Intifada fatigue hits Palestinians

Behind the nearly closed shutters of his shop, safe from the ears of others, Samer Shaher sits among unsold vats of olives and olive oil. A round-faced man with round glasses, Mr. Shaher states his political views colorfully. "If the candidate running against Arafat is a monkey," he says of the promised elections, "I will still vote for the monkey."

The intensity of this disaffection is one reason a US-educated university professor named Abdul Sattar Kassem has declared himself a candidate for president.

"Corruption has reached every little corner in Palestine," he says, promising to focus his campaign on "domestic issues." He is purposefully vague about his view of Israel and how to resolve the conflict, but he does say that "nobody should expect me to put Palestinian fighters in jail" – which is precisely what the US and Israel have demanded of Palestinian leaders.

He says he can win support from Palestinians upset with Arafat, particularly Islamists. Mr. Kassem teaches Islamic political thought at An-Najah University in Nablus.

One of Arafat's longtime colleagues in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas Zaki, is also choosing this moment to ratchet up his criticism of Arafat and the nature of the intifada. Arafat, he says, has created a "state of no law," failed to administer the Palestinian Authority effectively, and communicated badly. "Lying and deceiving and weaving back and forth doesn't solve a crisis," says Mr. Zaki. "It needs brave people ready to stand firm and bring peace to this area."

Kassem, although critical of US intentions, says President Bush's public call for a new Palestinian leadership has opened up the atmosphere, allowing people to speak more critically of Arafat. Zaki, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Hebron, says it has had the reverse effect.

"Many friends have called me to say I shouldn't be so critical of [Arafat] and siding myself with the US indirectly," Zaki says. He says he has persisted in speaking out, but that many others have not.

Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, says the predicament facing Palestinians has made them politically schizophrenic. "People can't work, they can't move, they are suffering – and they criticize Arafat because of that," he says. But deep inside, he adds, most Palestinians "are unhappy not because Arafat is a hard-liner; on the contrary, they are criticizing him because he is not tough enough."

And they are defensive in the face of external criticism. "They won't allow his removal by the Israelis and the Americans."

Palestinian public-opinion polls show declining support for bombers, but the trends are less than definitive. One pollster reports that Palestinian support for suicide bombings went from 58 percent last December to 52 percent in May; another registed a support rate for bombings of 64 percent in December 2001, which rose to 72 percent in March 2002 and has since dropped back to 68 percent in a sampling conducted in May and June.

More than 50 Palestinian intellectuals and businesspeople last month published a petition calling for an end to armed attacks against Israeli civilians, but many Palestinians found fault with the appeal because it did not sufficiently blame Israel and because the project was funded by foreign governments.

Jarbawi notes that most Palestinians sympathize with the bombers, especially in the immediate aftermath of attacks. But the intensity of Israel's responses, including military-imposed curfews and restrictions that bring normal life to a halt, has made many Palestinians think again.

"The Palestinian community in general," says Bassem Eid, a leading Palestinian human rights advocate, "has become much more aware of the Israeli reaction after each suicide bombing."

"It's an ambiguous state of mind," Jarbawi says of his fellow Palestinians. "They can't make up their minds about [the bombings]." As a result, the future might bring a deepening reluctance to engage in such tactics or a willingness to aggravate the violence. "It might go either way," Jarbawi says.

Hisham Ahmed, another Bir Zeit professor, is more pessimistic about the Palestinian fight against Israel. "I think what we might be heading towards is much worse, much stronger than before, because people have really lost hope," he says.

On the political front, there seems to be less uncertainty. "If Arafat runs, Arafat wins, no matter what," says Jarbawi.

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