Yasser Arafat’s cabinet yesterday called off next month’s election for a Palestinian president and legislature because it said the Israeli military occupation of West Bank cities made a free ballot impossible.
First, Arafat says, the tanks must go, and then comes the vote.
The Israelis say the opposite. Ariel Sharon argues that without the election of a new Palestinian leadership ”the terror” will not stop, and so the troops must stay.
In the event, it is highly unlikely that Palestinian voters would dump Arafat in favour of another leader, not least because it would be seen as bowing to Israeli pressure.
But the Palestinian leadership has, over recent weeks and months, undergone a creeping but fundamental shift in thinking.
A growing number of senior Palestinian officials are criticising Mr Arafat’s handling of the past two years of intifada, and specifically the brutal and traumatic wave of suicide bombings. Some blame Arafat directly, some do not. But his deputy, Abu Mazen, recently said that attacks on Israeli civilians had brought only ruin and destruction to the Palestinian people.
Arafat himself acknowledged as much back in June, when he appealed for an end to the suicide attacks. Three months later, Fatah said it would stop killings inside Israel and press other Palestinian groups to do the same.
Both declarations were a recognition that the latest intifada has severely damaged the struggle for statehood, bringing fresh misery to Palestinians and robbing their cause of much international support and goodwill.
Israel took advantage of the chance to portray its conflict with the Palestinians as part of the western world’s ”war on terror” and lumped Arafat in the same category as al-Qaida. Washington barred its officials from meeting him and called for his removal from office.
The Israelis say Arafat’s crucial error was political: he failed to recognise that the world changed the day al-Qaeda attacked New York.
”Arafat made a mistake when he failed to distinguish between September 10 and September 12 2001,” said Major General Amos Gilad, the Israeli army commander on the West Bank.
”The world woke up, and Arafat lost legitimacy because he supports terror. Even the president of the United States, after seeing the intelligence presented to him, came to the conclusion that there is a need for new leadership for the Palestinians.”
Arafat’s closest aides may not put it in those terms, but they concede the point.
”These [suicide bombing] operations have reduced the level of international support for the Palestinian people,” said Hussein al-Sheikh, the West Bank leader of Fatah’s armed wing, Tanzim.
”There is a national interest behind stopping this: to rebuild international support and let Sharon be seen as the terrorist.”
The Europeans have been pressing an agenda which recognises that Arafat may not be so easily disposed of, but have also emphasised the cost to the Palestinian cause of suicide bombings.
Last month, after visiting the survivors of a bus bombing in Jerusalem, the EU’s special envoy, Miguel Moratinos, demanded that the attacks on Israeli civilians stop.
”This cannot go on any longer. The Palestinians must stop terror everywhere.” Addressing the Palestinians, he added: ”If you do not disassociate yourself from terror, you will lose Europe.”
European diplomats have encouraged a return to the tactics of the first intifada, with its popular resistance on the streets, and for the Palestinian leadership to re-emphasise the secular and nationalist characteristics of the struggle. The Europeans, like the US and Israel, also want major reform of the corrupt and listless Palestinian Authority.
But the Palestinians are not being encouraged to abandon the military option entirely. A special envoy from at least one non-European country of which the Palestinians take notice has urged Fatah to redirect its efforts to attacking military targets in the West Bank.
All sides acknowledge that the number of suicide attacks has fallen sharply in past months, although the Israelis attribute this to their military clampdown.
Arafat, although still denying he ever ordered suicide attacks, says he has used his powers to curtail them because he puts the interests of the Palestinian people above popular pressure to shed Israeli blood.
But prominent critics of the Palestinian leadership – such as Mustafa Barghouti of the reformist Palestinian National Initiative – say Arafat’s hand has been forced by widespread exasperation at the course of the current intifada.
”What has this intifada achieved in bringing about a Palestinian state?” Barghouti asked.
”People might have believed it was worth it if there was some political progress, if there were some tangible benefits. But there is nothing but misery.
”We need to return to the ways of the first intifada. We need to turn this back into a popular, unarmed uprising.” – Guardian Unlimited Â