Arafat's time has gone, and Palestinians must vote him out

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 06/26/2002 | Patrick Bishop

[Pokey78]

Courtiers holed up with Yasser Arafat during the siege of his Ramallah bunker earlier this year noticed a curious physical change in their leader. The palsied trembling, which had afflicted him since a brain operation, ceased. The old man seemed almost to be enjoying the experience.

Arafat is famously undaunted by adversity. It seems almost to nourish him. Now President Bush's anathema has placed him in another tight spot. Arafat has responded by hinting that presidential elections will take place next January. His survival instinct tells him this is a smart move. Once again, he has invested the notion of Palestinian statehood in his own person. Criticism in the intervening six months will look like disloyalty. Voting against him will almost amount to treason. He will, he hopes, be reinstalled in the position he has occupied almost all his adult life at the head of the Palestinian people.

It is a strategy that appears to have every chance of succeeding, but we must hope for the sake of everyone in the Middle East that it fails; that he is persuaded to stand down before that date or that he is defeated. Arafat has become an obstacle in the path towards peace and Palestinian statehood. Bush has made it clear that, as far as the Americans are concerned, he no longer speaks for the Palestinians. Apart from the protagonists, America is ultimately the only power that matters. His maintenance of office can only further delay a settlement.

The conventions of the Palestinian struggle, however, make it impossible for this truth to be publicly acknowledged. It was inevitable that the attack on Arafat's leadership would be countered by a chorus of support. Palestinians, not unnaturally, resent the idea that Washington should choose their government.

But after the chanting and poster waving has subsided, many inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza will be left reflecting that perhaps the Americans are right. Most want peace, prosperity and a future for their children, not the war, poverty and despair of the past 18 months. The orthodoxy of Palestinian political thought blames all this on the Israelis. Common sense whispers that this is not so.

Arafat's standing among his own people has been shrinking steadily ever since he returned home seven years ago. His great talents were as an advocate and figurehead, sustaining the Palestinian cause in an indifferent or hostile world. What he is not is the leader of an entity with pretensions to becoming a modern state. Symbolism interests him more than reality. Government bores him. The system of patronage that had regulated the PLO in exile has become a web of corruption. The subtlety with which he presented the Palestinian case now looks merely slippery.

Many Palestinians accept that Arafat has become a liability. They will none the less be reluctant to act as Bush would like them to. Arafat still enjoys ineradicable prestige for his part in laying the foundations of a Palestinian state. Removing him on the say-so of an American president would be an act of treachery. It would be doubly perfidious because it would award victory to the hated figure of Ariel Sharon. The Arab-Israeli conflict has, in some respects, turned into a blood feud between two patriarchal leaders. Arafat, for all his faults, is still Palestinian champion.

Elections will give the Palestinians an opportunity to send him honourably on his way. At the moment, it seems likely that Arafat would win comfortably. The collectivist attitudes fostered by the leadership have stunted political growth. Discussion is centred almost entirely on the means of ending Israeli occupation. Debate on the shape of post-occupation Palestine is regarded as irrelevant or even suspect.

Inside the PLO, no one has emerged to challenge Arafat's authority. Figures who are respected in the West, such as Mahmood Abbas, one of the main architects of the Oslo agreement, have no following among ordinary Palestinians. There is a possible younger successor in Marwan Barghouti, who emerged from the student movement to win great popularity, but he is in an Israeli jail.

Despite the initial expressions of solidarity, it is possible that Arafat's grip on Palestine might yet be loosened. Palestinians have, until now, accepted the idea that suffering is their most potent weapon. Their victimhood has gained them international attention and sympathy, and brought about near-universal recognition of their right to statehood. But the return on their pain is dwindling. The suicide bomber phenomenon has created a wave of feeling for the Israelis and altered the perception that the Palestinians are suffering uniquely.

President Bush has told the Palestinians that, if they stick with Arafat, they condemn themselves to more suffering and that the pain will bring no reward. It is a bleak prospect for even the most zealous nationalist. The lack of opposition to the Israeli re-occupation of West Bank towns this week in reaction to the latest suicide bombs was perhaps a sign that exhaustion is setting in.

But for any move to dump Arafat to have a chance of success, Palestinians would have to be persuaded that the American peace plan is acceptable and - equally important - that Washington is committed, as never before, to seeing that it is implemented.

There have been some tentative, encouraging noises from Palestinian analysts, with one respected political scientist, Khalil Shikaki, hailing the proposals for provisional statehood as a possible breakthrough.

But Palestinians regard Sharon in the same light as Israel and Washington do Yasser Arafat - the problem, not the solution. As long as he is in power, few would place any faith in Israeli undertakings. These two old men have become a symbol of the intractability of a problem that, in its essentials, is not really that complicated.

Palestinians could perhaps be persuaded to parricide if there was an act of reciprocity on the Israeli side. They have to accept that this is not going to happen. Bush has left them with a stark choice. For Palestine to live, Arafat's leadership must perish, and the great survivor's career be brought to an end by his own people.

[McGavin999]

At the proper time, Sharon will retire. He will go down in history as the man who brought peace to Israel, but he will retire.

[DoughtyOne]

[desertcry]

The palestinians, and arafat have no desire for a Palestinian state, why should they? They know that a State
carries with it some responsibilities, ie. stopping terrorisism, and earning their way in this world. Right now, they get money without earning it(Given by other arab states, and the liberal countries of the West), they can vent their envy, and hate against Israel without being held to account by the so called civilized countries(West, and East) It's the perfect situation for what the arabs want, exterminate the Jews.