Arafat and the Dream of Palestine: An Insider's Account, is a new book about the Palestine issue and its men. While flipping through its pages, I felt that I had written it, even though it was written by Bassam Abu Sharaf, my friend and a struggler for the cause. Every story related by Bassam reminded me of what I knew about the matter, and my additional information. Some of it might not be useful, and some of it is entertaining, and all of it deserves to be told. He begins his tale with the history of Arafat and the Palestine issue, in a chapter on the day the “old man's” plane crashed in the Libyan desert during a huge sandstorm. Abu Sharif provides the reader with interesting information, as if he saw the event himself. I will add here only that my teacher and friend, Hisham Sharabi, called me on the morning of the following day. We had woken up to hear in Washington that Arafat had survived. He asked me if I had heard the news, and I said yes. He asked to meet me at the Georgetown University campus, where he taught and I was a student. We strolled in the front courtyard of the university, as he puffed on his pipe. Finally, he said, “You know, Jihad, we Palestinians don't have much luck.” Sharabi was an opponent of Arafat and his political line. Abu Sharif also tells the story of the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani, and how he became the spokesman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the editor of al-Hadaf magazine. Kanafani's wife Anni called me at the Reuters office and said that her husband had been killed. I went quickly to the family home in Hazmieh and saw my colleague, Abdel-Wadoud Hajjaj, crossing the street to the al-Nahar building, which contained the offices of the United Press, where he worked. I took him with me and we saw emergency medical workers bringing out the remains of Ghassan and his young relative, in big plastic bags. Abdel-Wadoud's wife, who was Danish like Anni, was pregnant, and the couple ended up naming their baby Ghassan. Abu Sharif discusses the murder of three Palestinian leaders: Kamal Adwan, Kamal Nasser and Mohammed Youssef Najjar, in Beirut in April 1973. Once again, I was a witness to Israeli terror, since Maha Jayyousi, the wife of Kamal Adwan, had called my mother. I hurried to the family home to see ambulance workers bringing out Kamal. His body had been pierced by dozens of bullets. I sat on the edge of the bed and the mother held her two children; the next time I saw them was in Amman, when they were in their 30s. The three martyrs were in two residential buildings near the Sheikh Barbar Khazen (police) barracks in Verdun Street. Najjar and his wife were killed in one of the buildings. Kamal Adwan was murdered in front of his family, as the book says, in the first floor apartment of the other building. In this second building, on the eighth and highest floor, Kamal Nasser was killed. The Israeli terrorists killed an Italian stewardess by mistake in the apartment below Nasser's before going up to get him. I saw him on the floor, near the entrance to the apartment, as if crucified. He was on his back, with his arms outstretched. It was as if the Israelis meant to warn the Christians in the resistance, since Kamal Nasser was Christian. His family did not witness his murder, according to the book, since he lived alone. When we were together at the American University of Beirut, Bassam Abu Sharif's considerable handsomeness meant that he had many romantic adventures. He tells how he lost some of the skin from his face, some fingers, and the sight in one eye, and hearing in one year, due to an assassination attempt by letter bomb in 1972. I sat with the family and friends at al-Maqassed Hospital for days, waiting to hear that Bassam had not lost his sight totally. He was active politically at university, which got him into trouble with the administration. Perhaps he remembers one day, I found him wrapping himself in a blanket and guarding the office of the PFLP, near the Roman Amphitheater in Amman. I got him angry by telling him about the girls at university that he had left behind. He grabbed a machine gun and pointed it at me, threatening to kill me if I didn't shut up. I was at the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman when it was occupied by the PFLP in June 1970. I was also at the hotel with my colleague Wafiq Ramadan, when Bassam called me and asked me to hurry to the “Revolution Airport,” where I saw the demolition of three hijacked planes in September 1970. Every story in the book reminds me of my part in it. Bassam treats King Hussein of Jordan fairly, as he admits that the Palestinian resistance acted excessively in Amman and used the slogan “all power to the nationalists,” as if it wanted to take over power. Black September of 1970 and the following confrontation in 1971 led to the exit of the resistance from Jordan, to Syria, and then Lebanon. Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah, God rest his soul, brought Arafat with him from Jordan, and Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad took Arafat in his car to Baabda Palace in Lebanon, to protect him from any personal attack. Arafat didn't do right by Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion, and I am writing the truth, as I saw it with my own eyes. I can add that Yasser Arafat did not want the confrontation with the Jordanian authorities in 1970, as he was dragged into it. This was due to the position of the PFLP and smaller, extremist groups, which had political differences with Fatah. In his dedication to me, Bassam Abu Sharif wrote that “We were men's men, and as we were, we shall continue to be.” Perhaps we were once like that, but the world has changed around us, and the future is unknown.
