Suha stirs the pot

Monday, November 08, 2004

uha Arafat’s sudden emergence as the holder of the key to Arafat’s hospital room seemed to be the first thing that has gone wrong in the smooth transfer of powers from Arafat to the institutions of the PLO, Fateh and PA since Arafat was rendered incapacitated by his still-mysterious illness. Her seemingly hysterical appearance this morning on an Arab satellite station that her husband’s partners of the last decades were ‘conspiring’ to ‘bury him alive’ so they could grab power, was brushed off by several key spokesmen, including Jibril Rajoub, who pointed out that Mrs. Arafat had not been beside her husband for more than four years ‘and never was part of the Palestinian leadership.’ According to Israel Radio’s Avi Issacharoff, reporting from Ramallah, the Palestinian street is vehemently against Suha.

In any case, the tantrum made PLO Secretary General Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’ and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who were planning to fly to Paris today to finally see Arafat’s condition first hand, postponed until tomorrow. The conventional wisdom was that tomorrow afternoon, as Ramadan ended, the Palestinian leader would be taken off his life support systems and allowed to pass away in peace. Presumably, by then, the details on the Arafat funeral – Gaza still remains the most likely locale for his burial – would be finalized.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was presenting a sweeping reform of how the banks are involved in the capital markets but the entire press conference was surrealistic considering that Netanyahu’s threat to quit his post remains in place and the deadline for the resignation was approaching – tomorrow night. Netanyahu’s threat to quit over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s refusal to hold a national referendum on the Gaza and northern West Bank disengagement plan, after the finance minister clumsily led a failed party putsch with some other ministers against Sharon, has resurrected all the anti-Netanyahu venom in the political system that seemingly faded since he became an energetic finance minister pushing neo-Thatcherite reforms through the economy. The political scuttlebutt for days has been that Netanyahu will look for a ladder to climb down from his untenable position and indeed, he was granted two possible ladders: the first is a ‘report’ by a committee of Likud MKs who examined the referendum issue and came to the conclusion that a bill could be drawn up for a referendum – but there’s no majority for the referendum in the Knesset unless Sharon throws his weight behind it. Which he won’t. The other ladder is Arafat’s condition, which has already prompted talk on the Right, where they are hoping for Netanyahu to quit, to take up leadership of the anti-disengagement campaign, about postponing the disengagement ‘in case it is possible to strike a deal with the Palestinians.’ Ironically, Yossi Beilin of Yahad is also saying the same.

espite the seemingly smooth transition of power from Arafat to Abbas and Qurei’, who are working hard building a consensus for a pan-Palestinian security deal among all the armed factions, a poll conducted last week by A Najah University shows that there is not much faith in them in the general Palestinian public. According to Haaretz, 59.8 percent of the polled Palestinians do not think Qurei’ is capable of managing the day-to-day affairs of the Palestinian Authority; only 28.4 percent of those questioned believe he is up to the task. Some 41.9 percent said Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat in running PLO bodies, cannot manage the PLO; 42.9 percent believe he can. The survey polled 1,360 adults - 860 in the West Bank and 500 in the Gaza Strip. Asked whether PA institutions can fill the security and administrative vacuum created by Arafat's transfer to a Paris hospital, 42 percent said yes and 51.3 percent said no. Asked which organization they support, 27.2 said Fatah, 20 percent back Hamas, 4.9 percent favor Islamic Jihad and 26.8 percent are unaffiliated. Some 66.5 said they supported a general cease-fire with Israel, provided there are guarantees Israel will maintain it.

Those kinds of numbers have the Israelis worried. Excerpt for occasional slips, Israeli ministers are obeying Sharon’s instructions about keeping silent on Arafat’s condition and the succession in the PA. But one minister who has been speaking is Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who has been issuing somewhat contradictory statements ranging from cautious optimism through skepticism about any change on the ground, to predictions of worsening violence. So far, in any case, years of Israeli intelligence predictions about an internecine Palestinian bloodbath of civil war, have been proved false. Indeed, if anything, so far Palestinian society seems to be behaving with an extraordinary political maturity for the Arab world, with the demand for elections – after Arafat actually does pass away -- the most common thread in the political discourse.

One scenario that has lately been mentioned is for Marwan Barghouti, in Israeli prison, being a candidate for PA president, with expectations that he could come out the winner. On the other hand, every day is a new political experience for the Palestinians and they could continue confounding the experts – and perhaps even themselves. For example, Abbas and Qurei’ might decide between them who should be the candidate, rather than battle it out. Or the Hamas could, as was reportedly already hinted over the weekend, be included in the collective leadership leading up to elections, take part in the elections – and meanwhile, its armed men be coopted into the Palestinian security services, much the way the Hagannah, Palmach and Etzel were drawn into the IDF right after the declaration of statehood. In any case, the assumption that one-man, strong-man rule such as Arafat’s is the natural state of the Palestinian political arena, is so far being proven to be mistaken. The institutions meanwhile appear to be working. Maybe that’s why the Israeli opeds this morning were mostly about Netanyahu’s threat to resign and Ehud Barak’s return to Labor Party politics. There was little enthusiasm for either of them in any of the opeds.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation