. A far more urgent concern for most Americans was the sudden use of oil as a weapon against the United States and its allies. In late 1973 the world’s largest oil producers drastically increased the price of their shipments to the West, and the Arab members of the oil cartel imposed an embargo on those shipments. These actions drove a spike of inflation into the U.S. economy and created a gasoline shortage at pumps from Maine to California. Motorists had to adjust to long lines at the filling stations, and to make matters worse, there were days when no stations had gas to sell at any price.

The world’s two largest exporters of petroleum were Saudi Arabia and Iran, and in early 1974, I did 60 Minutes stories on the leadership in both countries. That was when I had my first interview with the autocratic ruler of Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah was punctilious about his royal status, and before he would deign to be in-

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terviewed, my producer, Bill McClure, and I and the members of our camera crew had to line up in an appropriate pecking order and pay our respects to His Majesty, as though we were newly arrived diplomats presenting our credentials to the Peacock Throne.

In spite of his imperious manner, the shah turned out to be what we like to call “good copy.” I was not given any ground rules or other advance restrictions as to questions, and as long as I observed the protocol and took care to address him periodically as “Your Majesty,”

I could ask him just about anything. In fact, he seemed to welcome questions that had an edge to them, and most of his answers were refreshingly frank. The more time I spent with him, the more I came to realize that he truly enjoyed the give-and-take of a spirited argument and would even go out of his way to instigate some friction.

There was, for example, anexchange that took place early inour 1974 interview. The shah was aware that I had flown to Iran directly from Saudi Arabia, and when I alluded to that previous visit, he seized the opportunity to give me a little lesson in geographic nomenclature.

W A L L A C E : As you know, I have been across the gulf, the gulf that you call Persian and they call Arabian—

T H E S H A H : Why do you call it that? You have been to school, haven’t you?

W A L L A C E : Yes.

T H E S H A H : What was the name that you have read during your school days?

W A L L A C E : Persian Gulf.

T H E S H A H : All right. That’s—

W A L L A C E : (Laughs) But they do call it the Arabian Gulf.

T H E S H A H : Well, they can do many things.

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We talked at length about the huge hike in oil prices, and he insisted that the major oil companies in the United States were profit-ing almost as much from the increases as were the countries that exported the petroleum. I challenged him on that assertion, but he stuck to his guns, and he may have been right. What I did know was that the shah had beena longtime critic of Westernoil companies and their governments, and he had even chosen to couch his grievances against them in ethnic or genetic terms. I asked him about that.

W A L L A C E : You have said that the blue-eyed Europeans—the blue-eyed people of the United States—have plundered your country. Do you really believe that?

T H E S H A H : I do, because just only take this oil thing, among others. For fifty years they were taking the oil and flaring the gas.

W A L L A C E : That is, burning it?

T H E S H A H : Just burning it. What name would you give to this action?

W A L L A C E : Well, it was uneconomical, they said.

T H E S H A H : Obviously, because they didn’t care. . . .

W A L L A C E : And you do believe that we in the United States and the European nations—the blue-eyed ones—in a sense discriminated against brown-eyed oil?

T H E S H A H : So far, yes.

That was the first of three interviews I had with the shah. I met with him again a year later, and on that occasion, I concentrated my queries on his secret police force, the SAVAK. Predictably, he indig-nantly denied the various accusations I quoted about SAVAK’s methods of torture.

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The next year, I returned to Iran, and when that piece was broadcast in October 1976, I noted in my on-camera open that “60 Minutes made its yearly pilgrimage to the shah’s palace in Tehran to canvass the royal views of assorted topics.” The topic that inspired his most provocative comments was the power of the Jewish lobby in the United States. As usual, the shah did not mince words. I questioned his claim that all American presidents were unduly influenced by that pressure group.

W A L L A C E : Surely, Your Majesty, you’re not telling me that the Jewish lobby in the United States pulls the strings of the presidency?

T H E S H A H : I think so. Sometimes they are disserving the interests of Israel.

W A L L A C E : Explain!

T H E S H A H : Because they’re pushing around too many people . . .

W A L L A C E : Why would the president of the United States pay attention to that lobby?

T H E S H A H : They are strong.

W A L L A C E : Strong in what sense?

T H E S H A H : They are controlling many things.

W A L L A C E : Controlling what?

T H E S H A H : Newspapers, media—

W A L L A C E : Your Majesty!

T H E S H A H : Banks, finances. And I am going to stop there.

W A L L A C E : Well, now, just a second. You really believe that the Jewish community in the United States is that powerful? They make the media reflect their view of foreign policy?

T H E S H A H : Hm-hmm. Yes.

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W A L L A C E : They do not report— We do not report honestly?

T H E S H A H : Don’t mix things, please! I don’t say the media. I say in the media they have people, not the entire media. Some newspapers will only reflect their views, yes.

W A L L A C E : Well, The New York Times, for instance, is owned by the Sulzberger family, who are Jewish. Are you suggesting that The New York Times is biased in its treatment of the question of Zionism, Israel’s existence, the United States’ relationship with the Arab world?

T H E S H A H : I will have to put all the articles of The New York Times written on this subject and draw the conclusion. You can put this through the computer and it will answer you.

W A L L A C E : What you’re saying is that yes, you do believe.

T H E S H A H : Well, let’s wait for the answer of the computer.

W A L L A C E : The Washington Post.

T H E S H A H : The same.

W A L L A C E : The networks.

T H E S H A H : Less.

W A L L A C E : I must say, you’re speaking with your characteristic candor.

T H E S H A H : Yes, if you like. I try to be candid. I have always been.

I never saw the shah again, at least not in person. Over the next two years, Islamic fundamentalists who bitterly opposed his secular regime steadily gathered strength, and by the time I made my next trip to Iran in November 1978, they were in open rebellion. My assignment that fall was to cover the protests and riots that had broken out on the streets of Tehran. Two months later, those disorders escalated into a full-scale revolution, and the Peacock Throne was

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doomed. In fact, the shah and his family were fortunate to get out of Iran alive. Their escape in January 1979 infuriated the Muslim fundamentalists and especially their leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had taken over as the spiritual head of the new Islamic government.

The royal family fled first to Egypt, and from there moved on to Mexico. To further complicate matters, the shah was stricken with cancer, and in October 1979, he formally asked permission to enter the United States for medical treatment. When his request was granted, Washington and President Carter became the targets of all the fury that had erupted in Iran. The mob protests in Tehran led to an assault that fall on the U.S. embassy and the seizure of its diplomatic corps. Thus began the long ordeal of captivity for fifty-two American hostages in a country that had been overwhelmed by the frenzy of religious fanaticism.