So far, Arafat has no land, no state and no real army. Yet despite his lack of leverage, he has more than held his own in the negotiations with Israel over implementing Palestinian antonomy in the Gaza Strip and Jericho, talks that are scheduled to resume this week. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he warns that Islamic militants in the Hamas movement will overpower him. He makes an issue of his own dignity, insisting that he cannot be merely the leader of “a Bantustan.” He breaks promises made in his name by others. After the latest round of talks, he made major amendments to the understandings reached by his own emissary.
The framework agreement that Arafat and Rabin sealed with a handshake in Washington last September gives the Palestinians little more than a promise of Israeli withdrawal from most of Gaza and Jericho. The Israelis insist on retaining full control over external security. But Arafat keeps extracting concessions from them. The Israelis have ceded the Palestinians at least a presence at border crossings. Rabin also has indicated that Israel won’t insist on the right to pursue terrorists into areas under Arafat’s control, but instead will depend on Palestinian police to catch them. On another key issue, the size of the autonomous region around Jericho, Israel has doubled its original offer to roughly 54 square kilometers (21 square miles). Arafat is holding out for triple figures.
The Israelis continue to toss Arafat tidbits, like the release of 101 Palestinian prisoners last week. More significantly, they are starting to prepare their constituents for something that once was unthinkable to most of them. “The possibility shouldn’t be ruled out that after the interim period, the autonomy will turn into an independent entity or even a Palestinian state,” Agriculture Minister Yaacov Tzur warned a group of kibbutzniks last week.
Arafat’s insistence on Palestinian independence irritates his Arab neighbors. Jordan wants influence over the future Palestinian entity, and King Hussein recently issued an ultimatum to Arafat: cooperate or else. A crisis was averted last week when PLO officials signed a deal with Jordan on economic cooperation, allowing Jordan to reopen bank branches in the West Bank, among other things. Syrian President Hafez Assad, who fancies himself the main Arab power broker in the region, was angered by the deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Assad continues to play host to all of Arafat’s opponents within the PLO, giving them free rein to assail the agreement–at least until he cuts his own deal with Israel.
These days, Arafat’s most nettlesome critics are fellow Palestinians from the occupied territories, who worry that he is becoming another Arab despot. Last week, a delegation headed by Haidar Abdel-Shafi, the respected physician who led the original Palestinian team in peace talks with Israel, went to Tunis with a petition demanding more democracy in the PLO. Signed by 118 prominent Palestinians, it chastised the PLO leadership for “playing its role in a disorganized and improvised manner.” Arafat promised them nothing new.
The most important debate in Tunis these days is over Arafat’s desire for absolute control over Palestinian finances. “It is not acceptable,” says one of his critics. “Let him control police and customs and landing rights at the airport. These are matters for the state. But he wants to control the sale of perfume, the restaurants, everything.” But one of Arafat’s supporters argues that the Palestinians “are entering the stage where the president ought to have the power of economic control, at least in this first year. He who directs the economy will direct the policy of the future.”
Even the reformers do not yet want to dump Arafat, if only for the lack of an obvious successor. He will probably cling to his political tightrope for some time, at least until he plants his flag in Gaza and Jericho. At that point, the old guerrilla will lose some room for maneuver. Methods vital for an underground organization–keeping finances secret or rewarding loyalty over merit–may not be suitable for what Palestinians hope will be the embryo of a new state. After years of involuntary association with Israel, Palestinians in the territories have come to expect more from their leaders than just fancy footwork. “Whether we like it or not,” says West Bank journalist Daoud Kuttab, “people here have lived very close to a country that deals with its own people according to a rule of law and democracy.” In his own people, Arafat may finally meet his match.
Arafat is under fire from all sides. The angriest critics:
After months of talks, the Israeli prime minister is deeply frustrated by Arafat’s slippery negotiating style.
Jordan’s ruler lost the West Bank; now he worries about losing influence over an entity led by Arafat.
The Syrian leader fancies himself top dog in the region; he’s furious with Arafat for making peace without his OK.
