ARAFAT
:
…..
is Yasser Arafat and his circle of associates who have suddenly
discovered the virtues (theoretically at least) of democracy and reform.
I know that I speak at a great distance from the field of struggle, and
I also know all the arguments
about the besieged Arafat as a potent symbol
of Palestinian resistance against Israeli aggression, but I have come
to a point where I think none of
that has any meaning anymore. Arafat is simply
interested in saving himself. He has had almost ten years of
freedom to run a petty kingdom and has succeeded essentially in
bringing opprobrium and scorn on himself and most of his team; the Authority
became a byword for brutality, autocracy and unimaginable corruption. Why
anyone for a moment believes that at this stage he is capable of
anything different, or that his
new streamlined cabinet (dominated by the same old
faces of defeat and incompetence) is going to produce actual reform,
defies reason. He is the leader of a long suffering people, whom in the
past year he has exposed to unacceptable pain and hardship, all of it
based on a combination of his absence of a strategic plan and his
unforgivable reliance on the tender mercies of
Israel
and the
US
via
Oslo
. Leaders of independence and liberation movements have no
business exposing their unarmed people to the savagery of war criminals like
Sharon, against whom there was no real defense or advance preparation. Why
then provoke a war whose victims would be mostly innocent people when
you have neither the military capacity to fight one nor the diplomatic
leverage to end it? Having done this now three times (Jordan, Lebanon,
West Bank) Arafat should not be given a chance to bring on a fourth
disaster.
He
has announced that elections will take place in early 2003, but his
real concentration is to reorganize the security services. I have long
pointed out in these columns that Arafat's security apparatus was
always designed principally to
serve him and Israel, since the Oslo accords were
based on his having made a deal with Israel's military occupation.
Israel
cared only
about its security, for which it held Arafat responsible (a
position, by the way, he willingly accepted as early as 1992). In the
meantime Arafat used the 15 or 19 or whatever the right number of
groups was to play each off
against the other, a tactic he perfected in
Fakahani, and which is patently stupid so far as the general good is
concerned. He never really reined in Hamas and Islamic Jihad which
suited
Israel
perfectly: it would have a ready- made excuse to use the
so-called martyr's (mindless)
suicide bombings to further diminish and punish the whole people. If there is
one thing along with Arafat's ruinous regime
that has done us more harm as a cause it is this calamitous policy of
killing Israeli civilians, which further proves to the world that we
are indeed terrorists and an
immoral movement. For what gain no one has been
able to say.
Having
therefore made a deal with the occupation through
Oslo
, Arafat was never really in a position to lead a movement
to end it. And ironically, he is
trying another deal now, both to save himself and prove to
the
US
,
Israel
and the other Arabs that he deserves another chance. I
myself don't care a whit for what Bush, or the Arab leaders, or Sharon
says: I am interested in what we as a people think of our leader, and
there I believe we must be absolutely clear in rejecting his entire
program of reform, elections, reorganizing the government and security
services. His record of failure is too dismal and his capacities as a
leader too enfeebled and incompetent for him to try yet again to save
himself for another try.
…..
finally, is the Palestinian people who are now justifiably clamoring both for
reform and elections. As far as I am concerned, this
clamor is the only legitimate one of the six I have outlined here. It's
important to point out that Arafat's present administration as well as
the Legislative Council have overstayed their original term, which
should have ended with a new round
of elections in 1999. Moreover, the whole
basis of the 1996 elections were the Oslo accords, which in effect
simply licensed Arafat and his
people to run bits of the West Bank and Gaza for
the Israelis, without true sovereignty or security, since Israel
retained control of the borders,
security, land (on which it doubled and even tripled the settlements), water
and air. In other words, the old basis for
elections and reform, which had been
Oslo
, is now null and void. Any
attempt to go forward on that kind of platform is simply a wasteful
ploy and will produce neither
reform nor real elections. Hence the current confusion which causes every
Palestinian everywhere to feel chagrin and bitter frustration.