 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
Palestinian Affairs: The Ninth Life
Isabel Kershner
Can Yasser Arafat, the ultimate survivor, survive?
Suspended somewhere between patriarchal authoritarianism and political oblivion, Yasser Arafat now finds himself in a limbo that must count as one of the most bizarre episodes of his entire, often unillustrious career.
In his landmark policy statement of June 24, U.S. President George W. Bush banished Arafat, 73, into historical purgatory as a failed, corrupt leader who is associated with terrorism and must be replaced. At the same time, Arafat is being personally blamed by his own people, as never before, for, as one Palestinian businessman puts it, "all of their miseries." Many Palestinians are coming to the conclusion that the ra�is is well past his sell-by date.
"Nobody is discussing whether Arafat is going to leave or not, but how," says Salah Abd al-Shafi, an up and coming Gaza political consultant and economist. "Everyone feels it is the end for Arafat. How to handle it is what is being discussed. All, including those closest and most loyal to Arafat, realize this is the end of him."
Palestinians are primarily angry at Arafat and the PA for their inability to provide either a basic livelihood or any minimal kind of security for their people. PA financial corruption, Arafat�s marked lack of leadership and the absence of any clear direction or gains from almost two years of the intifada have caused widespread resentment. Although the intifada violence, seen as revenge against Israel, gives satisfaction to much of the enraged Palestinian public, many also wish it would all somehow end. They blame Arafat for the chaos he has created, with or without malice aforethought.
Many Palestinians also accuse Arafat of being out of touch with reality. One source reports that the PA head spent over two hours at a recent cabinet meeting discussing the India-Pakistan crisis, to the astonishment of his ministers, as if he were living in Scandinavia, and not in Ramallah with Israeli tanks surrounding his headquarters. Whether the details are true or not, the fact that Palestinians now talk to the press this way is telling in itself.
In the Israeli military�s assessment, Arafat�s influence is fading so fast that the army top brass is reportedly no longer gunning for his deportation, believing that a new, alternative leadership will rise within six months in any case.
The popular disenchantment with the Palestinian leader comes despite Bush, rather than because of him. Abd al-Shafi is the first to acknowledge that the U.S. president "did a great service to Arafat on the street. Now anyone opening their mouth in favor of reform," he says, "is being called pro-American," which is no compliment in Gaza nowadays.
Nevertheless, on July 1, thousands of out-of-work Palestinian laborers, who can no longer get to their jobs in Israel as a result of the 22-month security closure, held what is being called a "hunger demonstration" in Gaza city at which the Palestinian Authority came in for a verbal beating. Unemployment in the Gaza Strip is now said to be over 60 percent. Cries of "Mafia! Mafia!" went up from the crowd as PA riot police stood by at a distance.
"For the PA, this was a very shocking thing," says Abd al-Shafi, who is chairman of the Palestinian Forum for Democracy, a non-governmental organization, and who observed the demonstration. "Ultimately, they�re aware that the closure is the problem," he says of the unemployed workers. "But they don�t see any serious effort by the PA to solve the crisis, while they continue to see PA officials driving by in their fancy cars, with bodyguards."
Palestinian pro-reform advocates now discussing how Arafat should go don�t expect him to do so willingly, though according to the Palestinian rumor mill, which is now working overtime, Egypt has offered to host the Palestinian leader should he decide to retire.
The pro-reformists have up their sleeve what they see as another, more realistic way of getting around the problem that would allow Arafat to go out with dignity. There is talk about drafting a new Palestinian constitution that would allow for a prime minister (a role that doesn�t exist at present), as well as a president (the role Arafat now fills, and by all accounts, expects to fill for life). According to this scenario, elections would be held for the Palestinian Legislative Council. The largest party would form a functioning government and appoint a prime minister. Arafat would remain president in a symbolic, rather than executive capacity -- becoming the equivalent of a constitutional monarch without power, which is more or less the position of Israel�s president.
There are indications that if elections are held, Hamas may consider running for the Legislative Council. As that suggests, a new, reformed Palestinian leadership may not be any more compromising toward Israel, and could even be more hardline.
Various initiatives for fundamental reform are now making the rounds, including one launched by Ramallah political activist Mustafa Barghouthi, the veteran and respected Gazan politician Haidar Abd al-Shafi (Salah�s father) who has long criticized Arafat�s autocratic style of rule, and Jerusalem engineer and author Ibrahim Dakkak. Launched in mid-June, it calls for the establishment of a national emergency leadership, democratic elections and political and administrative reform.
