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Ehud Ya'ari: Reformation
Don�t hold your breath.
They are all sober and experienced people, and they have no illusions about their power to seriously curb Arafat�s ability to manipulate the new cabinet he appointed on June 9.
The four are:
� The interior minister -- and ostensible head of the security services -- Gen. (retired) Abd al-Razak al-Yihya, 73, who served over 30 years ago as commander of the now-defunct Palestinian Liberation Army, the Palestinian battalions set up in various Arab countries under the nominal authority of the PLO.
� Justice Minister Ibrahim al-Daghmah, a former director general of the ministry, whose appointment came as a surprise even to those in the close entourage of the ra�is.
� Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, a former International Monetary Fund representative and, more recently, the manager of one of the larger banks in the territories.
� Education Minister Naim Abu Hummus, who has been upgraded to the cabinet from his position as director general of the Education Ministry.
A fifth personality, who had not been named by press time, is meant to join the new reform pantheon: A minister for religious affairs and the Muslim endowments, who will be charged with supervising the mosques, the sermons and the Islamic Waqf, and who will be expected to rein in the fiery religious establishment. Arafat has had to delay this appointment until he receives Hamas�s tacit approval for the candidate.
As holder of the key position of interior minister, Yihya is supposed to command the security and intelligence apparatuses, but there is absolutely no doubt that they intend to revert to type despite him, and there is no chance at all that he intends to try to impose discipline on them. Yihya does not constitute a real buffer between the security forces and Arafat, but rather will serve as a go-between for show.
As finance minister, Salam Fayyad will be responsible for instituting transparency and accountability, and for stopping money trickling into private pockets, or being used to fund terrorism. But Arafat doesn�t need financing from the official budget, having his own alternative sources.
With all his talent, Abu Hummus didn�t manage to gain control of the school system and clean it up of incitement as director general of the Education Ministry, and he doesn�t have the teeth to make him any more effective as minister.
As justice minister, Daghmah is supposed to institute an independent judiciary as a counterbalance to the arbitrariness of the executive branch. But the judges will first have to assess whether he is the real source of authority, and not only a cover for those who would pull the strings from outside the court system. The same will go for whoever gets the religious affairs portfolio.
In other words, under strenuous pressure from the United States, the European Union and a few of the Arab states, which culminated in CIA head George Tenet�s fist-banging on Arafat�s table, the ra�is has carried out the reshuffle that was demanded of him but has made sure that it has no real content.
Those with muscle in the PA have kept their cabinet positions, including all the members of the clique that the Palestinian street accuses of corruption and of ignoring the public�s needs.
Meanwhile the price of the reform is being paid only by those who lack strong backing. Some more fortunate ex-ministers were immediately given "ministerial level" jobs heading new government agencies -- i.e. with the same salary, same car.
From all the thunderous talk about the "reform," the appointments have emerged like a weak echo. The first to express disappointment were the naive members of the Palestinian reformist camp who were at least expecting a more sophisticated pretense that the PA had changed its spots.
True, Arafat has made some concessions. True, some key positions have been filled by people who are considered fair-minded and well-meaning. True, the number of cabinet ministers has been reduced from 32 to 21, and many ministries have been merged in order to "save money."
But the cabinet is not the real decision-making body in any case. The institutions that count are those outside the PA hierarchy such as the loose formation known as "the leadership," which includes the members of the PLO Executive Committee and the other faction heads. All that has happened is that Arafat has devalued the PA once again, and has turned the cabinet into a more technocratic body. As usual, he is pushing policy-making authority into external committees whose make up he determines and whose decisions he directs.
As usual, those who for their own reasons want to believe that the "reform" is under way in some shape or form will claim that the new faces should be given a chance. The truth, though, is that this is no reform, nor even the beginnings of it. It is only another stratagem which could not be avoided and which won�t change much.
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