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Visit our
GAMLA Slide Show
presenting several
pictures of the life
of Shlomo Baum Z"L

    21 November, 2000

    Palestinian Authority and P.L.O. Non-Compliance with signed agreements and commitments: A record of bad faith and misconduct

    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 lactic 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 Failure

    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 - w ell bellow 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 NGO's.

    [Graph: The development of the Palestinian Real Product per capita
    1993 = 100 (shows peak in 1994 with decline until 1997 followed by partial recovery up to first half of 2000]

    The most striking proof of the PA'S mishandling of its population can be found in the lack of care for its most needy population - the refugees. Not only does the PA insist on not using any portion of its budget towards improving their living standards, it is demanding 'that the international community increases its support for them.

    Calls upon Arafat, by some of his best friends - such as the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) team, which examined Palestinian governance - - went unheeded, and calls for change from within were roughly repressed. Given this bleak prospect (which reportedly led even Jerusalem's Palestinian residents, let alone Israeli Arabs, to resist the notion of being transferred to P.A. governance...)

    It is not surprising that Arafat may have felt more comfortable igniting a nationalist struggle - and pinning the blame for future deprivations on Israel - than focusing on the urgent need to reform the Palestinian system.

    Conspiracy Theories and Miscalculations

    Another recurrent pattern which does color Arafat's judgement, at times - and was certainly evident in the manner in which he "explained" the current crisis to the Emergency Session of the Arab Summit - is his tendency to weave conspiracy theories (Mu'amarat) and use them, with a thin line separating fact from fiction.

    Thus - as an example - in a series of interviews in March and April 1995, including a fascinating meeting with a sympathetic Israeli and American audience, Arafat raised the argument that a secret Israeli organization - an "O.A.S." within the GSS... - working through the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was in fact responsible for a series of terrorist attacks such as the bombing in Beit Lid (in which 22 Israelis died). It should be noted that this fantastic argument came (already then) in conjunction w ith a warning: any attempt by Israel to stall on the peace process - because of the security "excuse", as he saw it - would have a terrible affect on Israel's standing in the world:-

    "King Hussein will not go on with you, the Egyptians will not, Senegal will not, Mandela will not, if the process with us fails ...not with the whole of Africa, and the five Muslim states in Central Asia, not with all of them, not even with China. You know how strong our links are with all of these states..." (Gid'on Levi in "Haaretz", April 28, 1995; see also "al-Hayyat l-Jadidah", March 22, 1995).

    This mixture of wild conspiracy theory, and the threat that Israel, the region and the world will know no stability - unless his demands are met - was central, more recently, to his speech in Cairo, where he blamed Israel and the I.D.F. for having conspired for more than a year to prepare the "butchery" of the Palestinian people: hence the urgent need for international protection to be introduced into all "Palestinian Territories".

    The danger implicit in such manipulative assertions and "claims on reality" is that they can easily develop into a major misreading of the situation and a harmful miscalculation – as was the case in 1995, when Arafat absolved himself in this manner from any serious effort to curb terrorism; and might be the case now.