But one major factor mitigates against any of this actually happening in Arafat�s lifetime. If the PLO chief has distinguished himself in anything, it is in his ability to survive. He was almost written off the political map in the wake of the Gulf War in the early 1990s for his disastrous backing of Saddam Hussein, only to be resurrected by his adoption of the Oslo peace process that brought him back out of exile to head the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian national movement then went from near financial bankruptcy to becoming the recipient of massive international aid. Arafat is also one of the few mortals to have survived a plane crash -- living to tell the tale when his private jet plunged into the Libyan desert in 1992.
Arafat may be like a cat that�s had eight lucky escapes, but he is expected to hang onto his ninth and final chance for dear life.
"His career may be over in the sense of being able to influence his people, but he is still here," says one Palestinian observer. "As long as he is breathing, his own survival is the name of the game."
Ghassan Khatib, a seasoned political analyst from Ramallah who recently "went official," becoming minister of labor in Arafat�s reforms cabinet, dismisses predictions of Arafat�s demise as "naive." Arafat�s leadership was, he says, "renewed by Bush�s speech. Bush and Sharon are seen as the enemy. No one would dare challenge his leadership now."
As for speculation about the possible creation of a post of prime minister, Khatib says he finds the idea "strange." Arafat has officially announced in three different forums that presidential, legislative council and local elections will be held in January 2003, Khatib notes. He adds that there is no legal basis for a prime ministerial post in the current political framework for the PA�s interim, pre-state period agreed with Israel under the Oslo Accords.
Arafat could always appoint a prime minister -- somewhat defeating the pro-reformists� purpose -- but Khatib argues that the Palestinians have no need for one under the current circumstances. "If we are moving into statehood, then there should be a prime minister," he argues. "But if we�re heading back into reoccupation," he says, "the posts of president and prime minister are irrelevant. In this context, maybe what we need are more leaders of resistance or a new unified intifada leadership."
Khatib was speaking by phone from his Ramallah home where he was under curfew, a few days into Israel�s Determined Path military operation. The operation, which has brought the army back into almost all the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, possibly for a lengthy stay, followed two deadly suicide bombings in Jerusalem on June 18 and 19 that killed 26.
Though many Palestinians, as well as Israel and the Americans, have criticized Arafat�s reforms so far as disingenuous and cosmetic, Khatib, a member of the communist People�s Party and long an independent and critical voice, insists that they are serious.
Privately, he has reportedly told Palestinian colleagues that he will give the new cabinet six months to prove itself. To The Report, he mounts a spirited defense of the progress made so far. The placing of the security services under the control of the newly appointed interior minister, Abd al-Razak Yihya, he says, is "very significant." And he calls the unifying of all the PA�s financial accounts under the control of newly appointed Finance Minister Salam Fayyad "revolutionary."
All the income derived from the commercial monopolies previously handled by Arafat "advisers," money that used to go under the table into special accounts and slush funds, is now treated as official PA income, says Khatib. "Some of it was even used for salaries last month," he says. "Believe it or not, it�s happening."
As labor minister, Khatib doesn�t have any answers for the unemployed workers other than to seek emergency aid from Arab governments and the international community. "We have no resources at all," he says. "The PA is affected by the circumstances and is unable to meet its obligations."
All PA employees pay a 5 percent tax from their salaries that goes to help alleviate the hardship of the unemployed. After the "hunger demonstration," 9,000 unemployed laborers received a payment of 600 shekels (about $120), only the second such benefit since the intifada began. Before the intifada, over 100,000 Palestinians were working inside Israel on a daily basis.
Khatib, like other Palestinians, believes that the Gaza workers� demonstration was orchestrated by the opposition. Though the protest was presented as spontaneous, Gazans note, the demonstrators were bused in and wore T-shirts printed with slogans. Some say the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was behind it. Khatib believes it was more likely Hamas.
"It�s been proven all over the Arab world that economic hardship brings people to fundamentalism," he says. "When the PA can�t deliver, hunger gets exploited by Hamas." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he charges, "plays into the hands of Hamas. It�s consistent with his policies."
Ironically, just as the realization grows among Palestinians that Arafat, the symbol of the struggle, is also the source of much of their misery, several key figures considered as the leadership�s natural heirs, or favored by Israel and the Americans for potential leading roles, have suddenly left the field.
Abu Ala, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has been in and out of hospital recently with heart trouble. Abu Mazen, Arafat�s No. 2 in the PLO hierarchy, is in bad health himself and is currently grieving over the untimely death of his 42-year-old son while undergoing heart surgery in Qatar in June.
