The short and highly selective memories of
Arafat’s new critics
Abdeljabbar Adwan
Much of what has been said about the Palestinian Authority’s corruption, President
Yasser Arafat’s dictatorial methods, the Palestinians having been let down and the
pressing need for reforms as featured, among other things, in US President George W.
Bush’s June 24 Middle East policy speech is indeed true.
But none of it is new. Nor was it a recently discovered secret. It is what the Palestinian
opposition and intelligentsia have been saying, confirmed by various outside observers,
since the early 1970s.
So why focus on these themes now? Why didn’t Israel, the US and Europe object to this
state of affairs during the past 12 years’ quest for peace? And why indeed
didn’t the Palestinian people change it themselves?
It is doubtful the Bush administration wants to get rid of Arafat by killing him, as some
Israelis advocate. But Bush is about as well disposed toward Arafat as he is toward
Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein. He would like to persuade and prompt the
Palestinians to remove Arafat democratically to provide Iraq with a choice: follow the
belated Palestinian example, or face a military invasion to impose a fait accompli as
detailed in the war plans being leaked to world public opinion.
But the main reason to focus on corruption and reform is to divert attention from the
Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank; to justify the international community’s
failure to nudge Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon toward peace; and to put pressure on
the Palestinians and their leaders to settle for interim solutions and peace offers that
short-change them.
It is obvious from Bush’s address and Israel’s day-to-day behavior on the ground
that their aim is not to secure reforms for the benefit of the Palestinian people. It is,
essentially, to force Arafat to choose between providing security to Israel and ending his
political career, and to serve notice to PA security chiefs that their fate is in
Israel’s hands and that they must do as told. Israel and the Bush administration want
a Palestinian security service that protects Israel, and a Palestinian leader who is under
their control and prepared to make concessions. When that is achieved, reform and
democracy can be forgotten.
When Israel opted for the 1993 Oslo Accords, it believed it was bringing the PLO leader
back out of the oblivion to which he was consigned in the period between his exit from
Beirut in 1982 and the 1990/91 Gulf crisis. It also struck the deal with Arafat as a way
of evading pressure from Washington to move toward a comprehensive settlement of the
Arab-Israeli conflict in the context of the Madrid peace process.
At the time, Yitzhak Rabin warned leaders of the first Palestinian uprising that they
would soon have someone who knows how to put them in their place Arafat, with his
arbitrary ways and disregard for the rule of law.
The Oslo agreements were formulated around the concept that the new PA would protect the
Israelis, while the Jewish state reserved the right of hot pursuit, retained control of
the border crossings, water resources and much else in the occupied Palestinian
territories, and deferred consideration of key issues like the Jewish settlements which
far from being frozen, have doubled since then.
Arafat did not develop his current personality traits and modus operandi during the past
decade. He was the same before. Israel knew that, counted on it and sought to take
advantage of it.
The same can be said of the Americans and Europeans. They thought Arafat’s
autocratic, unaccountable and underhand style was an asset that would enable him to assert
his sole control and foist concessions on his people. They provided him with financial
aid, knowing full well where and how it would be spent. Israel too contributed to the
financial corruption by depositing Palestinian customs revenues in private accounts in
Israeli banks. The bulk of international aid was meanwhile used to meet the payrolls of
the bloated security services to enhance the president’s power and Israel’s
protection.
So why all this belated outrage now?
The real joke is when Israel accuses the Europeans of having supported Palestinian
“terror” by providing aid that ended up in the hands of the Arafat’s Fatah
Movement.
Israel used to divert Palestinian customs revenues the tax paid by Palestinian workers
and the VAT charged on Israeli goods sold to the Palestinians, to the PA via bank
accounts held by individuals. Moreover, trade in basic commodities flour, cement,
petrol, gas, building materials was placed in the hands of people who were given a
monopoly on importing these goods from or via Israel. They could thus control the price
charged for them locally, and thereby made enormous profits. These individuals were the
president’s men and cronies, and a share of their profits was transferred to
Fatah’s coffers. The movement’s men and activities needed funding, and the PA
could not afford to provide it all, so it came via Israel as everyone was fully aware.
The plan, of course, was for Fatah to eclipse opposition movements like Hamas and Islamic
Jihad. No one imagined that events would take such a turn that it would end up competing
with them.
In short, the Israelis, Americans and Europeans did not do business with Arafat because he
was a democrat, but because of his authoritarianism and his presumed ability to stifle
opposition, make political concessions and protect the Israelis. When he performed those
functions by acting high-handedly and repressively and circumventing institutions
especially the elected Palestinian Legislative Council and when corruption was on full
display, none of his current critics endorsed the Palestinian public’s criticisms of
him.
Israel’s support for Arafat and his circle went a long way toward silencing the West
about how the opinions of ordinary Palestinians were being ignored. Few cared about the
criticisms they were making of the PA, whether for serving Israel’s designs, or over
its financial and administrative corruption and the autocratic way it was run. No foreign
government protested the absence of the rule of the law or the kangaroo courts. That in
turn undermined the Palestinians’ capacity to change the bitter reality.
But Israel is not the only reason things got to that condition. Since the start of the
armed liberation struggle, unarmed opinions have been marginalized and wiser heads
excluded from decision-making circles. Platitudes about the gun being the only means to
liberation prevailed, and the culture of glorifying the freedom fighter, the warrior, and
the suicide bomber took hold. Thus, the armed factions came to dominate Palestinian
political and social life, from time to time vying with each other over the number of
casualties they had sustained and inflicted.
In the conditions of the Palestinian diaspora in mostly undemocratic countries, or under
the Israeli occupation that did not allow democratic elections, there was no alternative
to falling in line behind the armed struggle slogans and putting up with the failings of
the factions and of Arafat’s approach. Abdeljabbar
Adwan is a Palestinian analyst and wrote this commentary for The Daily Star.
Copyright © The Daily Star |
