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Two Editorials on Arafat |
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by Lebanon Daily Star and NYTimes via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
22 Jul 2004
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Two highly editorials asking Arafat to step aside. The surprise: one's from Lebanon. |
Gaza's crisis mirrors Palestinian and wider Arab failures
By Rami G. Khouri
Lebanon Daily Star staff
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
The rapid deterioration of the domestic political order in Gaza and the West Bank reflects a range of underlying tensions, problems and failures that have manifested themselves for over a decade, and most of them are self-made Palestinian failures. They also mirror similar dilemmas that plague most of the Arab world, largely revolving around a single common practice: the tendency of small power elites or single men to monopolize political and economic power in their hands via their direct, personal control of domestic security and police systems.
The Gaza chaos therefore is really about two issues: first, the clear failure of the current Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat to achieve its people's national rights to statehood, security and a normal life, and the consequent need for a combination of new leadership blood and better policies; second, Gaza is yet another warning about the failure of the modern Arab security state, and the need for a better brand of statehood based on law-based citizen rights rather than gun-based regime protection and perpetual incumbency.
It is not surprising that the catalyst that sparked the current tensions in Gaza is the issue of who controls the security forces in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories. Many younger Palestinian activists and militia members revolted against their president, Yasser Arafat, last week when they briefly kidnapped the Gaza police chief and Arafat crony Ghazi Jabali. They wanted to make the point that Palestinians are fed up with the continued prevalence of corrupt, ineffective politicians and security appointees. Arafat made things worse when he consolidated 12 security services into three and then appointed his cousin Moussa Arafat to head them in Gaza. This sparked street demonstrations and attacks against Palestinian police posts, and Arafat had to retract the appointment of his cousin. The resignation of the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qorei, only added to the political chaos and highlighted the ineptitude of Arafat's rule.
In this ongoing and evolving situation, the many underlying failures of the current Palestinian leadership all coalesce into a simple single fact: Yasser Arafat has led the Palestinian national movement for nearly 40 years now. While his policies have kept alive the Palestinian cause they have done so at a very high cost. Both he and his people live in miserable, often pathetic, conditions today, and Arafat, incredibly, has alienated virtually every potential partner, including many of his own political party activists and his own people, the Arab regimes, the Israeli left, the US, and now even the UN special envoy to the Arab-Israeli peace process.
The current revolt in Gaza against Arafat and his failed men and policies is no surprise. It reflects the Palestinian quests for better domestic governance and a more effective war-or-peace policy vis-a-vis Israel. The Palestinian Authority that Arafat heads is more vulnerable to popular rebellion in part because Israel and the US have isolated and imprisoned Arafat in his Ramallah compound, and have systematically degraded the Palestinian security and police services. Israel's announcement that it plans to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza next year has also prompted the various political forces in Gaza to start competing for their share of power when the time comes for the Palestinians themselves to run the place again.
This also reflects the steady fragmentation of Palestinian political life that has occurred in the past two decades. Palestinian national institutions continue to fray under the constraints of the Israeli occupation and are being replaced by a combination of new forces: Hamas and other Islamist movements, local militias and warlords, freelance gangs and local thugs, regional or breakaway factions of the leading Fatah movement that Arafat founded four decades ago, armed resistance movements to fight Israel, and grassroots movements for democracy and human rights, to name only the most obvious. The Arafat-led Fatah movement remains the core of Palestinian political life, but because of its repeated failures to deliver national rights and a better life to its people it has lost much credibility and is vulnerable to the multiple challenges it faces these days.
The lightening rod for such challenges - no surprise in the Arab world - is the police and internal security system that many Palestinians accuse of being autocratic and corrupt. With around two-thirds of all Palestinians in Gaza living below the poverty line, such homegrown abuse of power on top of the indignity of occupation and poverty has become too much to take. Some of those who challenge Arafat - Hamas elements, former security officials and local militia chiefs such as Mohammed Dahlan, younger Fatah activists, breakaway Fatah groups such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - seek a share in power. But most ordinary Palestinians and political activists are not in revolt because they want to rule, but because they want to be ruled by an efficient, humane government - something that Arafat and his men have failed to deliver.
