The Middle East According to Robert Fisk

In the age of Geraldo, it seems almost an anomaly that a rumpled, 56-year-old professorial British-newspaper foreign correspondent could draw a string of standing-room-only throngs to American university auditoriums. But that's exactly what the London Independent's Middle Eastern correspondent Robert Fisk has been doing from Chicago to Los Angeles, generating an often rock star–like reception (a crowd of 900 saw him last week in Cedar Falls, Iowa!). Though he's rarely published in the United States (except for occasional short pieces in The Nation), Fisk has built a loyal following that pores over his every word via the Internet with almost cultlike devotion. Fisk, who has covered the region for 26 years, is considered by many to be simply the best and most knowledgeable correspondent currently working in the Middle East.

But Fisk also has his detractors: critics who allege that he is knee-jerk anti-American and anti-Israeli, a patsy for Yasser Arafat.

But any in-depth discussion with Fisk reveals a thoughtful man, immersed in Middle Eastern history, tempered by decades of reporting and ready to argue in ways guaranteed to rankle true believers on any side of the conflict. The L.A. Weekly's Marc Cooper interviewed Fisk on Sunday at the home of the Independent's Los Angeles correspondent.

COOPER: In your public speeches, you have been suggesting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might turn into something as apocalyptic as the French-Algerian war of four decades ago -- a horrendous war that took well over a million lives. Are things that dark?

ROBERT FISK: I think we already have reached those depths. If you go back and read the narrative history of the Algerian war, you'll see it began with isolated acts of sabotage, a few killings of French settlers, followed invariably by large-scale retaliation by the French authorities at which point, starting in the '60s, the Algerians began a campaign against French citizens in Algiers and Oran with bombs in cinemas and discotheques, which today translates into pizzerias and nightclubs in Israel. The French government kept saying it was fighting a war on terrorism, and the French army went in and erased whole Algerian villages. Torture became institutionalized, as it has by the Israeli authorities. Collaborators were killed by Algerian fighters, just as Arafat does so brazenly now. At the end of the day, life became insupportable for both sides.

At Christmas, Ariel Sharon called French President Chirac and actually said, We are like you in Algeria, but "we will stay."

And it's quite revealing that Arafat himself keeps referring to "the peace of the brave." Whether he knows it or not, that's the phrase De Gaulle used when he found it necessary to give up Algeria.

COOPER: For those who have watched this conflict over the years, it sometimes seems confounding what Ariel Sharon is thinking strategically. If one accepts the common view that Arafat has been a reliable and often compliant partner with the Israelis, what does Sharon think he has to gain by undermining him and opening the door to the more radical groups like Hamas?

FISK: Remember that when Arafat was still regarded as a superterrorist, before he became a superstatesman -- of course he's reverting back now to superterrorist -- remember that the Israelis encouraged the Hamas to build mosques and social institutions in Gaza. Hamas and the Israelis had very close relations when the PLO was still in exile in Tunisia. I can remember being in southern Lebanon in 1993 reporting on the Hamas, and one of their militants offered me Shimon Peres' home phone number. That's how close the relations were! So let's remember that the Israelis do have direct contact with those they label even more terrorist than Arafat.