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Following the Leader
By Barry Rubin*
The author paints a pessimistic picture of post- Arafat Palestinian politics. His counterintuitive assessment is that the death of the long-time leader will not open the way for accommodation, but rather will lead to a continuation of the failed Palestinian policies of the past. –Ed.
"Much of the West imagines the conflict is about a Palestinian wish to create a West Bank-Gaza Strip state, a simple matter of nationalist resistance to foreign occupation. But this is not what Palestinian leaders say when they talk to each other, their public, or the Arab world."
The last time I met Marwan Barghuti, along with other notable Palestinians, I joked how impressive it was to see so many leading minds of the Palestinians together.
"Yes," he punned, "but where is it all leading?"
That remains the central question for the Palestinian movement today. For all practical purposes, Abu Mazin is going to be the sole candidate in the election for leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Marwan Barghuti has threatened to run but has now withdrawn.
To begin with, it is worth noting that the Palestinian elections are going to be proclaimed as a near-model exercise in democracy. Yet for anyone who wants to look at what is actually happening it is easy to see that:
Fatah bosses chose the sole candidate.
Fatah bodies then unanimously endorsed him.
Other candidates were pressured to quit.
The election is merely a one-candidate, one-party affair like those regularly held in Arab dictatorships, with the establishment's man monopolizing media coverage and active regime backing. The sole difference will be that a few minor candidates can run.
On election day, Abu Mazin will get 80 percent of the vote or more and observers will declare the balloting to have been free and fair.
But what happens at the ballot box means nothing for the power struggle among dozens of warlord-type contenders and the two main factions. On one side is the traditional leadership of the PLO, Fatah, and PA, who mostly come from places that became part of Israel in 1948 and who spent years of exile abroad. Abu Mazin is their consensus candidate.
On the other side, are younger men, mostly from the West Bank, who arose during the intifadah of the late 1980s. They view their elders with contempt, as having failed to win victory and becoming corrupt bureaucrats. Rather than blaming Arafat for these problems, they opportunistically claim to be his true heirs.
Ironically, during the 1990s, Arafat was their great enemy. He excluded them from Fatah's slate in the 1996 parliamentary elections. Barghuti and a few others won seats anyway and tried to destroy Arafat politically. After 2000, however, Arafat backed Barghuti in launching a new disastrous war, consisting largely of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Politically and militarily it was an Arafat-style disaster but Barghuti, now serving several consecutive life sentences in an Israeli prison for multiple murders, sees the war as the model for the next decade or two.
Thus, the difference between the two factions is narrow. Both portray themselves as Arafat's rightful successor. Neither advocates a compromise peace with Israel in which two states live peacefully side by side.
Much of the West imagines the conflict is about a Palestinian wish to create a West Bank-Gaza Strip state, a simple matter of nationalist resistance to foreign occupation. But this is not what Palestinian leaders say when they talk to each other, their public, or the Arab world.
If this view were accurate a solution would be quick and easy: make a deal, end the occupation, create a Palestinian state, and everyone will live happily ever after. Unfortunately, however, this narrative while it has worked elsewhere does not fit here and was already disproved in the 1990s' peace process. Indeed, these things already would have happened after the 1948 or 1967 wars, after Egypt made peace with Israel in the late 1970s, or during the peace efforts of the late 1980s.
True, Arafat is gone but now Palestinian leadership is being contested by one group most of whom (though not Abu Mazin himself) argue that Arafat was always right, while the other group simply wants to adapt Arafat's strategy for a new generation.
Even today, only a small minority of Palestinian leaders envisage a two-state solution along with settling all Palestinian refugees in their own state (and receiving more than $20 billion in compensation) as ending the conflict completely. Abu Mazin may want such a peaceful solution, but he knows that compromise is political suicide. Barghuti' s on-and-off candidacy is intended to remind him of that fact.
In pragmatic terms, Palestinian leaders should be thinking: We are in terrible shape and have no state because of our incorrect strategy. Violence, radicalism, and maximalist demands failed. We must try compromise, peace, and moderation. Accept Israel's existence; get our own state; bring home the refugees to become productive citizens; and focus on economic, social, and cultural development to benefit our people. Since this seems logical, much of the world is assuming that such is the Palestinian position.
But the leadership's real standpoint is: Our armed struggle is winning. Continue the battle, produce more martyrs, make no concessions, gain international support (by pretending otherwise) and we will win in the end as Israel collapses or surrenders, no matter how many years are required, lives it costs, or resources are wasted.
True, Abu Mazin is the only conceivable Fatah candidate offering hope for peace. But the real test is whether any of the following happens:
Will he make a single speech to his people explaining the realistic analysis of the conflict and its solution outlined above?
Is the PA-controlled media going to reduce its incitement to violence?
How will other Fatah leaders describe their intended future strategy?
Is any real pressure going to be applied on violent groups to stop terrorism against Israel, especially after the election?
These steps, not its leaders' interviews in the Western media, will show where the movement is heading.
December 20, 2004
Endnotes
Note *: Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography and Hating America: A History (Oxford University Press, August 2004). Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. Back