Stardate 20020329.1159

(Captain's log): If indeed Israel does not kill Arafat, and I still expect that they will, then their official plan is to "isolate" him. The question is what that would mean that is different from the condition in which he's lived for the last few months.

I think it would mean effective house arrest. No phone, no communications of any kind, no visitors. He'd be fed, and maybe even permitted to read newspapers, but he would no longer be permitted any means at all of getting messages out to anyone else, and thus would no longer be able to control anything.

I don't think this is feasible. Oh, they can do it. But they can't keep doing it; the rising tide of political pressure would become intolerable. In particular, it would cause progressively stronger pressure on the US to get Arafat freed. And once Arafat walked free, it would be viewed as a victory for the Palestinians.

Colin Powell has said that he's been assured by Israel that Arafat won't be harmed. That assurance is meaningless, for a number of reasons. First of all, even if it were Israel's firm intention to take him captive instead of killing him, the kind of fighting going on in Arafat's compound is chaotic in the extreme. No-one can control who survives or who dies, unless they take foolish chances.

But more important is that someone is telling a little white lie. It's part of the rules of the great game that you don't actually try to kill off enemy heads of state. You do anything else you can, but you're not supposed to actually hunt the other players. For a long time, in fact, that was official US policy. It Just Wasn't Done.

It's not obvious just who is telling the white lie. I suspect that the Sharon government is fibbing to Powell, but I think Powell isn't being fooled. But this gives Powell cover; it means that the US won't be complicit in Arafat's death when it happens. So though I think Powell knows that this assurance is meaningless, he's repeating it.

The fiction is going to be that it was never intended for Arafat to die, that he was an accidental casualty. But if indeed he is captured, it will also be impossible for him to die later. No-one will accept any stories about him breaking away and jumping out of a window when he's in captivity. So if indeed they want him dead, he's going to have to die in the chaos of combat.