The formation of a new Cabinet for the Palestinian Authority fails to impress the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi. While “appreciating the difficulties” faced by President Yasser Arafat, it finds his amended ministerial lineup “disappointing by any standard.”
Having “raised unprecedented expectations and spoken confidently of sweeping changes that would reflect radical reform of the PA and its performance,” the Palestinian leader carried out little more than a “pro forma shuffle,” the paper remarks. “This will not satisfy the Palestinians, and if the aim of the PA and its president was to satisfy others, the Israelis and Americans won’t be appeased either.”
According to Al-Quds al-Arabi, the only “pleasant surprise” is the appointment of Dr. Salam Fayyad as the new finance minister. Otherwise, the new government retains most of the “liabilities” that were members of the previous Cabinet, including some figures who are “symbols of corruption and the misuse of public funds,” and were identified as such in reports prepared by the PA itself and the Palestinian Legislative Council.
“At this difficult stage, when Arab capitulation initiatives are crowding each other out and the Bush administration is adopting Israel’s solutions, a government should have been formed that represents all groups and colors spanning the Palestinian political spectrum and includes people of proven experience and dedication,” the paper writes.
But except for the former communist Palestine People’s Party, all the other parties and factions opted to stay out, Al-Quds al-Arabi reports. Arafat did try to persuade them to join a national unity government, but without knowing what that government’s program and priorities were going to be they could not be expected to accept. And the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine could hardly agree to be part of an administration that is illegally keeping its secretary-general, Ahmad Saadat, behind bars.
The Palestinians have an enormous reservoir of highly talented people, and one would have expected to see at least some of them brought in to the new Cabinet to replace the “old faces.” But Arafat “always avoids change” and sticks to longstanding loyalists, who he prefers working with, especially in tough times such as these.
“We acknowledge that the American and Israeli target from Palestinian reforms is to depose President Arafat and replace him with a Palestinian Hamid Karzai, who would accept what he rejects; and we acknowledge too that the Palestinian leader could never climb down over fundamentals.” But, says Al-Quds al-Arabi, “it is precisely because the current stage is so difficult and his head is wanted that he needs to replace his tired old horses.”
In the Beirut daily An-Nahar, Sarkis Naoum says the Palestinians’ eagerness for reform is tempered by fear of the uses to which Israel, America and even the Arab states seek to put the process.
The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are unanimous that the PA’s performance “is not ideal,” he says. Its president is an “absolute ruler” who takes all strategic, security, financial and administrative decisions single-handedly, and some of its officials have used their posts for self-enrichment at a time of growing poverty for the population.
Naoum writes that, in contrast to the Americans and Israelis, who want the PA’s security forces “reformed” to put an end to suicide attacks against Israeli targets, the Palestinian public favors overhauling them for a completely different reason ­ namely, that they did not resist Israel’s reinvasion of the West Bank cities, towns, villages and refugee camps in any coordinated fashion. Those members of the police who did fight back either did so on their own initiative, or because the Israeli Army targeted them directly. But despite having a total of some 40,000 members, the PA security forces did not mount a coherent defense.
This, says Naoum, may have been due to a lack of planning. But it could also have been a product of the ties some of those agencies’ commanders have woven with Israel and the US, which Arafat may have thought he could make use of to advance the national cause.
But the security forces’ failure to control the “street” ­ which Arafat might also have mistakenly calculated could strengthen his negotiating hand ­ enabled radical forces to gain the ascendancy, and demonstrated Arafat’s inability to comply with the demands made of him by the “international community,” above all to bring an end to suicide operations, writes Naoum.
While it was this, specifically, that prompted Washington and Tel Aviv to “decide” on reforming the PA, the Palestinians will nevertheless welcome any reforms, he says. But they are also wary on several counts.
They fear the process is merely intended to supplant the historic leadership of the Palestinian struggle, which despite all its mistakes they prefer to an “installed” new leadership that lacks popular roots and is willing or forced to comply with Israel’s dictates.
They also fear that reform is a guise for provoking internecine conflict, especially between Fatah and Hamas, both of whose behavior has largely been conditioned by considerations related to keeping hold of, or acquiring, power.
They fear too that the demand for reform is only a pretext allowing Israel to avoid political talks, and that the Arab states will also “get in on the act” and turn overhauling the PA, rather than ending the Israeli occupation, into the central issue.
