RAMALLAH, West Bank, — Irrelevant? Never.
That’s the message, Palestinian analysts and officials say, that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat hopes to deliver about himself to the United States by making a power play against moderate Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
Arafat’s ploy, at a crucial time for a US-backed peace plan, is to force Washington to stop ostracizing him and deal directly with him to salvage the “road map” to a Palestinian state, they added.
Flexing his muscles, the 74-year-old leader has been trying to strengthen his already solid hold on Palestinian security forces in the face of US demands for Abbas to act now against militants opposed to peaceful coexistence with Israel.
And with the collapse of a truce last week and a surge in tit-for-tat Israeli-Palestinian violence, Arafat appears to have won at least a grudging acknowledgement from Washington that its road map may go nowhere without him.
In a politically embarrassing public appeal, US Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Arafat last week to help Abbas take steps to end bloodshed that has included a Palestinian suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus and Israeli killings of militants.
But in a sign that Arafat’s strategy may not be working, the White House accused him on Tuesday of undermining Abbas’s efforts to win more sway over Palestinian security forces.
The criticism followed a refusal by Arafat to cede control of two major security forces to the reformist prime minister he reluctantly appointed under US pressure last April.
Arafat further undermined Abbas by naming a new national security adviser who might clip the wings of Security Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan, a US favorite.
“By blocking the consolidation of the Palestinian security services under Prime Minister Abbas, Yasser Arafat undercuts the fight against terrorism and further undermines the hopes of the Palestinians for peace and for a Palestinian state,” White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan told reporters.
The United States has accused the veteran Palestinian leader of fomenting violence in a 35-month-old uprising for statehood, an allegation he denies.
“Yasser Arafat is telling the world that he is the only one pulling the strings,” Palestinian political analyst Mahdi Abdul Hadi told Reuters.
Arafat, viewed by his people as the icon of their quest for independence, is no longer welcome in Washington and spends his time in his battered headquarters in the Israeli-surrounded city of Ramallah in the West Bank.
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Arafat said he was not much concerned whether Washington talks to him directly or not. “I was elected by the Palestinian people and this is Palestine, this is not Afghanistan,” he said with a shrug.
But in private, Arafat is sour.
“Arafat sometimes complains, why should Abu Mazen (Abbas) be received as a statesman at the White House and why do they turn to him (Arafat) only to become their policeman,” a senior Palestinian official told Reuters.
“But Arafat is willing to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad like he did in 1996 if the United States talks to him directly and pressures (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon to make political moves,” the official said.
Those Israeli steps, Palestinian officials said, must include the lifting of the physical siege imposed on him.
Heaping more pressure on Abbas, the leadership of Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction — coaxed by the president — decided this week to replace Abbas as interior minister and nominated the former West Bank security chief for the job.
The crunch could come next week, when Abbas delivers a “state of his government” address to the Palestinian Parliament in a session which legislators said could lead to a confidence vote.
Abbas, a former peace negotiator, has been handicapped by a lack of popularity with many Palestinians who believe he owes his position only to US-Israeli pressure. His inability to end Israeli incursions and blockades has weakened him too.
“The rift between Arafat and Abu Mazen is not political, nor is it over whether one wants to crack down on militants and the other doesn’t,” a Palestinian official said.
“Abu Mazen and Arafat agree on the same political lines and Arafat may be more pragmatic than Abbas. But the struggle between them is that each person is trying to prove to the Americans that only he can deliver,” the official told Reuters.
“If this power struggle continues, there will be a stalemate in the peace process and possibly a civil war,” he said.
- Arab News Opinion 28 August 2003