As Arafat and Abbas glowered at each other, members of Fatah’s Central Committee attempted to broker a compromise. They proposed that an Arafat loyalist named Nasser Yusuf take over as Interior minister–and also take full responsibility for security. Arafat accepted Yusuf, but demanded that Arafat himself continue to command an elite bodyguard unit known as Force 17, the powerful General Intelligence Apparatus and the National Security Force, the Palestinian equivalent of an army. Abbas also backed Yusuf–but not if Arafat kept personal control over three armed groups. The rivals argued heatedly, until the Fatah men gave up in frustration. The argument left relations between Arafat and Abbas frostier than ever. “They acted like little kids,” says one Fatah member who was present.
So much for the “irrelevant” Yasir Arafat. With the U.S.-backed Roadmap in tatters and Abbas’s popularity sinking, Arafat, the wily survivor, is flexing his muscles again. Whether he succeeds in consolidating his power could determine the future of the Mideast peace process.
Arafat has emerged only rarely from his bombed-out compound since Israel occupied Ramallah last year. But all along he has been quietly using money, executive fiats and the trappings of the presidency to maintain control over every aspect of Palestinian society. Now he appears to be angling for a larger public role. And last week, in the wake of the Jerusalem bus bombing that killed 21, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Arafat’s resurgence, calling on him to pressure Hamas and Islamic Jihad into initiating another ceasefire. “The Bush administration deceived itself,” says Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian minister of Labor. “It thought it could create an alternate leadership. But the wish did not become the reality.”
Arafat has kept himself in the game by undercutting his prime minister at every turn. Arafat still has the loyalty of 28,000 troops (and their commanders) who are paid by a security unit controlled by the president. He uses Fatah’s Central Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council to block reforms: when Abbas’s Finance minister, Salam Fayyad, tried to force into retirement 600 of Arafat’s elderly Fatah cronies, Arafat bullied the Palestinian Legislature into rejecting the plan. Arafat has also stymied attempts by the new minister of Justice to reform the courts. The president appoints governors and mayors, and though Fayyad has imposed strict controls over the Palestinian Authority treasury, Arafat maintains a personal war chest of $30 million a year. Arafat doles out the cash to war widows, students and other supplicants. “He operates like a pasha,” says a Western diplomat in Jerusalem.
Arafat has also gained from the collapse of the Roadmap. Despite Palestinians’ expectations that Abbas would rapidly improve their lives, conditions have barely changed inside the occupied territories. The Israeli government refused to make concessions when Abbas wouldn’t confiscate weapons or arrest members of militant groups. Of the 500 road blocks in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces have removed just nine. Moreover, Israel ignored the Roadmap’s requirement that it immediately dismantle 80 illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank; instead, there has been a net increase of two outposts since June. And Israel continued its killings of militants in spite of a three-month ceasefire, or hudna, declared by the armed groups. Those killings led to a predictable cycle of retaliation. “Most Palestinians already regard Abbas as a lame duck,” says a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. “Arafat seized the opportunity to humiliate him even further.”
Arafat made his latest power grab last week. In what was widely regarded as an attempt to snatch the rest of the security forces from Abbas’s grasp, Arafat named Jibril Rajoub, his former West Bank head of Preventive Security, to the previously unfilled post of national-security adviser. Palestinian sources say that Rajoub will likely preside over a new council that will control all 53,000 men in the security forces–and answer only to Arafat. That could sideline Rajoub’s archrival, Mohammed Dahlan, who now serves as the director of Abbas’s security apparatus.
The Bush administration is furious. U.S. and Israeli officials believe that the Palestinian president has supported armed resistance and winked at terror for the past three years. “By preventing the consolidation of the Palestinian security forces under Prime Minister Abbas, Yasir Arafat undercuts the fight against terrorism,” a White House spokeswoman said last week. In remarks to NEWSWEEK last week, Rajoub dismissed the criticism as “crazy,” saying his mission is to strengthen and reorganize security according to the Roadmap. “We need a united command,” he declared, “and Arafat will run it.”
