Interesting piece by Khalil Shikaki in the Washington Post.
There are some things I believe in it, some things I don't believe, for instance, Shikaki says that Arafat considered stopping the intifada post Sept 11th. Well, I'm sure he considered it privately, but show me one speech in Arabic where he said any such thing. As for the criticism of weakening Arafat when he needs strength to move against the Islamists, the answer is always the same -- when he had the strength, he didn't move, he just trimmed and temporized. Arafat never moves until his back is truly against the wall.
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Little Doubt About Why Arafat Has His Back to the Wall
By Khalil Shikaki
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page B01
RAMALLAH, West Bank--For the past three months, my office building on Irsal Street has been part of the reoccupied section of Ramallah. From my window, in a single frame, I can see the two most depressing and glaring failures of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process: the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Israeli tanks surrounding it. These tanks have come to symbolize Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to isolate and discredit Arafat, and coerce him into cracking down on those Palestinians who are determined to use violence to end the 34-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Through the infliction of gradual but sustained punishment, and occasional but well-timed provocation, Sharon is trying to compel Arafat to embark on a campaign of liquidation against the Islamists (members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad) and the young guard of the Palestinian national movement (especially the Tanzim, theparamilitary wing of Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO). Presumably, the punishment and provocation would stop only when Arafat's anti-terror campaign is fully underway and irreversible. Failing that, Sharon seems to hope that some alternative leadership, one more moderate and willing to accommodate Israel, might emerge and replace Arafat.
As a Palestinian who for a decade has been intensely involved in the search for a negotiated peace, this Israeli strategy seems to me to border on sheer madness. It seeks to create winners and losers, as Sharon would like nothing better than to see Arafat and the Palestinians defeated.
The reason for the strategy is simple: Sharon does not have much to offer Arafat at the negotiating table. His idea of scattered Palestinian bantustans in 42 percent of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 is utterly detested by all Palestinians. No Palestinian leader could accept such conditions in any future agreement with Israel; I am convinced of this each day by the pain and suffering I see in the eyes of my staff, who live in the northern part of the West Bank and have to pass through humiliating Israeli check points just to get to work. But an Arafat weakened by bloody internal division might be more amenable to Sharon's crummy offerings. And so Sharon tries to weaken him.
Arafat refuses to play by Sharon's rules. But lacking a clear vision or strategy of his own, he finds himself clumsily walking a tightrope, hoping to balance irreconcilable interests. Searching for approval at home, and having failed to deliver a state or even good governance for the Palestinian people, he finds himself tolerating violence and appeasing the nationalist young guard and the Islamists. Yet, under pressure from his old guard, from Israel and from the international community, he signs on to the Mitchell report and the Tenet plan, both American stabilization strategies.
Since Sept. 11, Arafat has clearly tilted in favor of a cease-fire. In a closed and stormy meeting I and others had with many leaders of the intifada, I strongly sensed the change. Arafat's representative stated it bluntly: "Now, after September 11, the intifada may have to be stopped."
Today, the Palestinian leader seeks to deter the Islamists and the young guard from carrying out attacks against Israel by threatening to crack down on them. Their ways are a direct threat to his own existence; it is therefore in his own interest to make his threat against them as credible as possible. His task is relatively simple, and so is his risk, since he is not trying to dismantle their infrastructure, as Sharon wants. He only seeks to prevent them from starting something. That task is made simpler because these Palestinian groups believe that they can count on Sharon to violate the truce, with his assassination policy, for example. Even Arafat, they rightly calculate, cannot strongly object to revenge attacks in the aftermath of assassinations carried out by Israel. Given the traditions of Arab-Israeli warfare, a Palestinian non-response to such attacks would be tantamount to accepting defeat. In light of this, Arafat would not see revenge attacks as a violation of the cease-fire.
By discrediting Arafat and continuing his provocative attacks, Sharon indeed seeks victory. But it seems clear to me that he also hopes that Arafat -- now seeking to regain and demonstrate credibility to an angry United States, a skeptical Europe and disillusioned Arab leaders -- would then be compelled to choose between being a backer of terror, by tolerating violence aimed at Israeli civilians, or joining the war against terror, by entering into a violent confrontation with the Islamists and the young guard in order to permanently dismantle their infrastructure. By refraining from confronting these two groups, Arafat seeks to avoid the bloody internal infighting that, he believes, can only lead to his physical or political suicide, a risk he is not willing to take.
