RAMALLAH, West Bank, 16 September 2003 — Mahmoud Rahmi, a middle-age Palestinian clerk, has plenty of gripes about Yasser Arafat. He considers Arafat’s Palestinian Authority corrupt and riddled with cronyism. He thinks Arafat missed opportunities to end to three years of conflict with Israel, and before that squandered chances to find a path to Palestinian statehood.

But last week, when Israel threatened to banish Arafat from the Palestinian territories as punishment for allegedly fomenting terror, Rahmi was among the thousands who rushed to Arafat’s headquarters to form what they meant to be a human shield around the 74-year-old Palestinian leader.

None of this seemed contradictory to Rahmi, who kept a watchful eye on his small daughter as a pro-Arafat demonstration wound its way through the streets of this West Bank town.

“What Israel did was disrespectful, not only to Arafat but to the Palestinian people,’’ he said. “This was hurtful to us and hurtful to our cause, and it is not something we can allow to happen.’’

For Arafat — a veteran of decades of guerrilla warfare with Israel, struggles within the Palestinian national movement and the vicissitudes of heading a government that has no state to rule — the events of the past week were consistent with a long-standing pattern. Where the Palestinian leader is concerned, it often seems that the worse things are, the better for him.

As in the past, Israel’s move against Arafat came at a moment when his popularity and prestige were under threat. Once again, this brought about a prompt reversal of fortune.

“The Israelis rescued him — they created a climate in which the instinctive Palestinian reaction is to rally behind Mr. Arafat,’’ said Khalil Shikaki, an eminent Palestinian academic and pollster.

The same thing occurred in spring 2002, when Israel placed Arafat’s headquarters under siege, using tanks to punch holes in the walls and ringing the compound with soldiers in armored vehicles. Then, as now, Palestinians rushed to lend support.

Before the outbreak of the current intifada, or uprising, in September 2000, and even as the fighting intensified, Arafat’s Palestinian Authority was under heavy domestic pressure to reform itself. Critics lashed its lack of fiscal accountability and the weakness of crucial institutions such as the judiciary and Parliament. But as pressure mounted to present a united front against Israel, those complaints largely fell silent.

Over the weekend, as Israel faced intensifying international criticism for considering his expulsion, Arafat was having a busier-than-usual day holding court at his compound. The Anglican bishop came to call; so did several Israeli peace activists.

Arafat addressed a group of foreign diplomats, telling them that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to “cancel’’ the Palestinian Authority itself, not simply move against him. Schoolchildren in uniform marched through the gates, singing songs praising Arafat. He waved to the children and called through the window that he had no time to come out and see them.

On Sunday, Israel’s Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said Israel not only ought to consider expelling Arafat, but should weigh his possible assassination. The Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, called that consistent with the behavior of “a Mafia, not a government.’’

Amid the sense of crisis, debate over Arafat’s role a week earlier in the ouster of Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister Arafat had appointed four months earlier under US pressure, receded almost entirely into the background.

The incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei appeared to have a clearer grasp of his own limitations. Not long ago, Qorei was talking to Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli peace negotiator, and the subject of Arafat came up.

“Here I am in my home village, where everyone has known me for years,’’ Qorei said, according to Beilin, with whom he became close a decade ago during talks leading to the Oslo peace accords. “And if I were to walk outside right now and say to them all, ‘Listen, I have reached a peace agreement with Israel, with some concessions from them, and some from us’ — well, they would stone me.’’ But if Arafat were to make the same announcement, Qorei continued, people would cheer and throw flowers.

‘’And that,” he told his old friend, ‘’is the difference between him and me.”