A view from the turmoil Of the current uprising, the U.S. consul said Arafat allowed it but didn't plan it.

JERUSALEM — The highest-ranking American diplomat in Jerusalem said that Yasir Arafat did not plan the long, bloody intifadah now under way but adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward it as a way to allow Palestinians to "let off steam."

Through frequent meetings with Arafat (until the U.S. policy to shun him), U.S. Consul-General Ronald Schlicher came to know as much as any envoy about the crafty Palestinian leader.

"I don't think [Arafat] plotted the intifadah. I think it was mismanaged," Schlicher said on the eve of his departure from a post he held during the most violent and pessimistic two years in Israeli-Palestinian relations. "He adopted a laissez-faire attitude to violence as an instrument of political change" and "let the Palestinian populace let off some steam" in an effort to deflect internal criticism of his leadership.

For the bearded, whip-smart Schlicher, known simply as the "C.G.," two years of ceaseless bloodshed, more than 2,500 deaths, unproductive peace talks, and the near-collapse of the economies of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are markers on his memory lane.

In an interview with The Inquirer, Schlicher, 46, looked back at the tumultuous times and reflected on the continuing conflict.

Because Jerusalem is not internationally recognized as the capital of Israel, all but two countries - Costa Rica and El Salvador - have their embassies in Tel Aviv. The U.S. Embassy is there, headed by Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer.

Schlicher heads the Jerusalem-based U.S. consular corps, which has heavily guarded offices in West Jerusalem and predominantly Arab East Jerusalem.

Dividing the diplomatic labor, Kurtzer maintains contacts with Israel's government; Schlicher, who is fluent in Arabic, maintains contacts with the Palestinian Authority. He returns to Washington on Sunday and then, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post, carried by the Associated Press, he is in line to become the ambassador to Tunisia.

Even before the start of the Palestinian uprising, or intifadah, in September 2000, there were signs the peace process was "not going swimmingly," Schlicher said, citing the riots after Israel opened a tunnel near the Western Wall in 1996 and deadly violence in May 2000, on the day Israel celebrates its independence and Palestinians commemorate it as Al Nakba - "the disaster."

After each of those incidents, however, "pressures and tensions were tamped down," Schlicher said.