Though Arafat’s rejection of Barak’s offer constituted a historic catastrophe for his people, the Palestinian leader returned to his hard-line supporters as a hero who had thumbed his nose at the president of the United States, as someone who had not backed down and settled for less, and as a leader who stood tough against the entire world.
Arafat went on television, and the world watched as he talked about his love for the Palestinian people and his grief over millions of families living in the squalor of the refugee camps. Now that I was traveling with my father and attending meetings with Arafat, I began to see for myself how much the man loved the media attention. He seemed to relish being portrayed as some kind of Palestinian Che Guevara and a peer of kings, presidents, and prime ministers.
Yasser Arafat made it clear that he wanted to be a hero who was written about in the history books. But as I watched him, I often thought, Yes, let him be remembered in our history books, not as a hero, but as a traitor who sold out his people for a ride on their shoulders. As a reverse Robin Hood, who plundered the poor and made himself rich. As a cheap ham, who bought his place in the limelight with Palestinian blood.
It was also interesting to see Arafat through the eyes of my contacts in Israeli intelligence. “What is this guy doing?” my Shin Bet handler asked me one day. “We never thought our leaders would give up what they offered Arafat. Never! And he said no?”
Indeed, Arafat had been handed the keys to peace in the Middle East along with real nationhood for the Palestinian people—and he had thrown them away. As a result, the status quo of quiet corruption continued. But things would not remain quiet for long. For Arafat, there always seemed to be more to gain if Palestinians were bleeding. Another intifada would surely get the blood flowing and the Western news cameras rolling once again.
Conventional wisdom among the world’s governments and news organizations tells us that the bloody uprising known as the Second Intifada was a spontaneous eruption of Palestinian rage triggered by General Ariel Sharon’s visit to what Israel calls the Temple Mount complex. As usual, the conventional wisdom is wrong.
The evening of September 27, my father knocked at my door and asked if I would drive him to Marwan Barghouti’s house the next morning after dawn prayer.
Marwan Barghouti was secretary-general of Fatah, the largest political faction of the PLO. He was a charismatic young Palestinian leader, a strong advocate of a Palestinian state, and a foe of the corruption and human rights abuses of the PA and Arafat’s security forces. A short, casual man who wore blue jeans most of the time, Marwan was favored to be the next Palestinian president.
“What’s going on?” I asked my dad.
“Sharon is scheduled to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque tomorrow, and the PA believes this is a good opportunity to launch an uprising.”
Ariel Sharon was the leader of the conservative Likud Party and the political nemesis of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s left-leaning Labor Party. Sharon was in the middle of a close political race in which he was challenging Barak for leadership of the Israeli government.
An uprising? Were they serious? The PA leaders who put my father into prison were now asking him to help start another intifada. It was galling, though it wasn’t difficult to deduce why they approached my father about this plan. They knew the people loved and trusted him as much as—if not more than—they hated and distrusted the PA. They would follow my father anywhere, and the leadership knew it.
They also knew that Hamas, like a worn-out boxer, was down for the count. They wanted my father to pick it up, splash water in its face, and send it in for another round so the PA could knock it cold again before a cheering crowd. Even the Hamas leaders—weary from years of conflict—warned my father to watch out.
“Arafat only wants to use us as fuel for his political furnace,” they told him. “Don’t go too far with this new intifada of his.”
But my father understood the importance of making this gesture. If he didn’t at least appear to be working with the PA, they would simply point the finger at Hamas, blaming us for disrupting the peace process.
Regardless of what we did, we seemed to be in a lose-lose situation, and I was deeply concerned about the plan. But I knew my father needed to do this, so the next morning I drove him to Marwan Barghouti’s house. We knocked on the door, got no immediate response, and eventually learned that Marwan was still in bed.
Typical, I said to myself. Fatah involves my father in their stupid plans and then can’t even be bothered to get out of bed to help carry them out.
“Never mind,” I told my father. “Don’t bother. Get into the car, and I’ll take you to Jerusalem.”
Of course, driving my father to the site of Sharon’s visit was risky, given that most Palestinian cars were not allowed to enter Jerusalem. Ordinarily, if a Palestinian driver was caught by the Israeli police, he would be fined, but given who we were, my father and I would probably be arrested on the spot. I had to be very careful, keeping to the side roads and trusting that my Shin Bet connections would protect me if necessary.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are built on the rubble and remains of two ancient Jewish Temples—the Temple of Solomon from the tenth century BC and Herod the Great’s Temple from the time of Christ. Thus it is with good reason that some have described this rocky hill as the most volatile thirty-five acres on earth. The place is holy to all three of the world’s great monotheistic religions. But from a scientific and historical standpoint, it is also a site of enormous archaeological significance—even to the most hardened of atheists.
In the weeks prior to Sharon’s visit to the site, the Muslim Waqf—governing Islamic authority there—had closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archaeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then in carrying out construction work on new underground mosques at the site, they brought in heavy earthmoving equipment. The evening news in Israel carried images of bulldozers, backhoes, and dump trucks working in and upon the site. Over the course of several weeks, dump trucks moved some thirteen thousand tons of rubble from the Temple Mount complex to city garbage dumps. News reports from the dumps showed archaeologists shaking their heads in disbelief as they held up remnants of artifacts retrieved from the rubble, some of them dating back to the First and Second Temple periods.
To many Israelis, it seemed clear that the intention was to turn the entire thirty-five-acre compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past. This included the destruction of any archaeological findings that represented evidence of that history.
Sharon’s visit was designed to deliver a silent but clear message to Israeli voters: “I’ll put a stop to this unnecessary destruction.” In planning the trip, Sharon’s people had received assurances from Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub that his visit would not be a problem as long as he did not set foot in a mosque.
My father and I got to the site a few minutes before Sharon’s arrival. It was a quiet morning. A hundred or so Palestinians had come to pray. Sharon arrived during normal tourist hours with a Likud delegation and about a thousand riot police. He came, he looked around, and he left. He said nothing. He never entered the mosque.
It all seemed like a big nonevent to me. On the way back to Ramallah, I asked my father what the big deal had been.
“What happened?” I said. “You didn’t start an intifada.”