And For His Next Act ...(future of Yasir Arafat)

The corridor leading to his office vibrates with activity. Politicians and militants, activists and peace negotiators come and go, waiting for face time with Yasir Arafat. And the Palestinian leader has lots to spare these days. For more than a month he's been stuck in a compound that once served the British and later the Israelis as a military base and jail. In spite of that, Arafat seems, somehow, cheerful. An hour earlier demonstrators were chanting below his window, singing his praises and jeering at Israeli troops. Now, behind his desk he's signing documents in rapid succession, answering questions almost gregariously. Though he is the smallest man in the room--nearly cartoonish in his oversize glasses--his presence is colossal. Clad in his signature fatigues and headdress, he makes light of his internal exile: "Here I am in Palestine," he says, gesturing widely with both hands, flashing a familiar smile.

In a small part of it anyway. The 72-year-old rebel's immediate domain is a hallway the length of a football field, a clutch of aides and advisers, an office and an adjoining bedroom. The man who once racked up frequent-flier miles faster than a corporate executive now can't venture farther than the grimy edge of Ramallah in the West Bank. Israel keeps its tanks parked just 100 yards from his office, their barrels trained in his direction. This is hardly the first time Arafat has been hemmed in, but it might be the tightest stitch of his life. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who hunted Arafat for a decade and fashioned Israel's current siege policy, has vowed to keep the Palestinian leader corralled until the bloody intifada ends. "Even if he could stop the violence, I don't think there's anything Arafat can do at this point to get Sharon to engage," says a European diplomat long involved in regional peacemaking. "I don't see Sharon letting him out of Ramallah."

Don't count Arafat out just yet. The Palestinian leader is the Houdini of Mideast politics. He has outlasted seven American presidents and 12 Israeli prime ministers. He breezed out of Beirut 20 years ago when the same hard-charging ex-general, Sharon, had him cornered and tried to wipe out his forces. Arafat's dramatic getaways during military operations in Jordan and the West Bank in the 1960s and '70s are lore among Palestinians, as is his skill at wiggling out of political tight spots.

But Arafat now faces something tougher than the Jewish state's enmity: a growing conviction among Israelis, even political doves, that he is no longer useful--that he can't seal a peace deal and won't deliver security. For the 73-year-old Sharon, it translates into a compulsion to prove Arafat's irrelevance by sidelining him. Even when Arafat kept things quiet during a 24-day stretch beginning last month--creating possibly the best climate in more than a year for a return to the bargaining table--Sharon brushed it off as a trick. To back up his charges of duplicity, he cited a weapons-laden ship apparently headed for Palestinian territory.

Despite his limited range of movement, Arafat told NEWSWEEK he is still a player--that he is using all the resources at his disposal to effect a ceasefire. "I'll do my best to sustain it," he insisted. "There's one authority [in Palestine] and it will be respected." But by the end of the week his assurances rang hollow. On Thursday a member of his own Fatah group shot up a dance hall where Israelis were celebrating a 12- year-old girl's bat mitzvah, killing six people. (A leaflet said the murders were in retaliation for Israel's assassination of a Fatah leader in the West Bank town of Tulkarm.) Arafat condemned the attack vigorously, but a day later, an Israeli cabinet member suggested isolating him further by preventing diplomats and journalists from reaching his headquarters.

That's where Washington comes in. Palestinian officials say Anthony Zinni, U.S. President George W. Bush's special envoy to the Middle East, is pressing Sharon to ease up on Arafat, even as the United States ...