Arafat Trying to Prove He Is Still 'Relevant'
"Arafat is not yet finished, as Sharon claims," said the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who has argued to the prime minister, in vain, that talking to Mr. Arafat is in Israel's best interest.

Perhaps one of Mr. Arafat's greater strengths now is that even Palestinian critics, people who regard him as dictatorial and incompetent, are rallying to his side. They resent what they see as an Israeli attempt to dictate who should lead them, despite the insistence of Mr. Sharon's lieutenants that they have no such intention.

"As long as he is relevant to his people, he has to be relevant to the outside world," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst.

Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian spokeswoman, said in an interview conducted before the latest Israeli action that Israel had a "patronizing" habit of trying to decide "which Palestinian leader is kosher and which Palestinian leader isn't."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/international/17ARAF.html