The scene: A solitary figure sits at a desk where two candles flicker. He rises slowly and walks downstage. A spotlight plays on the black-and-white keffiyeh covering his head. The voice, quavering as he begins, grows more insistent and belligerent as the soliloquy proceeds. He speaks:

Trapped? You call this trapped? But all the world’s a stage. A basement in Ramallah is as good as a podium at the United Nations. Better. This siege has turned me into the hottest “get” for American television since Gary Condit. Ariel Sharon is so 1950s. Just doesn’t get it. Probably takes his news off a Philco radio.

No one will ever say I did not change. I am chimera, I am quicksilver, I am Arafat. I have had to turn on a dime every hour of my life to survive these murdering Israelis and my Arab brothers, who also see me as a threat.

They are right. All Arab leaders have betrayed me, dissed me, tried to use me, then to kill me and to kill the Palestinian revolution that I alone now embody. They will pay. Except brother Saddam Hussein. He knows that through it all, down deep, I did not change at all. I owe the guy.

Sure, I shed skin after skin and watched as associate after associate was murdered when they began to upstage me. I jumped from burning deck to burning deck in the 1970s, then ran to catch up with the intifada of the 1980s, and hugged Shimon Peres to help the cause in the 1990s.

At Camp David, Clinton wanted to make me the George Washington of Palestine. Yes, I was tempted to sell out my people, in the miserable camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and become emir of the West Bank. That was the deal on offer. The money underneath the table was pretty good not as good as what Saddam offers, but more secure.

Israeli commentators say I could have achieved my strategic goals without bloodshed with that deal. But they miss the point. Bloodshed is the point. I had to seize, not passively receive. The Israelis give me total credit for this new uprising. History will remember me as warrior, resister, struggler.

I am no monster, and no quisling. Armed struggle has always been my way, my meaning, my religion. The borders of Palestine will be traced in blood, as a great nation’s should be. The frontiers will be demarcated and protected by international troops, not by a groveling peace treaty. That is and was my plan. Once Israel elected Sharon to prove to us that brute force could make Israelis secure, it fell into place: My people had to show them they were wrong.

These fools in Washington and Europe chase their own tails by debating whether I am a terrorist or not. They think if they come up with the right label, like “Enduring Freedom” or “homicide bombers,” then everything is fixed. And they say we Arabs are prisoners of rhetoric.

How can I be a terrorist when the American secretary of state comes to this bunker and gives me a major say in whether his mission will succeed or fail? He wouldn’t call me a terrorist, no matter how many times he was asked. How can you?

Colin Powell gave me the lecture on this being my “last last chance.” Heard that before. I couldn’t tell if he believed it or was just looking for a few new artful promises from me to help him hold off the maniacs at the Pentagon. Powell understands that as long as I stir the pot here, America’s campaign to bring Iraq to account could be significantly delayed. But I could not read if that is good news or bad news to him.

The Jordanians and Egyptians scared Bush two weeks ago by threatening to expel Israeli ambassadors from their capitals. Way to go guys. And the CIA put the White House in a panic with reports which we helped plant that those two regimes could come crashing down any day. The spooks go for that stuff, because some day it could be right. But not yet.

Bush sent Powell out to calm my Arab brothers. That’s why Powell had to come see me here. But I am Arafat. I have no brothers. Understand: I thrive on chaos, not calm or peace. Sharon is great at producing chaos around me. That’s the deal I was looking for all along.

He smiles. He turns. Exit Arafat. But not for long.