Thursday, May 15, 2008
Fighting corruption, rebuilding institutions and trying to bring militants into the political system, Palestinians have moved on after the death of their leader. But how long will their new hopes last?
Mar 30, 2005 | Yasser Arafat's gravesite is effusive. The plot is an explosion of color: a garden of flowers and rose wreaths, of ribboned banners from around the globe proclaiming respect and sadness for the deceased Palestinian president. A mausoleum of glass shields the site from weather, and three guards flank the grave day and night, keeping stern vigil over their patriarch. At the foot of the site is a Quranic verse: "God will give victory to believers."
Though the gravesite, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, aims to exalt Arafat, it is a lonely place. Arafat died on Nov. 11, 2004. Three months later, on the afternoon of my visit, I saw few mourners. Those who did come paid their respects to the rais, as Arafat was known, and then drifted away, as quick and quiet as ghosts. The grave's location adds to its isolation: It's tucked into a far corner of the Muqata, the Palestinian presidential compound. The Muqata, the former British military headquarters from the old Mandate days, is an enormous expanse, but a virtually empty one. In 2002, after a series of Palestinian terrorist bombings killed dozens of Israelis, the Israeli army reoccupied Ramallah with the goal of destroying the city's terrorist infrastructure, smashing the Palestinian Authority and isolating Arafat. This incursion, part of a massive military campaign in the West Bank code-named "Operation Defensive Shield," destroyed most of buildings inside the Muqata. Today only two modest structures remain; the rest is pavement. Operation Defensive Shield marked the beginning of Arafat's confinement: After it, Israel forbade him from stepping beyond the front door. In this sense, Arafat's grave is as isolated from the life of Palestine as the Palestinian leader was himself during the last two years of his life.
Many people feared Arafat's death would set the Palestinian people dangerously adrift. He was not simply their national leader, but the symbol of Palestinian nationalism -- the embodiment of his people's aspirations for statehood and the man who brought them recognition from Israel and the world. More than this, Palestinians are a nation besieged by occupation and fractured by internal divisions: between West Bankers and Gazans, Muslims and Christians, insiders and outsiders, refugees and non-refugees, and scores of political factions. Without their keel, their stabilizing force, surely this nation would capsize.
Except it hasn't. Palestinians are looking toward the future with apprehension and even fear, but they are not in shock and they are not adrift. They found themselves without a captain and wasted no time in plotting a course for themselves. How effectively they navigate this course remains to be seen, and the actions of Israel and the United States will have a decisive effect on the outcome. But in the meantime, one thing is certain: Arafat may be immured beneath the Muqata, but his people are struggling to move on.
"In the past there was a national consensus about Arafat and his role as a national leader," Jabril Rajoub told me a few weeks ago. Former chief of security in the West Bank, Rajoub now serves as national security advisor to Mahmoud Abbas (better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mazen), Arafat's successor. "There was always conflict between the old and young generations when Arafat was alive," Rajoub continued, "but Arafat controlled the rules of the game. With his death, the conflict is going on with new momentum."
Rajoub was referring to the long-standing division within Palestinian politics between the old guard and the young guard. The former describes the founding members of Fatah and the PLO, men who lived in exile with Yasser Arafat in Lebanon, Jordan and Tunis. Many of them were elected to the Fatah General Assembly in 1989 and occupy positions in the Fatah Revolutionary Council as well as the Fatah Central Committee, the movement's most powerful body. The young guard lived in the territories under Israeli occupation and won legitimacy among the people as fighters in the first intifada and as prisoners in Israeli jails. Though they shared ideological and operational links to the PLO (all based on armed resistance against Israel), the young guard were like orphans, forced to come of age without the guidance and protection of their parents.
The young guard, however, had a set of surrogate parents: the Israelis. Palestinians in territories may have learned occupation from Israel, but they were also exposed to Israel's democratic system of government.
"We learned democracy from Israel," one Palestinian woman told me. "If you discount Israel's treatment of the Arab Israelis (who are subjected to a great deal of de facto, and a certain amount of de jure, discrimination), they still have regular elections, parties, a working parliament. Even when we were under occupation we saw this."
That Palestinians in the territories understood and appreciated democratic ideals was evident in their universities and inside Israeli prisons, where elections were institutionalized and meticulously conducted. In contrast, the old guard developed their view of power and governance under the corrupt and dictatorial Arab regimes in which they were living.
This was not simply a question of rampant corruption but what many have called a crisis of administration within Arafat's Fatah party. Sami Sa'adi, president of the Cairo Amman Bank, explained it this way: "There is no clear mechanism inside Fatah to give the new generation a role in decision making. No clear channels between the top leaders and the ground. We need modern institutions: transparency, elections, rules to define membership in Fatah."
Sa'adi, who is in his mid-forties, spent his teenage years fighting the occupation and his early adult years in an Israeli prison. After his release, the Israelis deported him for his activism in Fatah. Sa'adi received a business degree in Egypt and upon graduation, the Israelis permitted him to return to the West Bank. He worked for the Palestine Development Fund and the Palestine Banking Corp. before assuming his position at Cairo Amman. In his sober suit on the top floor of a bustling bank, Sa'adi looked like a man who understood the workings of a modern institution. "The requirements of making a secret organization," he continued, "are not the same as making a public organization."
The first ten years after Fatah's establishment in 1958 was a precarious time for the movement. Arafat and his close associates, Saleh Khalaf and Abu Jihad, were being pursued by Israel and others for their terrorist activities in the Middle East and internationally. They were constantly only the move -- during this period, Arafat is said never to have slept in the same bed twice -- and their activities were highly centralized. The top leaders of the party today such as Abu Mazen, Abu Ala, Hani Hassan and others were not active in Fatah's military branch (Khalaf and Jihad were eventually assassinated by the Israelis), but the party's culture of elitism and secrecy has survived. At least until Arafat's death.
"After his death everything is defined," Sa'adi said. "We are approaching a new era of our modern history. Arafat was a patrimonial leader. Because of the significant efforts he made for the cause he had special respect. Now nobody has the same power. Now all of us are equal."
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