Departure of Arafat will be a blessing

Andrew Friedman

Canberra Times - 11 November 2004

ACCORDING to traditional Jewish thought, rainfall in Israel is considered a blessing, hardly a surprise for a country that is arid eight months of the year.

Few could escape the symbolism, therefore, when the first rains of the northern winter arrived as Yasser Arafat's helicopter lifted off to carry him to far-away Paris.

Still, whilst Arafat's impending death could breathe life into the peace process he abandoned more than four years ago, it most certainly does not signal the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On the positive side, Arafat's death will create the real possibility that a new Palestinian leadership can emerge. It is no exaggeration to say that Arafat set the Palestinian agenda for more than 40 years, both by way of an unmatched political savvy that allowed him to routinely turn political death into great triumphs, and more importantly through an extensive system of patronage, maintained by a personal slush fund estimated to be in the billions of (US) dollars.

Arafat outlasted six US presidents, nearly a dozen Israeli prime ministers, the kings and statesmen of most Arab countries, and successfully resisted any and all attempts to reform his corrupt authority.

In the aftermath of the traditional mourning period, Palestinian society will have a chance to emerge from the darkness of the Arafat years.

But in order to do this, Palestinians and their Western supporters must decide whether Arafat's legacy of terrorism, corruption, cronyism, and zero-sum politics in which bad-for-Israel-equals-good-for-Palestinians will continue to define the Palestinian movement.

In short, the Palestinians will be faced with a choice - to continue on Arafat's path, necessarily precluding the emergence of a Palestinian state, or to choose a new crop of leaders who can assume the mantle of building the Palestine-in-waiting.

To be sure, it will be difficult to escape the shadow Arafat's legacy, for the simple reason that every single well-known Palestinian leader, or potential leader, is tainted with the same hues as Arafat. Of the best-known "potential heirs," Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is an unrepentant Holocaust denier, current Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie (Abu Ala) openly called for "armed struggle" against Israeli civilians during the height of the Oslo years, and jailed Aqsa Brigades leader Marwan Barghouti proudly describes his murder of Israeli civilians as "resistance".

Former Gaza security chief (and supposed "moderate") Mohammed Dahlan proudly admitted to an Israeli newspaper, "yeah, his soldiers were involved in murdering Israelis. So what?"

All are prominent faces of the Palestinian Authority corruption, as is nearly every other public face of Palestinian officialdom.

Which is not to suggest there is no possibility for the Palestinians to pull themselves out of the rut created by decades of murdering, thieving leaders.

But in order to encourage positive change, Western leaders must believe that such change is possible, and they must begin to think "outside the box" with regards to an emerging Palestinian leadership that is new not only in name, but in substance.

One possibility would be to nurture business and financial leaders to assume the reins of political power. Individuals such as Issam Abu Issa, the former head of the Palestine International Bank, and current Finance Minister Salaam Fayyad, could provide legitimate alternatives to old-school PLO veterans.

Not only are both individuals untainted by corruption, both have tried to combat fraud in the PA, with little success.

Issa was forced to flee Ramallah to Qatar after the Ra'is (president or chairman, Arafat's official title) confiscated more than $US100 million in PIB assets for his personal use in 1999.

As finance minister since 2002, Salaam Fayyad insisted that PA salaries be paid by direct deposit, rather than by cash payments from Arafat himself, the Chairman's preferred method.

Of course, Fayyad did not manage to rein in Arafat's corrupt regime, but given the circumstances, observers agree that his limited success has been remarkable.

Other possible leaders include human rights campaigners Bassem Eid and Iyad al-Sarraj. Both have spent time in Israeli and Palestinian jails, the former being an important status symbol amongst Palestinians, and are highly regarded in Israel as individuals dedicated to creating a Palestinian state without destroying the Israeli one.

Jordanian-Palestinian businessman Omar Salah may be little known in the West, but his grandparents were 1948 refugees from Ramallah who settled in Jordan and became a successful business family in that country.

For more than a decade Salah has maintained business relationships in Israel, and he was responsible for creating the so-called Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) in Jordan and Israel, a successful joint Jordanian/Palestinian/ Israeli venture whose goods qualify for duty-free trade in the United States. His story provides an important example to both sides that the conflict need not carry on without end.

Detractors will say that none of these individuals have the authority of an Arafat, that no-one besides the legendary Abu Ammar (Arafat's nom-de-guerre) could possibly sell a final-status peace deal with Israel to the Palestinian street.

However, this argument is faulty, for several reasons.

Even if one believes that Arafat once had the ability to "sell" an unwanted quality to his constituency, in practice he never did so.

Even at the height of the Oslo process, Arafat repeatedly described the agreements he'd signed with Israel as "temporary", and assured his opponents that he would cancel the accords as soon as the time was opportune.

Secondly, by almost every standard Palestinian life deteriorated under Arafat's leadership, and the Palestinians themselves have paid the stiffest price for his autocratic rule.

Per-capita GNP plummeted from $US1715 in 1991 to $925 in 2003, unemployment has skyrocketed, basic rights such as freedom of the press have been severely curtailed.

The international community has donated more than $US1 billion in aid to the PA since 1993, but not one housing, education, or hospital project has gotten off the ground in that time. And the list goes on.

Neither are these indicators tangential or the result of the past four years of violence: in each case, the drop can be directly attributed to Arafat himself.

Whereas before he emigrated to Gaza from Tunis in 1994 Arafat probably did in fact command the support of a majority of Palestinians, since that time he has squandered that backing in short order after arriving.

As Bassem Eid said in a 1996 interview, "once upon a time, people were proud of the scars they bore from confronting Israel.

"Now (when thinking about Palestinian corruption), they just cry." Moreover, these sentiments are felt at least as strongly regarding the small cadre of associates affiliated with Arafat.

As the world prepares for a post-Arafat era, it is the responsibility of world politicians to ensure that his death ushers in a new era in Israel-Palestinian relations.

However, in order for that to happen, the Palestinians must begin to put their own house in order.

Andrew Friedman is a Middle East Analyst for the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.