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Meanwhile, Arafat's personal Force 17 commando group has taken control of the streets after fresh rumblings of discontent. Recently, an angry mob besieged a police station and set free a youth arrested by one of Arafat's officers for gun running. With each passing day the intifadeh becomes more of a guerrilla war, including armed attacks by Arafat's security men working underground. Last week in Gaza, as Sharon forged a unity government with Barak, Israel assassinated a Force 17 commander, alleging he attacked a Jewish settlement. The following day, a Gaza bus driver in Israel killed eight Israelis by ramming his vehicle into a crowd of soldiers at a bus stop.
Money is near the top of Arafat's worries. He bitterly complains that Barak's government has frozen $320 million in Palestinian tax remittances. He doesn't say so, but Arab states, concerned about corruption, are also holding up $237 million in support. Half a billion dollars would keep some discontent at bay.
So Oslo, the greatest trophy of Arafat's career, is history. The gap in expectations turned out to be too wide for Israelis and Palestinians to close, the peace process itself too flawed to produce a magic solution. Even if Sharon comes and goes, as Barak, Netanyahu, Peres and Rabin did before him, Arafat must discover a new way of dealing with the Israelis. Otherwise, he will never persuade them to give the Palestinians what they want. Many Palestinians believe their fortunes will improve only when Arafat's domination of their affairs ends. "Democracy is needed," says Haider Abdel Shafi, who headed the Palestinian team at the Madrid Peace Conference. "Arafat will never admit that he made a mistake. He will simply blame Israeli aggression."
There's always the old way, of course: the armed struggle, terrorism, intifadeh. But Arafat is getting a little old to lead another guerrilla war. And that way didn't work either.
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