On the ninth anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination: Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech
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Text by Robert Rosenberg
Painting by Silvia Rosenberg

Elections coming?

Monday, November 01, 2004

In Paris, Yasser Arafat was said to be isolated except for his wife Suha and his doctors, and his condition seemingly improved because of massive blood transfusions and not because of letters from heads of state, as the Palestinian spokeswoman at the hospital said. The doctors in France will be counting how fast the white blood cells disappear from the new blood they gave the chairman and perhaps by tomorrow afternoon, the military hospital doctors will start providing hard information instead of speculation about the Palestinian leader’s condition.

Also in Paris are Mohammed Rashid, the Kurd who has always handled Arafat’s finances, and Mohammed Dahlan, the strongman of Gaza. For every Palestinian official trying to persuade the world – or themselves – that Arafat was in the best of health there was one explaining, as Imad Shakur did this morning on Army Radio, that Arafat is not the same man he was only a few weeks ago.

Thus, in Ramallah, quietly and seemingly quite smoothly, the Palestinian transfer of power demanded by the entire West and its allies in the East, seems to be taking place, even if Arafat’s chair is being left empty in the institutional bodies he formed for the PLO, the Fateh, and the PA.

The PLO Executive Council is now run by its secretary general, former PA prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. As the supreme Palestinian executive body, responsible among other things for the negotiations with Israel, the PLO executive decided to hand responsibility for all the Palestinian security forces, including Arafat’s National Security Council, headed by Jibril Rajoub, to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’. From prison, Marwan Barghouit is behind Abbas, while Dahlan to Fares Qadura want elections.

Arafat ruled unchallenged for 40 years by dividing all those people and many others in his entourage and overlapping inner circles against each other, forcing them into coalitions with and against each other. Now, suddenly, they were all cooperating, and there were no signs of preparations for the bloodbath everyone has been predicting for years when Arafat disappears from the scene.

Whether he lives much longer or not, a political process has been set in motion in the Palestinian arena -- and expectations are that the Europeans, followed by the Americans after the elections this week will step in to insist that with Arafat out of the way, Israel is out of excuses for not talking with the Palestinians.

he mystery about Arafat’s ailment was so great that even the head of Israeli Military Intelligence could only tell the government yesterday that ‘either he will recover or die.’ But Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash did say that ‘the end of the Arafat era,’ as it is being called, could lead to an end to the current round of violence in relations between the two nations. Maybe. In any case, it was rude and insensitive of Justice Minister Yosef Lapid telling the cameras outside the cabinet yesterday that Israel was not intervening in the Palestinian political process and then going into the cabinet to ask Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the question that forced Sharon to say that ‘as long as I’m prime minister – and I have no intention of giving up my seat – Arafat won’t be buried in Jerusalem.’

But Sharon also called on his ministers to show some restraint in commenting on Arafat’s condition and its ramifications – and he asked that none express preference for anyone as a replacement for Arafat, since Israeli approval would obviously sour the preferred candidate’s chances.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom did get say something the Palestinians might appreciate, however – he noted the Palestinian constitution calls for elections 60 days after the passing of the chairman and indicated Israel would be ready to stand out of the way of such an event.

The Palestinians have already registered some 75 percent of the eligible voters, for slated municipal elections. Shalom pointed out that the Palestinians could extend the city hall votes into national elections, and noted that the schedule – a February elections in the territories, could coincide with the next major step toward the disengagement Sharon has planned for the summer of 2005 – a March vote for the evacuation of the first group of settlements in Gaza.

eanwhile, those predicting Sharon’s fall -- from a mutiny headed by Binyamin Netanyahu -- were wrong. Netanyahu’s ministerial allies -- Education Minister Limor Livnat, Health Minister Danny Naveh, and Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz – all retracted their threats to resign. Netanyahu meanwhile has not – but he has broader considerations.

For example, the economy, which seemed to be doing so well only a couple of months ago, appears stuck in a much deeper rut than even he described. A Health Ministry poll released today said that one in five children say they go to bed hungry. Unemployment remains at the 11 percent level, not declining even though more than half the estimated 250,000 foreign workers have been expelled.

Netanyahu, say the business and economics reporters has been losing interest in the economic reforms he began last year, and by aligning with the anti-disengagement forces (even though he voted in favor of disengagement) he betrayed the business sector in Israel, which knows that the best thing for the economy is a political process with the Palestinians and withdrawal from the occupied territories.

Sharon’s office has indicated that if Netanyahu ‘apologizes’ he can remain in the government but there will be no referendum as Netanyahu demanded. Netanyahu, who spent the past few days on a private visit to New York meeting wealthy supporters, meanwhile is not backing down (though the conventional wisdom is that he will, in exchange for a meaningless quid pro quo that he could claim as a victory) – and he is not Sharon’s only problem.

The National Religious Party is preparing to quit the coalition next week on the 14th day since the disengagement passed the Knesset’s first reading. Sharon met with Labor’s Shimon Peres yesterday, to discuss the situation and afterward Peres bluntly pointed out that Sharon has only two choices – bringing in Labor or going to elections.

Bringing in Labor would mean a clash between the prime minister and his party, whether only at the Knesset faction level or in the central committee. But until then, who knows what might happen – Sharon must pass a budget bill (and Netanyahu sent word even before he landed this morning back in Israel that he would work to pass the budget) and Arafat’s doctors presumably will let the world know what seems to be a consensus among Arafat’s intimates – that even if he recovers from the current round of illness, he won’t be the same Arafat of the past 40 years.

And everyone is awaiting the vote in the U.S., with the working assumption that baring any major surprises, the U.S. elections will end up in the courts and might not be decided for another month or more…

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