The street revolt against Arafat in Gaza should not be seen primarily as a local power struggle by groups competing to take over if the Israelis withdraw next year. It reflects a much deeper malaise in Palestinian society. Its consequences may prove to be as significant as the changes in Palestinian leadership and policy that occurred after the1967 war. After that Arab defeat a new generation of Palestinians took over from the traditional leaderships that had failed to meet the challenges of Palestine's dismemberment and Israel's creation in 1948. We are probably witnessing today the shift to the third generation of Palestinian leadership, as the generation that led the Palestinian national movement since 1967 succumbs to an increasingly vocal vote of no-confidence from its own people. The key moves will be visible in who controls the security services, and if political power is accountable to elected civilian institutions.
Rami G. Khouri is the executive editor of The Daily Star
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New York Times (masthead editorial)
July 22, 2004
The Arafat Problem
It's been the misfortune of the Palestinian people to be stuck with Yasir Arafat as their founding father, a leader who has failed to make the transition from romantic revolutionary to statesman. All he seems capable of offering Palestinians now is a communal form of the martyrdom he seems to covet. Mr. Arafat should accept his limitations and retire as president of the Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli occupation, with all its excesses, remains the last prop for Mr. Arafat's popularity, and even that has lost its power to insulate him from serious political challenges. Encouragingly, Palestinians, increasingly fed up with Mr. Arafat's corruption, cronyism and deafness to their needs and aspirations, are becoming more assertive about demanding change. In the fall of 2002, members of Mr. Arafat's own Fatah movement mounted the first open political rebellion and forced Mr. Arafat to fire his entire cabinet and ostensibly cede some power to a prime minister in early 2003.
That process has not worked, as Mr. Arafat has clung to power, and the Gaza Strip's ongoing descent into lawlessness is emboldening calls for change, which will only intensify as an Israeli withdrawal from the territory draws closer. Mr. Arafat didn't help his cause there when he picked a relative, Mousa Arafat, to be the new security chief.
This week, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, one of the most loyal of Mr. Arafat's lieutenants and the chief negotiator of the Oslo agreements, proffered his resignation. "The very fabric of Palestinian society is coming apart," he said. Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority has become so discredited in Gaza that more people now look to Hamas, the radical Islamist movement, to provide some stability. Nor do Mr. Arafat's longstanding international benefactors pretend any longer that he is capable of responsibly governing a sovereign state if he ever got the chance.
The retirement of Mr. Arafat, who is 74, would allow the creation of a more credible Palestinian government that could garner international support and claim the moral high ground in the confrontation with Mr. Arafat's equally stubborn nemesis, Ariel Sharon.
But there is, of course, no sign that Mr. Arafat is interested in much beyond his own myth. Pinned down for the last two years in his battered Ramallah bunker, Mr. Arafat has abused his control over the authority's treasury and militias. It seems to be of no importance to him that the Palestinian lands are in total ruin and that the fruits of the Oslo accords are in tatters.
His reflexive insistence that this is all the fault of "Zionists," the West and other Arabs is unsustainable. Mr. Arafat himself bears a large share of the responsibility for these misfortunes.
Saying that it's time for Mr. Arafat to go is not the same as saying it is time for Mr. Arafat to be removed by force. He is, after all, a democratically elected leader, though the term he won in 1996 was never meant to be this long. Any Israeli or American-sanctioned move against him - or even an internal coup - would probably backfire. Ideally, Mr. Arafat's exit would be dictated by the Palestinian electorate at the polls, but there is nothing ideal about the Palestinian quandary, and it is unlikely that new elections can be organized in the occupied territories anytime soon. The dire situation calls for Mr. Arafat's immediate retirement.
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