Palestinian President Yasser Arafat appears, once again, to have held off challenges to his rule. But his latest victory does not answer the question of what will happen when he finally does leave the political scene.
When Arafat was seriously ill last year, Palestinians were near panic. Ahmad Dudin, former Fatah leader in Hebron, summed up the dilemma this way: "The Palestinian Authority has always been a one-man operation. Arafat never really agreed to share power. That is the problem."
Not only does Arafat have no designated successor, but he has crippled the creation of institutions that could provide for a smooth transition, develop new leaders, mediate disputes among competing candidates and factions, or check the power of a future dictator.
But at some point, Arafat will depart. He is 74 years old, and cannot be described as healthy. Arafat's ability to symbolize the Palestinian cause throughout the world has worn thin in recent years, but any successor would be more obscure.
So what will happen when a transition is forced on the Palestinian movement by his demise? The best way to address that question is to focus not on who, but on what, would replace Arafat. In a certain sense, Arafat is the Palestinian Authority. As a pro-reform Fatah official put it: "This is Arafat's narcissism. And we are all suffering from it. I am afraid the Palestinian people will still be suffering from it even after his death."
Arafat's departure will leave a vacuum that no other institution or leader will be able to fill. Indeed, Arafat has had several roles, and in each of them his stature has been unique. While nominally the Palestinians have a collective leadership, the reality is that Arafat has overwhelming control. He has been the Palestinian movement's sole leader almost from the day he founded it in 1959. Other contenders, like Abu Jihad and Abu Iyad, were assassinated, and Faisal al-Husseini -- the only major leader to rise to prominence within the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- died young. Arafat alone has the power to make everyone obey him, even if he often decides not to exercise this power.
Some argue that an obvious alternative to Arafat is democracy. But the more likely outcome is an unstable and ineffective collective leadership, a division of power into fiefdoms, or a high degree of anarchy. In a post-Arafat situation, it will be much harder for any successor or successors to impose discipline and hierarchy on the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority or Fatah.
Nor will Arafat's departure revive hopes for a political settlement with Israel. True, Arafat's refusal to authorize crucial compromises on such matters as Israel's legitimacy and Palestine's borders has been a critical reason for the failure to resolve the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflicts. Given Arafat's stature and control over the movement, he could have downsized the Palestinians' goals to acceptance of a state in only part of historic Palestine. But he never took the leap, and the major issues remain unresolved.
The problem is that even if future Palestinian leaders want to resolve the issues that block peace with Israel, doing so will be far more difficult than it would have been for Arafat. Under Arafat's long rule, whole generations of Palestinians have been indoctrinated with the belief that only total victory is acceptable. Indeed, beyond day-to-day policies, Arafat has constructed the Palestinian movement's intellectual and psycho-political style, which is dogmatic and uncompromising. Arafat's legacy is thus a political culture in which a leader may portray a disastrous tactic, strategy or outcome as a victory and be believed. So no political price is ever paid for continuing wars that cannot be won or making demands that will not be met.
The acceptance of violence without limit will be the most devastating feature of Arafat's legacy. Many movements throughout history have used violence, but few have so thoroughly justified and romanticized it.
This problem will not go away when Arafat does. How can someone with less legitimacy than Arafat escape this justification of violence? Entire groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades -- and their leaders owe their power to their willingness to kill Israelis, which has become the ultimate measure of political virtue. Any effort by Palestinian security authorities to put down these groups by force would lead to far more violence.
Arafat's refusal to take sides ideologically helped create an illusion of Palestinian unity, with everyone dedicated to a single Palestinian struggle. He achieved this consensus by devaluing statehood as an end in itself, building political unity on the myth of an idealized pre-1948 Palestinian society that could be "recreated" on the basis of the "right of return" and Israel's disappearance.
These aims are never going to be realized, but they also have never been subordinated to "ending the occupation," so they form the glue of Palestinian nationalism. In today's divisive circumstances, the emergence of a new Palestinian leader will most likely take years. During that interregnum, we should expect deadlock, anarchy or civil war.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs, and co-author of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography. Copyright: Project Syndicate
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