Palestinian suffering is thus made the focus of an appeal to the U.N. -- including an abuse of the "Uniting for Peace" procedure (which enables the UN General Assembly to overrule the Security Council), and a spurious call for the Security Council to send forces, Kosovo-style, to "protect the Palestinian Territories" -- all in an obvious effort to walk away from the negotiating table and avoid the tough choices involved.

Evidence for such concepts of "Internationalization" being worked on by Nabil Sha'ath, the P.A. Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, has been available for well over a year (e.g. his statement to Al-Ayyam, an official P.A. organ, on May 9, 1999); the current drive for an international commission of inquiry is part and parcel of this design.

The Root Causes

What has led Arafat and the P.A. leadership to opt for violence and incitement as an instrument of policy? A consistent pattern of behavior over several weeks, with a clearly defined set of goals ("Internationalization" of the conflict) and with the means (televised Palestinian sacrifice and suffering) apparently well-tailored to achieve them, cannot be simply dismissed as a passing aberration or a "caprice." Within the limits of what modern political science calls "bounded rationality," Arafat's gamble is risky, but not irrational.

Still, to understand the root causes for this choice -- or rather, the Palestinian refusal to choose, once and for all, the path of peace -- it is necessary to point out, albeit briefly, some of the recurrent themes in Arafat's political conduct over the years.

Arafat's Strategy of Avoiding Choices

Throughout his tenure as a leader of Fatah movement and the P.L.O., Arafat attached particular importance to the principle of maintaining "Istiqlal al-Qarrar," i.e. his ability to avoid becoming anyone's "agent" (and there were many in the Palestinian arena identified as working for some Arab or foreign interests...).

A key element in his ability to do so, at least until a major crisis forced a choice or a decision on him, was the constant manoeuver between the poles of any regional or international system in which he worked -- Egypt and her rivals in the Arab world; the Cold War protagonists; the Syrians and their enemies in Lebanon.

In recent years, this pattern of "fence-sitting" and indecision evolved around two polarities:

* Playing the U.S. (with which he established a dialogue in December 1988) vs. Iraq (which he came to see as a heroic Arab counter-balance to U.S. power). To some extent, this tactic is still at work. While speaking favorably of Clinton (as distinct from the U.S. Congress...) at the Emergency Arab Summit in Cairo, Arafat also endorsed the call for the lifting of sanctions on the "Suffering Iraqi People." Pro-Iraqi sentiments, including the fervent call of demonstrators for Saddam Hussein to "hit, hit Tel Aviv" (with chemical warheads) are indeed rife among Palestinians even now, despite the lessons learned from the disastrous choice in 1990-1991.

* Playing the dialogue with Israel (and the formal obligations detailed above) vs. an ambivalent attitude towards the Hamas, terrorism, and the use of violence: the consequences of this way of keeping his options open, and avoiding any implication that he now "belongs" to Israel (like the former S.L.A. in Lebanon...) have become manifest in the recent crisis.

Diverting Attention from Domestic Failures

In recent months -- well before the Camp David Summit, and not necessarily in connection with Arafat's positions in the negotiations -- a broad body of evidence (albeit vague and circumstantial, given the lack of reliable tools to analyze Palestinian public sentiment under an authoritarian power structure) indicated that much of the P.A.'s initial credit with its own "constituency" has been spent: Khalil Shikaki's surveys of Palestinian opinion found that Arafat's approval rates have been falling steadily -- well below 40% -- and that a vast majority of respondents thought of the P.A. institutions as venal, corrupt and incompetent.

At the core of the problem is the system of centralized economic monopolies, dominated by Muhammad Rashid (Khalid Salam) and his PCSC -- with a monopoly of several basic commodities (Guardian, April 27, 1997); the al-Masri family and their holding company, PADICO; and the varied economic interests of the Security "bosses," Dahlan and Rajoub.

The results are clear to see: in a climate hostile to real competition and to transparent free market practices, blatant disregard for personal property, bribery, corruption and mismanagement of domestic and aid funds, as well as the lack of compliance with commitments to refrain from those customs have been well documented by the PA's own public monitoring department, the "donor countries" and numerous NGOs.

The most striking proof of the PA's mishandling of its population can be found in the lack of care for its

December 2000               - 11 -               Outpost