View from the Arab World: Looking Beyond Arafat
By Rami G. Khouri, Pacific News Service, May 10, 2001

Most press accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem to consider only Yasser Arafat and those around him as the voice of the Palestinian people. The reality is much more subtle and complex, and new lines have emerged during the Intifada that would be a costly mistake to ignore. PNS Commentator Rami G. Khouri, former editor of the Jordan Times, writes a regular column from Amman.

RAMALLAH -- Seven months of Israeli-Palestinian clashes have led to significant change in political forces within Palestinian society.

This change is not sufficiently appreciated in Israel and the west, which tend to focus almost all political, emotional, intellectual, and mass media firepower on the person of Yasser Arafat and his many guards.

The important -- and still evolving -- political change within Palestine comprises several related elements.

First, a continuing hardening of attitudes among Palestinians as a whole. This is evidenced in the broad will to keep struggling (via the Intifada) for Palestinian rights and statehood and in greater emphasis on specific issues -- the need to stop building Israeli settlements before negotiations resume and the strong support for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

The most recent (mid-April) public opinion poll by the respected Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC) found that 80 percent of Palestinians support continuation of the Intifada (up from 70 percent in December).

Despite suffering from Israeli military attacks, checkpoints, travel restrictions, economic strangulation, and other aspects of military occupation, Palestinian commitment to the Intifada is increasing, because Palestinians see this struggle as leading to liberation and independent statehood.

Significantly, there are no credible calls among the Palestinians for a change in tactics.

To be sure, as the JMCC poll confirms, a majority of Palestinians wants to negotiate peace and coexistence with Israel. But a majority is also willing to fight and suffer in order to obtain its rights.

Only 30 percent of Palestinians say the peace process is dead, yet 74 percent say they strongly or somewhat support suicide bombing operations against civilians in Israel.

This is not a contradiction. These sentiments reflect a desire to negotiate peace and coexistence with Israel, but a parallel willingness to fight if negotiations produce only perpetual subjugation.

The second element of political change is that, within the broadened determination to struggle and pay the price for freedom and statehood, there is a visible fraying and fragmentation of the once total dominance of Yasser Arafat, the Fateh movement he heads, and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Three main groups seem to define Palestinian politics today. The Arafat-dominated PA, independent forces within his Fateh movement in alliance with other leftist-nationalist grassroots forces, and Hamas and other Islamist forces.

Another potential power center is the significant Palestinian constituency that wants more democratic, participatory, and accountable governance.

The combination of Fateh independents, nationalists, Islamists, and democrats represents a powerful new constraint on Arafat's tendency to decide policy on his own.

Therefore -- and this is the third element of change -- Arafat and the PA are being subjected to an unprecedented form of direct accountability. Arafat can certainly exert a major influence on the nature and direction of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, but he can no longer unilaterally define the thrust or the particulars of Palestinian political action.

This new form of accountability has increased in tandem with movement towards negotiating a permanent peace agreement with Israel. It started last summer, when Arafat did not agree to the Israeli or American ideas at Camp David because he knew that a majority of his people would not accept them.

Arafat and the relatively small circle of people who form the official Palestinian leadership, are starting to learn the crucial lesson that they cannot unilaterally negotiate the fate of their people without consulting their people.

In other words, Palestinian official positions must now reflect more accurately the consensus of the Palestinian majority. No wonder Arafat recently said that he cannot enter negotiations while his people are burying their dead on a daily basis.

These trends mark a fundamental change in the direction and manner of political decision-making in Palestine. They suggest that surges of fighting and periods of relative calm will continue in the weeks and months ahead, as diplomatic efforts to negotiate a fair, permanent peace are now more accurately guided by the sentiments of majorities in both Israel and Palestine.

Israelis and Americans can choose to ignore such facts and pin the blame for the violence solely on Yasser Arafat, but they do so at the double risk of degrading their own intellectual integrity and perpetuating the war that plagues all in this area.

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