No sooner had reports leaked from Norway that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was to share the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize this Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin than fax machines to East Coast news organizations were humming.
"The Nobel Peace Prize should be a crowning achievement for one's lifelong quest for peace," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
Conceding that Arafat made "a significant contribution" to peace recently, he added, "the body of his life's work remains in the fields of international terrorism and skyjacking."
The flap puzzled some long-term observers of the prize, who note that it has often gone to others with checkered pasts.
"I'm not sure a person's background prevents the person from making a contribution to peace in a given set of circumstances," said David Little, a senior scholar at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "It seems fair at least to look at the circumstances."
In this case, what Rabin and Arafat achieved was what had long been considered nearly impossible: a peace accord - still holding against difficult odds - between Israelis and Palestinians, long two of the world's most bitter enemies.
The import of the achievement muted criticism in Israel, where the Nobel news was overshadowed by worries about Sunday's terrorist attack in the heart of Jerusalem, in which two people were killed, and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.
Even Benjamin Natanyahu, the Israeli opposition leader, was muted in his criticism. "I congratulate Rabin on receiving the award," he said, "but receiving it with a partner like Arafat belittles its value."
That sentiment was shared in Israel by Jerusalem's Hebrew daily Yediot Aharanot, which questioned how the Nobel Committee could honor Arafat in the face of more acts of terror.
But another Israeli newspaper, Ma'ariv, published a commentary calling the Nobel move "a correct choice . . . though not a complete one."
The five-member Norwegian selection committee, true to a tradition of secrecy, refused to confirm or deny it had made its selection. But committee member Kare Kristiansen was so angered over Arafat's choice he threatened to resign.
Kristiansen has made Nobel waves before:
He questioned giving awards to active politicians, noting the Soviet crackdown on Lithuania came just months after then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev won the prize.
He noted that Israel invaded Lebanon after the Nobel committee honored then-prime minister Menachem Begin, along with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, in 1978.
Begin's award was criticized in some quarters because he led an underground Jewish terrorist group fighting for Israel's independence. But unlike Afarat, Heir said, Begin lived by "the rules of democracy." Contributing: Michele Chabin in Jerusalem
