Now is not a good time to be an optimist about peace for the Palestinians. The sense that everything seems to be in suspension, in a state of limbo, while the world waits to see if President George W. Bush really is going to finish his father’s unfinished business with Saddam Hussein has just been heightened by the announcement that Palestinian presidential elections have been postponed indefinitely.
The grounds are perfectly reasonable. With the exception of Jericho, every single Palestinian city of any consequence is effectively occupied and run by the Israeli military. These do not look like the circumstances in which a free and fair election could be run. The delay represents both a great opportunity and a great danger.
Let us take the latter first. The writ of the Palestinian Authority had hardly been established in the Palestinian territories before the Israelis began their clampdown. By identifying Yasser Arafat with the suicide bombers, Ariel Sharon’s Zionist administration felt it legitimate to attack and demolish the nascent institutions of the Palestinian administration. This demolition was both physical, as in the destruction of police stations, official buildings and the PA’s own headquarters and leader’s office, and psychological. Thus the great contradiction emerged in the Israeli argument against Yasser Arafat’s leadership. Given their virtual eradication of the law and order authorities, it was never clear how the Israelis imagined Arafat could crack down on anyone. Sharon, of course, knew, just as well as every other observer did, that whatever influence Arafat might once have enjoyed over Hamas and Islamic Jihad has been blown away bit by bit by Israeli aggression. For Zionism, any settlement with the Palestinians will compromise the goal of a greater Israel. Only by egging on the extremists will Sharon and his hawks be able to avoid the negotiating table.
The vacuum left by the collapse of the Palestinian Authority’s administrative infrastructure has been filled by the extremists. Their welfare and social services are often the only source of help for beleaguered Palestinians; their fighters the only source of law and order and protection. Nevertheless, had the presidential election gone ahead as planned next month, it is highly likely that Yasser Arafat would have won, for all the complaints against him. He has come to represent in his own isolation and humiliation, the horrors that have befallen everyone living in Palestine.
There are those who argue that soon a new moderate Palestinian leadership is needed to face down the Zionists, re-inspire Palestinians and impress the outside world. But, were such a leadership to emerge in these present uncertain days, when there is no mandated Israeli government to speak to and the world waits nervously for Washington’s attack upon Iraq, it would quickly squander its freshness to little purpose.
Bush does not understand how justice for Palestine will rob international terror of one of its great excuses. Until he learns some lessons about moderation, it is hard to see him honoring a moderate new Palestinian leadership. Therefore, it is probably for the best that the experienced and battle-hardened Yasser Arafat maintains his leadership in these alarming times.
