The phrase "peace process" that was so fashionable for almost a decade, has been replaced by a new one: The reform process!
Suddenly it is as if the entire Palestine-Israel conflict has been reduced to the issue of reforms in the Palestinian Authority.
Take this as you like. But the fact is that those now signing about reforms in the occupied territories do not have the same hymn sheet.
Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speaks as if his sole mission in life is to ensure "good governance" for the Palestinians. One of his most ardent admirers, the New York Ties columnist William Safire, even writes that Sharon is "the man of destiny" for the Palestinians in the sense that it is he, and he alone, that can give them a democratic system based on the rule of law.
One thing is certain: By keeping the world talking about reforms one keeps them off talking about Palestinian statehood and other uncomfortable subjects.
The European Union is also interested in talking up the reform talk. Some $3 billion of European money has disappeared in the running sands of the "Palestinians Authority" over the past few years with nothing resembling a regular system of accountability. A little bit of reform, even though cosmetic, might allow the European bureaucrats the fig leaf with which to cover their shameful failure in the Palestinian project.
Washington is interested in the reform talk for different reasons. George Tenet, the CIA chief, is back in the region with plans for a new security system. This is needed to cover up the CIA’s earlier failure among the Palestinians. Despite massive injections of funds and hard work to recruit Palestinian agents and "friends", the CIA has been unable to achieve the influence it had hoped for. Using the reform talk it now hopes to secure a more direct grip on the situation.
And the reform talk enables Colin Powell, the secretary of state, to hide the fact that the Bush administration has absolutely no policy on the Palestine-Israel conflict besides occasional gesticulations.
What about the Palestinians? Yasser Arafat, as usual, has absolutely n policy or project apart from ensuring his own political survival. And, also as usual, he swims, or rather drifts, with the tide. For over a decade he has had one single concern — to keep Washington happy without committing to any definite course of action.
Arafat loves to walk the red carpet at the White House and project his image as a world statesman. He still dreams of one day getting from George W. Bush the same photo opportunity that Bill Clinton offered on so many occasions.
To achieve that Arafat, true to his style, is ready to promise anything and sign anything including the Basic Law that he had sat upon for five years and described as "unworkable."
Members of Arafat’s close entourage talk the reform talk because they hope this will make the Americans and Israelis happy and thus let them hang on to their positions for a while longer. The so-called "Young Turks" of the Palestinian leadership, the quadragenarians who made their entire political career inside the occupied territories, talk of reform for different reasons. They hope that this will lead to a gradual eclipse for Arafat and his entourage, allowing a new leadership with deep local roots to emerge.
The radical Islamist groups hope that all this talk will lead to fresh elections in which they could win a legal power base from which to launch their quest for absolute rule.
Latest opinion polls show that less than a third of Palestinian voters in the occupied territories now want Arafat. This opens the field for both the Islamists and the nationalists to offer their rival programs without Arafat being able to confuse the voters from the middle. Arafat has survived by playing the Islamists and the nationalists against one another while promoting himself of as a kind of father figure and consensus leader. That game is becoming harder and harder to play as Palestinians realize that the emperor is naked — that is to say that Arafat has absolutely no policy on anything except self-preservation.
As a meaningful political process the second intifada is now over. This was the first popular revolt in history that did not produce anything resembling a clear set of demands. The main reason for this ambiguity was Arafat’s profound misunderstanding of politics.
For Arafat , politics is the art of rejecting the possible, dreaming the impossible, and promising the improbable all in the hope of spending one more day in the limelight.
But to blame all on Arafat, as Sharon does, is also unfair. The fact is that the Palestinians have so far failed to produce an alternative leadership. (They had one in 1991 but were forced by Israel to abandon it for Arafat).
Talk of reform in Palestine will get nowhere unless it is linked to the key issue: The creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state. The Palestinians need to develop their own peace plan part of which will deal with the political structures they hope to develop in their future state. Without such a plan all talk of reform would be a waste of time, and, sadly, also a waste of lives.