Arafat�s close economic adviser Muhammad Rashid, a once shadowy figure who recently became very visible, has apparently lost much of the source of his power under the new financial reform regime.
Muhammad Dahlan, the politically savvy Arafat confidant who resigned in June as head of the powerful Gaza Preventive Security apparatus, has taken a "time out" and is said to have taken up temporary residence in Cairo. Some Palestinians claim he has temporarily removed himself out of concern about the new Finance Ministry anti-corruption drive. Dahlan clearly has political ambitions, and launched a charm offensive in the British press during a London vacation in early July, but for now, a Palestinian political analyst says, "his plans are a mystery."
In one rare show of force and an indication of the disorder within the PA, the powerful West Bank Preventive Security chief, Jibril Rajoub, refused to go quietly when Arafat tried to fire him in July and send him into political exile as governor of Jenin. Loyal Preventive Security officers protested to Arafat on Rajoub�s behalf, demanding that he at least be replaced by someone from within the ranks rather than by Arafat�s original choice, Zuhair Manasra, the present governor of Jenin.
Palestinian sources say that Arafat is "playing" with Rajoub, the one PA security chief who meticulously kept his rank and file out of the intifada, and who is particularly trusted by Israel. According to Palestinian sources, Rajoub was replaced once before by Manasra while both men were in exile at PLO headquarters in Tunis in the late 1980s. Then, Arafat is said to have removed Rajoub from a senior position helping coordinate the first intifada.
By press time it seemed that Rajoub, who till now has had several thousand armed Fatah operatives at his command, would indeed be replaced as Preventive Security head, but might end up with a political promotion instead.
Several other security heads have been fired, including former PA police chief Ghazi Jaballi, within the framework of local and international demands for reform.
PA Minister Khatib describes the many personnel changes as healthy rotation. "In other countries, you cannot stay in your post forever," he remarks. Other Palestinians see the spring cleaning as classic Arafat divide-and-rule tactics, or even as a desire by a failing leader to leave scorched earth.
The Palestinian chattering class is now abuzz with rumors about Palestinian personalities meeting secretly abroad with American and European officials, and about candidates for leadership. One name that has come up as a potential prime ministerial candidate is that of PA Information and Culture Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Sari Nusseibeh, the prominent intellectual and PLO Jerusalem official, has also been mentioned in a similar context. Nusseibeh�s staffers deny that he has been meeting secretly with anybody abroad, and say the rumors are baseless. "There is no post of prime minister, and I don�t think there will be one," one aide told The Report.
As for Arafat, Khatib notes that there are "two different criteria" according to which the Palestinians judge him: One is the way he manages the PA, on which he scores low; the other is on his political strategy, on which Khatib, a public opinion expert, says he always gets a high rating.
"No one is saying he should have accepted Camp David," asserts Khatib. "A minority are saying he should be doing more to stop the violence, but the majority supports it." Khatib himself is now working on a new Palestinian-Israeli petition to protest against the harming of civilians on either side. But when it comes to the politics, Khatib insists, Arafat is nowhere near his twilight time.
And the ra�is still has fiercely loyal supporters. Two days after the "hunger demonstration," thousands -- Fatah claims 30,000 -- more Palestinians came out into the streets of Gaza to swear their allegiance to Arafat. A PA official who was watching that demonstration told The Report that out of every ten demonstrators, one was armed, amounting to hundreds if not thousands of armed men. "They were shouting �Viva Arafat!�" he says, and sent a clearly threatening message to "anyone who would even think of replacing him."
Speaking off the record, an aide to a senior PA minister explains the love-hate relationship that the Palestinians now have with their leader. "We consider Yasser Arafat not just as a leader or a symbol," he says, "we see him as the father. Yes, sometimes the sons of the family have arguments. Maybe we don�t like his way of ruling and see him as old fashioned. But in our hearts, he is still our father, the authority. We respect and love him. The more others insult him, the more we support him."
Even he acknowledges, however, that had Arafat not gained his public�s sympathy while being held under siege by Israel for several weeks this spring, during which he declared himself ready to die as a martyr, "you perhaps would have seen a lot more demonstrations and calls against him by now."
With his record for survival, it would be unwise to write off Arafat prematurely. For one thing, patricide is almost certainly out of the question. What is clear, though, is that Palestinians are increasingly asking how long they will have to pay for the father�s sins.
Palestinian Affairs
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2004 |  |