Who Can Control The Wife?

By LISA BEYER/JERUSALEM

Suha Arafat had said she wanted visibility. But the First Lady of Palestine surely didn't have in mind her starring role in a new ad sponsored by the Washington-based Jewish Republican Coalition. Taking a swipe at U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, the TV spot shows Mrs. Clinton, on a recent trip to the West Bank, listening blank-faced to provocative anti-Israeli comments by Mrs. Arafat and then pecking her on the cheek. It's clear what the viewer is meant to think: Yech!

By now, Mrs. Arafat is used to disparagement; she has received little else from her own people in the nine years since she married the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The latest scandal, though, provides a new low, with her husband's office compelled to issue a statement disavowing her. Even Suha's mother, activist Raymonda Tawil, took the opportunity to throw a punch: "She is so independent," Tawil told Israeli TV. "She has proved [she has] no mother, no husband. 'I am Suha!'"

In the comments that landed her in trouble, Mrs. Arafat did have a point, if not quite the stiletto she intended. While playing host to Mrs. Clinton in Ramallah, she lamented the "damage" caused by Israel's use of "poisonous gas" against Palestinians. It's true that tear gas, frequently used by Israeli soldiers, has been linked to miscarriages among Palestinians, though no one has proved the link to cancer that Mrs. Arafat alleged. She also charged that Israel had contaminated 80% of the Palestinian water supply. The figure was dubious, but poor Israeli environmental practices have compromised the water sources that supply both Israelis and Palestinians.

Still, Yasser Arafat, according to a close aide, was "furious" with his wife for embarrassing Clinton. "He didn't appreciate having to defend her to American and European diplomats," says the aide. The Arafats are accustomed to playing a defensive game. Suha, 36, with her bottle-blond tresses, Louis Feraud suits and French fashion magazines, was not the wife most Palestinians had imagined for their austere leader, 70, whose dedication to their liberation is symbolized in his olive drabs, stubbly beard and standard explanation (since abandoned) that he remained a bachelor because he was married to a woman called Palestine. The couple first met in 1985 through Tawil when Suha was a student at the Sorbonne. In 1989 Arafat asked her to join his staff in Tunis, his headquarters-in-exile, as an economic assistant.

Suha has aggravated resentments among Arafat's closest aides by claiming they are corrupt; they in turn claim she uses her position to seek out business opportunities. If Arafat's men once feared his wife would distract him, that worry has been dispelled. In interviews Suha grouses that Arafat allows little time for her and their daughter Zahwa, 4. The couple sleep on separate floors of their seaside apartment in Gaza City. Says a friend of Suha's: "Because her husband neglects her, she wants to compensate by getting involved in political affairs." If only she had talked to Hillary Clinton about that, the two might have found common cause.

--By Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem. With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Nablus

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Nablus