Arafat and the Palestinian question

Is Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in trouble - and should non-Palestinians care about Palestinian politics, anyway?

The answers to these questions are: Yes, kind of; and yes, definitely.

For 35 years Mr. Arafat, now the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been the best-known face of the Palestinian leadership. But in recent weeks, he and his closest cronies have been stridently criticized by activists in his own political-military movement, Fatah. This criticism, the "office arrest" that Israel has imposed on him for more than two years, and the Bush administration's refusal to deal with him unless he completes a thorough reform of the PA have weakened him considerably.

His situation looks precarious. But seasoned Palestinian commentatorsall agree: Don't bet on him losing his leadership position anytime soon.

Most Palestinians feel themselves caught between a rock and a very hard place. Nearly all of them agree that most Arafat cronies are corrupt and that the PA under Arafat has been incapable of defending them against the onslaughts they've experienced from Israel during the past 10 years. Many Palestinians note that the Oslo accords of 1993, which were the centerpiece of Arafat's policy until 2000, did not bring them the independence he had promised and failed even to halt Israel's continued expropriation of Palestinian land.

But since 2002, Israel and its main financial backer, the United States, have been openly calling for Arafat's ouster. Ironically, it is precisely those calls from Israel and Washington that have prevented most Palestinian reformers from openly calling on him to resign.

Thus, when angry Fatah reformers met in Nablus at the beginning of August, they loudly criticized people around Arafat - but not Arafat himself. When nationalist activists stormed a key PA office in Gaza, they successfully called for the ouster of new office chief Musa Arafat - but not of his boss and cousin, Yasser Arafat.

Other Palestinians have gravitated to the Palestinian Islamic groups, especially Hamas. Hamas is seen as less corrupt than Fatah, and more responsive to the Palestinians' pressing socioeconomic needs. Its militancy against Israel has - in a time of national humiliation - won it the respect of many, but not all, Palestinians.

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is talking seriously about withdrawing from Gaza - and Hamas activists say it is only their militancy that has forced him to do so.

These trends in Palestinian politics are extremely important to the US, because Washington's recent policies on the Palestinian issue are cited by Muslims worldwide as one of the main reasons for their strong opposition to Washington.

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