Naoum says concern is especially acute because of the stranglehold Israel, and its lobby in the US, has over most senior members of the Bush administration. And it can only be addressed if the Arab states adopt a unified position that pushes Washington to “weigh up its vital strategic interests” in the region against its total bias toward Israel. “What is needed is a rational but firm stand that reflects the common Arab interest, and not the exclusive and varied interests” of individual Arab states.
In the Beirut daily As-Safir, publisher Talal Salman writes that whenever Arab leaders visit America, they seem to “lower the ceiling of Arab demands” by a further notch.
Thus, whenever Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon follows in their wake, he is presented with a fresh package of concessions made by Arab leaders on the Palestinians’ behalf. This encourages Sharon to adhere to the most extreme positions himself, “and reinforces his confidence in his ability to persuade President George W. Bush that they are in it together against ‘terror,’ that ‘Arab terror’ must be beaten and not negotiated with (just like the Taleban and Al-Qaeda) and that ‘Arab moderates’ are with them in this battle against those common enemies.”
The upshot of the latest spate of high-level Arab visits to the US is that the Bush administration’s “vision” of a Palestinian state has become even more vague and remote, its hostility to the PA has increased, an Israeli withdrawal even to pre-intifada lines is no longer on the cards, and the blame for everything is being heaped on Arafat, writes Salman.
“Washington has suddenly discovered that the PA is ‘corrupt’ and ‘undemocratic,’ lacks institutions, and is controlled by one man who is either incapable of ‘putting a stop to terrorism’ or incites it, and is thus unqualified to be a partner of the exemplary ‘man of peace,’ Ariel Sharon,” he quips.
And the Arab regimes have gone from outbidding each other over the issue of resolving the Palestinians’ problem, to vying to offer concessions on their behalf, “each according to its need to appease Bush.” And with each official Arab visit to Washington, Arab demands are lowered while Israel ups the ante of its military operations.
When the Saudi crown prince went there, he was ostensibly promoting the Arab Peace Initiative, but in fact discussing proposals with “a lower ceiling.” This, despite the fact that he has something to offer ­ not just oil, but recognition of Israel ­ in exchange for securing the Jewish state’s withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Egyptian regime has nothing of the kind to offer, having already given it all away, and cannot renege on its commitments because it claims that would mean war (against the US no less than Israel, Cairo maintains).
The Moroccan regime also seems to have decided it is expedient to offer its services as a “mediator.” And the Jordanian regime, which is forced to walk a knife edge, “wants nothing other than to avoid leaving its fingerprints on any proposed solution, so that once the PA accepts it ‘of its own accord,’ it need only support its acceptance,” Salman writes.
“As for Arafat, he persists with the familiar behavior ­ raising a slogan and pursuing an altogether different course. He thus embarks on ‘political reform’ by shuffling some ‘ministers’ after reducing their number from 30 to 21 (while providing alternative posts for those who were ejected), appointing an interior minister who never wielded authority even when he was a military commander in his youth, retaining a minister of tourism, and delaying the appointment of a minister of religious affairs in order to bargain with some Islamists.”
Kuwait’s Ahmed al-Rabi, writing for the leading pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, says Arab leaders should stick to the Saudi peace initiative which they adopted as collective policy in March and stop coming up with separate and conflicting proposals of their own.
“There is a real danger in some of the ideas touted by a few Arabs in order to appear moderate, but which cannot fail to clash with the fundamentals and essence of the Arab Peace Initiative,” he remarks. “Some Arab sides measure peace moves by the gauge of improving their own bilateral links with America and Europe,” often by abandoning principles that should be upheld.
The Arab League summit formed a follow-up committee to promote the initiative, and it should be allowed to do its job, Rabi says. A full withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967 is a primary requirement of peace, “and it will not do for one Arab party to talk of 50 percent of the occupied Palestinian territories and another to speak of 40 percent,” or to start proposing new timelines or terms of reference without the agreement of the others.
It was heartening when the Arab states agreed to a specific common program at the summit in Beirut last March, says Rabi, and they must not start going their separate ways now. “We need the Bush administration, Israel and others to hear a single Arab message that makes us worthy of respect.”

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