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CNN Live At Daybreak

Arafat Survived Previous Attempts to Push Him from Power

Aired June 26, 2002 - 05:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: If all of this focus on pushing Yasser Arafat from office has piqued your interest in the Palestinian leader, we've got the prescription.

And our Garrick Utley has it for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARRICK UTLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To Palestinians, he is the symbol of their struggle for a homeland. To Israelis, he is the symbol of the threat to destroy their homeland. And then there is Yasser Arafat's image of himself.

YASSER ARAFAT, PRESIDENT, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY: I am a part of my people. I am one of the victims.

UTLEY: And now he is the target of Israeli leaders and President Bush.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's missed his opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he's supposed to lead.

UTLEY (on camera): So who is Yasser Arafat, the victim he claims to be, or the failure George Bush sees him to be, or the terrorist the Israelis say he was and is? Well, what Arafat has always been is a survivor.

(voice-over): He was born in 1929 to Palestinian parents who lived in Cairo. As a child, he spent four years in Jerusalem before returning to Egypt to finish his education. Following the 1967 War, in which Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Arafat, who had formed his own movement to fight Israel, became head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Two sides of Arafat were seen at the United Nations in 1974 when he said he had come "with an olive branch in one hand and with a gun of a revolutionary in the other. Don't let the green branch fall from my hand."

Israel and its supporters did not buy that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yasser Arafat was really seen as the embodiment of the Palestinian terrorist movement for American Jews and, I might say, for most Americans.

UTLEY: Yes, there was that brief moment of hope, of peace. But that seems so long ago now. For Arafat, it has been a long way down. But he still has one thing going for him.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: Arafat is the only Palestinian leader at this time who can actually still legitimize a deal. If you don't deal with Arafat, with whom do you deal? He is the elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

UTLEY: George Bush, as well as Israelis, may see Yasser Arafat as the failed president of an ineffective government, unable or unwilling to stop the Palestinian suicide bombers. But Arafat's entire life is about not giving up his struggle, or his power.

ARAFAT: I am a pragmatic man. I am not dealing for myself. I am dealing for the sake of my people. Where is, where is, where is the future of my people?

UTLEY: And where is his future?

Garrick Utley, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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