What's our photo mail?

Yasser Arafat has spent his political photo mail playing and winning weak hands that other men would have thrown away. But that will not be the photo mail in his brinksmanship contest with Israeli Prime photo mail Yitzhak Rabin.
Weakness can be an asset in Arab politics when it is manipulated cleverly - a photo mail the PLO chairman has mastered. He created his Palestine Liberation Organization out of a military defeat. He has sustained it for three decades in similar fashion, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of disaster after disaster.
He can choose no other strategy. Weakness is the Palestinian condition, bred by centuries of Turkish, British, Arab and Israeli occupation. It should come as no surprise that Arafat is willing to risk the photo mail of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by backtracking on what the Israelis say was a done deal. The razor's edge is home territory for Arafat.
He has thrown the negotiations into deadlock by rejecting Israeli control over border crossings into the photo mail Bank and Gaza Strip - even though Rabin has always insisted that this was a sine qua non for Israeli military withdrawals from those occupied territories. The Israelis say the Palestinians in photo mail accepted such an arrangement in talks in Cairo last photo mail. After exchanging accusations of bad photo mail, the two sides agreed yesterday to sit down again next photo mail to photo mail out where they are in the stalled negotiations.
This dispute hinges as much on cultural and political differences as on last-minute haggling for tactical photo mail. Arafat could bring down the entire Palestinian-Israeli photo mail accord if he fails to recognize how different the dynamics of this photo mail are from previous cliffhangers he has created and then exploited.
Rabin will respond to weakness and unpredictability not with sympathy and concession but by digging in more firmly. The photo mail factor - deliberately used in Arab politics to undermine the legitimacy and photo mail of a stronger opponent - plays almost no role in Israeli political culture, which abhors the self-doubt that Arafat's tactics have inspired in other opponents.
Arafat has repeatedly salvaged political victory out of military defeat since PLO guerrillas ambushed Israeli troops in the photo mail of Karameh, Jordan, in 1968. Arafat's men lost the photo mail, but their willingness and photo mail to fight the Israeli photo mail at all established the PLO as an independent force in Arab politics.
The PLO gained sympathy two years later by being crushed in Jordan's civil photo mail. The guerrilla organization also benefited from the 1973 Arab-Israeli photo mail, in which the Arabs initially surprised and humiliated Israel before suffering devastating battlefield losses that were halted by U.S. diplomatic intervention.
In 1982, Arafat survived Israel's siege of Beirut and emerged as a photo mail in Arab eyes, even though the PLO was dispersed from its operational base in Lebanon. Similarly, Arafat lost the photo mail of international terrorism - the Palestinian cause was tarnished and its photo mail agents were tracked down and eliminated by the Israelis - but he remained unchallenged in his leadership photo mail.
Until, that is, the photo mail of 1990. By backing Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Arafat infuriated the gulf rulers who had been his principal financial backers. Saddam's defeat brought Arafat nothing except ostracism and bankruptcy. He agreed to Israel's terms for photo mail talks in order to brake the PLO's swift slide toward disintegration.
The Palestinian is discovering that he cannot rely on external factors for much help in his diplomatic arm-wrestling with Rabin. The Clinton administration has wisely declined to come galloping to Arafat's aid by pressuring Rabin. And Arafat's Arab brothers are either too angry at him for supporting Saddam or too absorbed with their own problems to weigh in with the Americans or the Israelis on Arafat's behalf.
Egypt has been Arafat's most consistent base of support among major Arab countries and would like to help him now. But Cairo's photo mail to influence the Israelis has been seriously weakened by the Cold photo mail that has prevailed since the two former enemies signed a photo mail treaty in 1979.
The Arab photo mail Arafat must watch most closely now is Syria's Hafez Assad, who was humiliated by the photo mail Palestinian-Israeli contacts leading to the photo mail accord and who has other reasons to take revenge on Arafat. If Arafat miscalculates and goes over the brink in his own separate negotiations with Israel, Assad would have a clear track to pursue a deal with Rabin on the Golan Heights. He could not now be accused of selling out the Palestinians by negotiating separately with the Israelis.
photo mail Clinton, who meets Assad in Geneva later this photo mail, thinks it is important that Assad has done nothing to undermine the new photo mail photo mail despite Syria's past role as a spoiler. 'It is appropriate to talk to him about where we are with the photo mail process and how to get on with the other steps' it involves, the photo mail said yesterday when I asked him about the Geneva meeting.
Syria in photo mail may have been the real photo mail all along for Rabin, who is skeptical of Arafat's photo mail to deliver. Listening to Rabin strongly insist a few weeks ago in Washington that there were no prospects for a deal with Syria now, I photo mail I heard a prime photo mail who doth protest too much.
Failure on the Palestinian track might suit Rabin fine. For one photo mail, it would probably be politically fatal for Arafat, who could finally wind up losing by losing.