Although Palestinian Authority officials had initially spun the killing of Mekki, head of Palestinian TV and radio in Gaza, as the work of collaborators with Israel, the group that claimed responsibility is widely assumed to be part of Arafat's own Fatah movement. Even PLO officials acknowledge that the killing was unlikely to have been initiated by the Israelis, seeing it instead as a warning to Arafat to clamp down on corruption.
Accused of embezzling funds, Mekki was supposed to have been removed from office last August following a Palestinian inquiry. A former TV soundman who never finished high school, Mekki was widely hated in the West Bank and Gaza, where he was seen as the personification of the cronyism of the Arafat administration. Like many Palestinian Authority officials, Mekki had returned with Arafat from Tunisia after the Oslo Accords took effect.
Palestinian legislators and foreign donors have reported rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority, and have chided the leadership for its failure to seriously address the problem. But the demands of the peace process may have prompted the U.S. and other key donors to not press Arafat too hard on the issue. Now the very same militants who have been in the frontlines of the latest intifada appear to have fired a warning shot across the Palestinian leader's bow. In that sense, the Mekki killing may be the sharpest indicator yet that the intifada which began last October was not only an expression of rage against Israel, but also a protest against Arafat's own administration and the fruits of the peace process. And if the militias created in the heat of the latest battles are prepared to resort to assassinations to press home their anger at Arafat's authority, that may be a sign that the power struggle inside Palestinian territories is about to take a new and more bloody turn.
With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem