WHAT WORKED FOR THE KGB IS WORKING FOR THE STATE DEPARTMENT. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, wrote back in September 2003 how Moscow turned Arafat into a terrorist, while convincing the West that he was the key to peace in the Middle East.

We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.

Is what Russia did with Arafat so radically different from what the West--and the US in particular--is doing with Abbas? The key difference of course is that Abbas is weak and not respected by his own people--a fact that Condoleezza Rice and others do not seem to overly concerned about.

In any case, Pacepa's instructions to Arafat are the key that has withstood the test of time--and logic:

In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel--over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch.

Arafat lived to see the day. Will Abbas?

And just how far will the players in this game go in order to see Abbas get that Palestinian state? In an article in January 2002, Pacepa wrote that they would go very far indeed:

In January 1978, the PLO representative in London was assassinated at his office. Soon after that, convincing pieces of evidence started to come to light showing that the crime was committed by the infamous terrorist Abu Nidal, who had recently broken with Arafat and built his own organization.

"That wasn't a Nidal operation. It was ours," Ali Hassan Salameh, Arafat's liaison officer for Romania, told me. Even Ceausescu's adviser to Arafat, who was well familiar with his craftiness, was taken by surprise. "Why kill your own people?" Col. Constantin Olcescu asked.

"We want to mount some spectacular operations against the PLO, making it look as if they had been organized by Palestinian extremist groups that accuse the chairman of becoming too conciliatory and moderate," Salameh explained. According to him, Arafat even asked the PLO Executive Committee to sentence Nidal to death for assassinating the PLO representative in London. [emphasis added]

Would Palestinian Arabs today go to the same extreme? Have they already?
Conspiracy theorists--feel free, but you have to marvel how a Palestinian leader so weak and incapable of delivering on any agreements that he has signed onto has come this far without the charisma and leadership that was supposed to have been the key to Arafat's success.

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