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Ehud Ya'ari: The Small White Hope
Ehud Ya'ari

Arafat has not been relegatedto irrelevancy. He has been neither sidelined nor bypassed. He holds significant power within Abu Mazen�s cabinet.

The new Palestianian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wants to stop the intifada, to call off the suicide attacks and other acts of terror, and to return to the bargaining table. He is clear on one thing: that the signing of the Oslo Accords was "the worst mistake Israel made in all its history," as he told a Fatah audience last summer, and therefore, the Palestinians would do well to cling to them. His agenda is a cease-fire, internal reform and negotiations.

Abu Mazen fought with Yasser Arafat for the appointment of Muhammad Dahlan as the minister of state responsible for internal security affairs because of his belief that Dahlan is the man to scare Hamas into accepting "understandings" about a halt in the vio-lence. (Arafat views Dahlan as too ambitious and too close to the United States.)

Except that the internationally-sponsored peace plan known as the "road map" talks of a war against terror, of gathering in illegal weapons and so on. It does not talk of a temporary ceasefire on the Palestinians� part. How is the progress going to be measured? Who will determine if the Abu Mazen-Dahlan duo has merely obtained Hamas�s cooperation in calming the violence, or if they are trying to break the organization�s terrorist network? Will we be gaining only a "freeze" or "suspension" of the attacks, or an actual invalidation of the Palestinian strategy that sees terrorism as an effective tool to be used on and off, at will?

Both Abu Mazen and Dahlan believe that in the near term it would be best for their people to lay aside their explosive belts and roadside bombs. But there is no guarantee they feel able -- or that it is worth their while -- to enforce their vision in a determined way.

The latest Palestinian opinion polls all indicate that Abu Mazen has barely any popular support (less than 2 percent); that there is sizeable opposition -- some 40-50 percent of those asked -- to the transfer of powers from Arafat to the prime minister; and that there is an atmosphere of skepticism and a lack of public trust in the changes he brings with him.

Moreover, Abu Mazen comes to his task blooded and bruised from the duel he was forced to fight with Arafat over the make-up of the cabinet. Arafat was of course the loser in that he was obliged to "choose" Abu Mazen for the role of prime minister in the first place, and that he was forced to accept Dahlan as a cabinet minister. Still, he managed to plant a majority of his own loyalists in the government, and to demonstrate that Abu Mazen would not have a majority either in the Fatah institutions or in the Legislative Council unless "backed" by Arafat -- thereby exposing Abu Mazen to the charge that he was annointed by foreigners, a consequence of massive American-European-Israeli pressure.

The result for now is the creation of a cohabitation arrangement between Arafat and Abu Mazen, or as Foreign Minister Nabil Sha�ath elegantly puts it, "a mixture of a presidential administration and a parliamentary system." In other words, Arafat has not been relegated to irrelevancy. He has been neither sidelined nor bypassed. He holds significant power within Abu Mazen�s cabinet and, ironically, he will try to exploit the very apparatus built to neutralize him as a bridge by which to escape his isolation in the Muqata�a and regain international recognition. Every gesture made to Abu Mazen will require a parallel payment to Arafat. Any rope given to the prime minister will mean a little extra for the rais.

So Hamas will not be too panicked by Abu Mazen and Dahlan if it reckons the two don�t have the backing of Arafat. Even the armed militias of Fatah will ignore the orders to store their weapons in hiding places if it is not clear that Arafat expects them to obey.

And we will soon see how the new government turns into a less important body when it comes to political decision-making than the Fatah Central Committee, the PLO Executive Committee and the other bodies of the PLO elders in which Arafat sits securely in the driving seat.