Arafat's Ambiguous Legacy

  • Share
  • Read Later
JAMAL ARURI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

LEADER: Arafat in June of last year

(2 of 2)

Oslo's challenge

Palestinians in the territories were incensed as the plum posts in the new Palestinian Authority went not to the local leaders who had sacrificed so much in the intifada, but to exiles who returned from Tunis with Arafat and in most cases rushed to use their new positions to feather their own nests. While Arafat enjoyed his new role as feted statesman in Western capitals, some painful realities didn't change for his people: The Israeli settler population of the West Bank doubled during the Oslo years, raising Palestinian suspicions over Israel's intentions. Meanwhile, on the Israeli side, the assassination of Rabin and a series of Hamas suicide attacks in Israel had installed a right-wing government dedicated to reversing Oslo. Arafat was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, and looked increasingly to the Clinton administration to intervene on his behalf. The process stalled, the third land transfer envisaged under Oslo still not completed by the time President Clinton summoned the parties to Camp David for final status talks. Their failure was a surprise to no one following events closely at the time; Arafat had made clear that he was not ready for final talks before the last land transfer, but Clinton and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak insisted they go ahead. Arafat suddenly found himself trapped between the pressures of his own base and of the wider Arab world, on the one hand, and his negotiating partners on the other. And when he failed to engage seriously with Barak's territorial offer at the talks, he was widely blamed for their failure.

But other shifts were afoot, to which Arafat appeared dangerously oblivious. Ariel Sharon was doing his utmost to scupper the deal; his grandstanding walkabout on the Temple Mount, the most sensitive piece of real estate in Jerusalem, was designed to challenge Barak's right to negotiate over its future. The action provoked young Palestinians into a series of riots that resulted in fatalities, and seven years of frustration among Arafat's base reached a boiling point. Numb to the dangers of a new round of confrontations, the Palestinian leader instead sensed an opportunity: Even though the new intifada was a rebellion as much against Arafat's own diplomatic strategy as against the Israelis, Arafat believed that fanning the flames could restore his domestic support, and also scare the Americans into wrenching further concessions from the Israelis lest the situation spin out of control. But the intifada quickly developed a logic of its own with sharp escalation on both sides, and the election of conservative governments in both the U.S. and Israel, followed a year later by the 9/11 attacks, left Arafat in a strategic cul de sac from which he never managed to retreat. He couldn't restart the diplomatic process without fighting a civil war against Hamas and even the militants of his own organization, and even if he had found the political will to pursue that course, it was doubtful whether he had the political authority to prevail. Arafat had become a prisoner not only of the Israelis, but also of his own contradictory strategy. The battered compound in Ramallah from which he watched history pass him by will now literally become his tomb.

Some of his successors, such Mahmoud Abbas, the U.S.-favored moderate who will likely inherit Arafat's formal leadership roles in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, recognize the failure of the tactics of the past four years. They will promote compromise as a means of completing Arafat's mission of creating a Palestinian state. But the grassroots operatives of not only Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also of Fatah itself are in no mood to compromise, and they will proclaim Arafat the very symbol of their unshakable defiance.

While the formal succession process will likely see titles passed from Arafat to Abbas without any direct challenge, Abbas will lack anything close to Arafat's political authority. There?s little reason to expect that Mahmoud Abbas will be more able to implement U.S. and Israeli demands for action against Hamas now that Arafat has gone than they were when he held veto power over their actions. The militants are already demanding a collective leadership, not simply a consultative arrangement among such old guard figures as Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, but also that groupings such as Hamas be drawn in to strategic decision making. Abbas will hold executive power, but the reach of that executive power will have been considerably trimmed by Arafat's passing. So, the post-Arafat leadership struggle among Palestinians will not be over who holds which title, but over what direction the movement takes. And that's a struggle in which sides advocating opposing strategies will claim, with some justification, to be the bearers of Arafat's torch.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. Next