In recent weeks -- and particularly since the Karine A affair, in which Israeli commandos intercepted a ship carrying 50 tons of weapons, allegedly from Iran, to the Palestinians -- the United States seems to have fully embraced Sharon's description of the threat, as well as his prescription for the remedy. With American diplomats in the region rarely able to travel in Palestinian areas since the start of the intifada 16 months ago, Israel has become the Bush administration's main source of information on Palestinian affairs. America's inability to understand Arafat's predicament seems also to reflect a shift in U.S. policy since Sept. 11. Understandably, the shift is dictated by the desire to project zero tolerance of terror. At the same time, however, the new policy reflects a lack of understanding of the complexity both of the Palestinian domestic scene and of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
Humiliated, with Israeli tanks only meters away and his back to the wall, Arafat the man becomes more stubborn; the leader, more defiant. For example, his moderate crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad has come to a halt since Sharonessentially placed him under house arrest in December. Moreover, the Israeli-U.S. notion that Arafat's authoritarian rule frees him to take all the risks he sees fit is simply wrong. In the year since Sharon's election, Arafat has been more willing to tolerate Israeli incursions, to arrest or kill wanted Palestinians, than to detain them himself and risk a possible clash with the Islamists.
Arafat has rarely taken risks alone. He needs the support of the people. Absent that, he needs others in the Palestinian leadership to take the risk for him, or at least share it. While senior Palestinian officials may complain about the lack of a clear mandate or Arafat's unwillingness to delegate authority, they seem to me unwilling to use whatever room to maneuver they already have. The July 2000 Camp David negotiations showed a reluctance on the part of Arafat's top aides to take risks for him by, for instance, publicly endorsing the compromises he was willing to entertain.
After Arafat leaves office, even if it is by natural means, the risks inherent in any reordering of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship will multiply. Arafat's successor will find himself in the samepredicament Arafat is in today, while lacking his stature or legitimacy. Ignoring or even removing Arafat, as some Israelis and Americans are suggesting, would only perpetuate the political impasse and fuel the escalation to major conflagration.
Blaming Arafat and absolving Sharon of responsibility, as the Bush administration seems tempted to do, can lead to further radicalization to the right in Israeli politics. And that could significantly destabilize the region. America's anti-Palestinian stance has encouraged people in the Israeli right, such as Beny Elon, a minister of tourism in Sharon's government, to call for the "mass transfer" of Palestinians to Jordan and to affirm the belief in the long discredited notion that Jordan is Palestine.
The current dynamic could well lead to total war, one in which Israel reoccupies most or all areas now under control of the Palestinian Authority. If that were to happen, the ability of a moderate national movement to continue to lead the Palestinian people would diminish, leading to the rise of a radical nationalist and Islamist coalition. Then, particularly if the violence escalated across the region, a strategy of "transfer" might not seem far-fetched.
Eventually, America's uncritical embrace of Sharon could prove disastrous not only to Palestinians but to Israelis and the region. Standing at the edge of an abyss, Arafat and Sharon may fall in spite of their best efforts and intentions, dragging all with them. As I glance out of my window, with the tanks roaring down the street, it looks all too imminent.
The essential defect lies in the blind U.S.-Israeli focus on security arrangements as the means to bring about an end to bloody confrontation. In response to the suicide attacks, Israel has been making its threat to destroy Arafat and the Palestinian Authority more credible through the systemic destruction of its security installations, prisons and headquarters. But by doing so, Israel is making Palestinian security services less efficient precisely at the time when the risk they are asked to take on is greatest. By focusing exclusively on security, Washington seems to affirm the suspicion that it seeks only a short-term solution to the conflict, one that calms but does not resolve it. And as the past year has shown, that is a focus that is sorely misplaced.
Khalil Shikaki is a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University and director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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