Arafat Back in the Forefront

Arafat Back in the Forefront
Ferry Biedermann - IPS 8/30/03

RAMALLAH, Aug 30 (IPS) - The seeming collapse of the peace road map has brought Yasser Arafat back to centre stage even though he was never quite outmanoeuvred by Israel and the United States.

With the appointment of the old chief of preventive security on the West Bank Jibril Rajoub as his national security adviser, Arafat has staked his claim to be once again the sole power dominating the Palestinian political landscape. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, it appears now in political circles in Ramallah, will have to back down or back out.

"There is a conflict between Abu Mazen (as Abbas is popularly known) and Arafat," says Kadura Fares, a young guard in the Fatah movement who pushed for the appointment of Abbas just a few months ago. "In the end if it's a matter of one of them going, it will have to be Abbas."

This is new from Fares, who over the last few years has put pressure on Yasser Arafat and the old guard to introduce reforms. He is a member of the Legislative Council, the parliament of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and a prominent member of the Fatah movement.

Fares and his colleagues are disappointed in Abbas. The Prime Minister should never have resigned his position in the central committee of Fatah during an earlier spat with the movement, he says. "He has turned out to be weak tactically, and we haven't seen enough happening in the area of political reforms."

While most people in both the Abbas and the Arafat camp deny there is a problem, Fares who is in the middle is blunt. "There is a struggle for power and it is overshadowing the suffering of the Palestinian people now, and we are not happy with that."

The jostling for position between Abbas and Arafat is crucial to the future of the road map. Political reforms within the PA are part of the road map, and both Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Yasser Arafat.

The apparent conflict between the two men is remarkable because for years they were the closest of allies as fellow founders of the Fatah movement. Now their rivalry threatens to overshadow all the important issues they confront.

The question of acting against militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad has become a hostage of the internal crisis in Fatah. Control over the security services that would be instrumental in a crackdown is one of the mostly hotly disputed issues.

In his luxurious house in Ramallah, Jibril Rajoub is once again in his element, with journalists queuing up to hear from one of the mot powerful security chiefs on the West Bank.

Rajoub was fired as head of preventive security last year after Israeli incursions. Now he is back, even though his functions are only vaguely defined. His potential powers are huge, and he is already demanding a seat on a council to be created to bring the security apparatus together.

"I respect Abu Mazen and I hope to work with him," says Rajoub. He denies that there is a split in the leadership or that there is a clash over control of the security services. "I only belong to one faction, the Fatah faction which is the backbone of the national struggle."

But Rajoub is already flexing his muscles. He has begun to hand out political 'advice' to the Prime Minister. "Abu Mazen has to go to the Fatah Central Committee and come to an agreement with them on outstanding issues," he says about his Prime Minister. "It is still possible to talk things through. He made mistakes but no crimes have been committed."

Mahmoud Abbas will deliver a report to the Legislative Council Monday on his first 100 days as Prime Minister. Rajoub clearly wants the air cleared before it comes to a messy confrontation in Parliament.

Kadura Fares sounds ominous about the 100 days report. It could lead to a vote of no confidence in Abu Mazen, he says. That would throw the whole road map into chaos and may mean months of delay in resumption of a political process.

To Rajoub that consideration is not relevant. He talks as though the road map never existed, and uses the rhetoric of the days before it was accepted by the Palestinian Authority. "As long as the Israelis are shooting at us we cannot act against militants," he says.

He openly disowns the road map but does not offer anything in its place. "I was not the godfather of the road map," says Rajoub. "It's up to the people who created it, the Americans and Bush, to push the Israelis to stick to their commitments."

There is similar talk in Abbas's camp. Israel is blamed for the breakdown of the road map, rather than the suicide attacks by militants. But there the emphasis is on Israel not having done enough to support the Prime Minister.

In his spanking new office in the interior ministry, a spokesman for Abbas's security adviser and minister of state Mohammed Dahlan blames the Israelis for "caving in to pressure from their public" in retaliating to the suicide bombing in Jerusalem two weeks ago.

His boss Dahlan is an old rival of Rajoub. It is an odd reversal of positions because Dahlan who props up Abbas used to be close to Arafat, while Rajoub had a very tense relationship with the Palestinian leader in the past. The changing alliances illustrate that the struggle between the two camps is over power, not policy.

"The differences between the two camps are blown out of proportion by the press," says Dahlan's spokesman. He goes on to list several ways in which Abbas has been able to outmanoeuvre Arafat, by firing Arafat appointees for example.

On the most crucial issue of cracking down on militants, the spokesman says there was agreement on all sides after the most recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

"Arafat and all the leaders of the political factions, except of course Hamas and Jihad, had agreed to a crackdown," says the spokesman. "We had been waiting for the right time because we had to rebuild our security forces, and we needed the backing of the people for such a campaign. But then the news came in that Israel had killed Abu Shanab and the whole thing was off."

Kadura Fares says things are slipping back to the way they were. "I don't want to defend Yasser Arafat," he says, "but he is the only elected leader we have and under the circumstances that is what we have to work with."