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The death of their leader brings a moment of truth for the Palestinians -- the great challenge of averting deeper chaos, and a chance to step toward lasting peace.
Nov 11, 2004 | The Arafat era is over. The man who won the Nobel Peace Prize but never an enduring peace for his people died in a Paris hospital early Thursday. Now, with the 75-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority gone, Palestinians, Israelis and world leaders are preparing for a watershed transition of Palestinian leadership.
For days to come there will be much contentious debate over Yasser Arafat's legacy -- a heroic lifelong revolutionary leader to many; a deeply corrupt dictator and terror kingpin to many others. His death, though anticipated days in advance, leaves leaders on both sides of the volatile Israeli-Palestinian conflict facing an unprecedented and urgent set of questions: Will a power vacuum in Arafat's wake prove fertile terrain for building a new Palestinian infrastructure and moving toward real peace, or will it unleash a chaotic period of Palestinian infighting, the ascendancy of militant factions, and yet more war with the Israelis?
Sorting through the many political and strategic crosscurrents is in some ways an exercise in chaos theory. Amy Hawthorne, a Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says numerous outcomes are possible even in the short term, with Arafat's death arriving at a volatile historical moment that is remarkable for its confluence of shifting tides. There is Ariel Sharon's so-called disengagement plan to pull out of Gaza and secure a grip on much of the West Bank -- already in progress, but dogged by sharp political resistance from Israelis even further to the political right of the prime minister. There is the freshly minted second Bush administration, emboldened by what it sees as an American mandate for, among other policies, its aggressive plan for transforming the Middle East through the use of military power.
And the Palestinian side itself is mired in a stewing volatility, with no real political center of gravity. Life for most in the occupied territories has been decimated by the four-year intifada, with an atmosphere of uncertainty made chronic by corrupt, fragmented leadership and infighting militant factions.
For now, Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO secretary general, is expected to take over the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah; and Ahmed Qureia, the current prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, will continue with the day-to-day running of government. They and other Palestinian officials have been scrambling to broadcast a message of unity and control -- but the reality of the near-term transition may be much murkier.
"In the short run I see a very messy, complicated situation," says Hawthorne. "There is no functioning Palestinian state or political system right now, so various militant factions like Hamas, rivals within Arafat's own Fatah group who want to challenge the old guard, and others are all operating in an environment in which central power is very weak to begin with. In many parts of the West Bank, and to some extent in Gaza, there already is a system of warlords essentially running local affairs. There will be multiple power struggles taking place at multiple levels."
Most experts agree that it is critical for Arafat's immediate successors to move swiftly toward a credible national election. Hawthorne says that a majority of Palestinians were defiant of Bush and Sharon's efforts to push out Arafat, their revered national symbol. But now that an opportunity for leadership change has materialized on its own, there is some hope of a groundswell for positive change.
Yet it remains unclear how a popular referendum would play out. "Abbas and Qureia don't have a popular support base; their power is derived from their ties to Arafat," Hawthorne says. "So if these two put themselves up for popular legitimation, it'll be a very risky situation, because they don't have nearly the measure of symbolic and emotional appeal to Palestinians that Arafat does. It's ironic that much of the popular disillusionment with the failures of the Palestinian Authority could land on them. They both played a very prominent role in the failed peace negotiations of the '90s, and both are viewed by many as corrupt."
The prospect for elections and how a new Palestinian leadership takes shape also depends greatly, of course, on the actions of the two biggest power brokers involved: Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush.
