Yasser Arafat huddles in Ramallah with his new choice for Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia
The unlikely architect of the President's latest setback in the Middle East is Yasser Arafat, the aging Palestinian Authority president who remains besieged by the Israelis in the ruins of his Ramallah compound, and had been left for dead politically by the Bush administration. Sidelining Arafat had been a precondition for the administration's renewed engagement in the stalled peace process, but the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas — appointed under strong pressure from the Bush administration — and his replacement by Ahmed Qureia is a reminder that Arafat still remains in charge of Palestinian affairs.
The Bush administration approach has been to act as if Arafat simply didn't exist — although it continued to restrain Ariel Sharon from expelling the Palestinian leader from the occupied territories, mindful of the regional crisis that such a move could trigger. Instead, Washington would simply ignore the elected leader of the Palestinians and deal only with the prime minister designated by the U.S. as Arafat's successor. And, so the theory went, by showing ordinary Palestinians that Abbas's pursuit of the roadmap brought progress towards statehood and an end to the occupation, Arafat would be cast into the dustbin of history by his own people.
But events didn't turn out quite that way; Abbas's departure underscores Arafat's continued centrality to the political process in the Palestinian Authority. If anything, the failure of the roadmap process to significantly alter the desperate plight of Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza actually restored and strengthened Arafat's standing among his own people.
And, of course, Arafat spared no effort to undermine his prime minister — hardly surprising, since it had been made clear to the world that Abbas's success would mean Arafat's demise. Nor was undermining Abbas especially difficult, given how little the new prime minister managed to win from the Israelis by way of easing the occupation. Arafat blessed the cease-fire Abbas had negotiated with Palestinian radical groups, but held tightly to the reins of the PA security services when the prime minister sought to consolidate them under his control in line with the "roadmap." When the struggle for control came to a head, Abbas was branded a collaborator by Arafat's grassroots supporters — a charge that made his position untenable given Israel's continued war against Palestinian militants and the absence he felt of vital support from the U.S. And so Abbas simply walked away from what most observers had concluded months ago was an impossible mission: bridging the chasm between Yasser Arafat and the grassroots militants of the West Bank and Gaza, on the one hand, and Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush on the other.
Arafat followed up quickly by naming Qureia to succeed Abbas, tossing a hot potato into President Bush's lap. Qureia, the popular speaker of the Palestinian legislature and key Oslo negotiator, is widely known as a moderate opposed to the armed intifada, who maintains close ties with many European, Arab and even some Israeli leaders (including Sharon's former foreign minister, Shimon Peres). He's not exactly a toady of Yasser Arafat, having clashed publicly with him on previous occasions — in many ways, Qureia's political pedigree is not dissimilar from that of Abbas, except that his personal relationship with Arafat is far stronger. But the question of Arafat is political rather than personal. Qureia made clear on Monday that he'd only take the job if the U.S. was ready to back him more vigorously than it had done Abbas, putting more pressure on Israel and recognizing Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian people. "If (they) do not want to change their attitude towards us, we do not need a government nor a prime minister," Qureia told reporters on Monday.
But Israel insists it won't work with any government loyal to Arafat. And that leaves the Bush administration in a quandary over how to respond. The administration's project in Iraq, if nothing else, necessitates U.S. involvement in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians. But the chosen recipe, premised on Palestinian 'regime-change,' has failed. Still, rather than turn up the heat on Israel, as Qureia is demanding, the U.S. has begun pressing the new prime minister-designate to carry out the crackdown on militant groups avoided by his predecessor.
Qureia?s comments that Palestinians could do without a government were designed to remind Israel and the U.S. that the Palestinians do not have a state. And without one, or the imminent prospect of ending the occupation through negotiations with the Palestinians chosen leaders, Qureia was warning, the Palestinians have no interest in protecting Israel. Deal with Arafat, he appeared to be saying or there will be no deal, and no prospect of restoring security.
Sharon's preferred method of dealing with Arafat, in the new situation, may be to expel him from the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli media report that Israeli officials sense a softening in the Bush administration's opposition to such a move, and Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz will visit Washington next week to petition the Bush administration to lift its prohibition against physically removing Arafat. It's unlikely, however, that the PA would survive such a move — and Qureia appeared to be warning that the Palestinians themselves won't try to keep it going if the leadership of the PLO is excluded. And as Israel discovered during the 1970s and 1980s, no Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza will step up to negotiate with the Jewish State unless authorized by the PLO to do so.
Still, Israel insist it will not work with a PA government answerable to Arafat, and if violence escalates it may try to expel him. If the PA collapsed as a result, Israel would then have to resume the occupier's responsibilities in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank and Gaza. And whereas it has sent its troops on raids in many of those cities in the course of the current intifada, it has studiously avoided long-term deployments or resuming responsibility for civil administration. Even hawkish Israelis who have no intention of surrendering the hundreds of settlements Israel has built throughout the West Bank and Gaza were relieved by the Oslo Accords requirement that they turn over those cities to a Palestinian gendarmerie — having to resume day-to-day patrols, let alone take responsibility for health, education and basic services in the streets of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron could exponentially raise Israel's casualty figures.
The collapse of the PA would not only raise the specter of an endless bout of bloodletting; it also potentially puts the very notion of a two-state solution to the conflict beyond reach. That would leave Israel in permanent control of millions of Palestinians with no democratic rights in the state that governs them — a situation dovish Israeli commentators warn would be akin to apartheid South Africa. Even Sharon himself warned his countrymen in May, "You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation. To hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation, I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians."