Arafat's political death has been announced as often, and as prematurely, as the real thing, writes Azmi Bishara It is difficult to sum up the phase -- let's call it the Arafat era -- that began with the founding of Fatah, let alone to characterise how this affected the way the PLO was controlled, the type of elite that rose to prominence following 1967 and the type that was ousted. How to explain, in so many words, the meaning of Black September? Or the notion of a sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people? Or the period of Palestinian presence in Lebanon? The Intifada? The PLO's behaviour as a state before the creation of one? That Arafat's illness is proving so difficult to diagnose seems somehow fitting for a man whose life has proved equally resistant to definition. Nor has the time yet arrived when this task should be undertaken. There is, however, a pressing need to address the short history and ramifications of the siege that Arafat endured. Since the aim of that siege was nothing less than the political assassination of Arafat, an analysis can illuminate what lies in store during the post-Arafat period. The Palestinian president has been under siege for three years, a period during which he was confined to his headquarters. He was, it was regularly announced, no longer important, a marginal figure out of the loop. Arafat, in a word, had become irrelevant. Yet if this really were the case, why are Israel, the US and others so anxious for him to die that they have already written his obituaries? And how do you explain the paroxysms of alarm expressed by others at the very prospect of his death? In the wake of Camp David II the US and Israel, which not that long before had been busy patting Arafat on the back for having won the Nobel Peace prize following the signing of the Oslo Accords, began to regard him as an obstacle to peace. They were joined in this belief by those who felt that in rejecting Barak's proposals at Camp David II Arafat had forfeited an historic opportunity. They had no wish, though, to see him dead. They had no desire to create a martyr, something that would undermine the legitimacy of anyone who they had in mind to succeed him. This did not, however, preclude working to isolate him, to constantly deride his status, political powers and international prestige. Israel and the US declared him anathema to the American age. The Palestinian people lashed back with the fury of the wrongfully offended. In the process clinging to their leadership became part and parcel of the right to self-determination. Because of the relentless pace of a sensationalist media and a mind-set that views political alternatives in terms of personalities, added to which is the fact that Israel and the US have long been discussing possible candidates to take the place of Arafat, the political mood in Palestine is far removed from the mechanisms of institutionalised change. It feels as if we are in the grips of a monarchical succession crisis rather than part of a national liberation movement seeking a state. Theoretically, the PLO has long- established institutions: the PA, likewise, has institutions that must convene in order to choose. But everyone knows that the real selection process does not actually take place in the voting sessions of the National or Legislative Council, but in the parleying between political forces in advance of the ballot. Such is life in all parliamentary systems. At this particular juncture we can only hope that the prevailing concern will be to promote the unity of the Palestinian people during this stage in their fight for freedom. The fight for freedom was the clarion call of the second Intifada. Yet this struggle has been characterised by heated competition between the factions as they endeavour to upstage one another in mounting and claiming responsibility for operations. There is no strategic vision or plan. It is as if perpetuating the struggle has become an end in itself as the factions scramble to assert their leadership and uphold their claims to be the vanguard of the movement. The Palestinian struggle is now informed by any number of random elements at the regional, local -- and even alleyway -- level. Striking an upbeat mood, one can posit that these operations have a strategic logic in that they aim to teach Israelis a lesson and make them pay a price, if only that Palestinian society does not have to shoulder the burden of all the costs by itself. This, of course, assumes that making a society pay is a legitimate form of political pressure. Governments and peoples of the West, and indeed of most of the world, certainly since 11 September, believe that the use of violence against civilians as a means of pressuring a society's government falls squarely within the definition of terrorism. Not that this applies to Israel, which has long practiced collective punishment as a means to break the Palestinian will. The Palestinians and their friends, though, are expected, in spite of everything, to distinguish between the violence of the occupier and the violence of the occupied. And so they have, even under the most excruciating circumstances, to the degree that some official Arab and Palestinian quarters now brand Palestinian violence as terrorism. The Palestinian factions have yet to study the relationship between means and aims. They have consistently sidestepped the following questions: Can making Israeli society pay the price produce political gains? What kind of gains, precisely, are required? How and when can the price be converted into a political advance? What should they do if the political consequences of their acts are not those they had hoped for? Is the means to be held sacred regardless? And the most important question: How do you define a political achievement in the absence of an agreed upon strategy? Palestinian officials used the term "terrorist" to describe operations mounted by Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP long before Europe branded the entire Hamas movement as terrorist. In European usage such terms have specific consequences. When used by the Palestinians they have other ramifications. One could never imagine Palestinian officials denouncing a Palestinian grassroots resistance movement as terrorist had there had been such a thing as a strategic Palestinian- Palestinian dialogue. Nor was the last Palestinian government the first to avail itself of such terms; Arafat did so long before his prime minister. Since 11 September Israel has worked long and hard to paint the Palestinian national movement into a terrorist corner, the attempts exemplified by numerous comparisons between Arafat and Bin Laden in Israeli propaganda. Israel has reduced the entire Palestinian question to the problem of restructuring Palestinian security agencies to "fight terrorism", a task it has made a precondition for the resumption of negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state on 40 per cent of the West Bank. Regardless of the details, and whatever names they go by, this is the essence of Israeli-US demands in the roadmap. And this is the essence of the logic with which the PA has agreed to deal, a logic that holds that the solution to the Palestinian problem resides in clamping down on Palestinian "terrorism". There are those within the PA who deftly accommodated themselves to these new circumstances, bowing to American-Israeli logic, in whole or in part, and giving it a nice Arabic sugarcoating in order to avoid problems on the home front. Others embraced it for tactical reasons, banking on their powers of persuasion and the opportunity to make themselves heard in the US and Israel once the resistance calmed down a bit. Thus it was that the new Palestinian government attempted to bring a halt to Palestinian military operations by reaching a truce with the factions, for this was the only way to prevent the logic it had embraced from reaching its natural conclusion and precipitating a real Palestinian problem. And by problem I mean civil war. For Israel the function of the Palestinian prime minister, a post created by virtue of a US-European initiative circumventing Arafat and the Legislative Council, was to restructure Palestinian security forces and wrest control of them from Arafat and then to launch a domestic confrontation aimed at "dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism". When the new Palestinian leadership appointed by Arafat attempted, instead, to circumvent this Israeli perception of the way things should go by launching a dialogue aimed at reaching a ceasefire, Israel charged that the Palestinian prime minister was avoiding his obligations under the roadmap and stepped up its assassinations and other assaults against the Palestinians. When Palestinians retaliated Israel complained to the world that the new Palestinian leadership was weak, hoping that by doing so it would goad that leadership into a Palestinian-Palestinian clash. Meanwhile Arafat, whom the Israelis were determined to assassinate politically, was fighting tooth and nail to hold on to every power they sought to remove. Because political reform, long a Palestinian demand, was also an Israeli demand aimed at eliminating Arafat, the question of reform became inextricably confused with Israeli dictates. The result was an untenable jumble that ultimately compelled the prime minister to tender his resignation, the clincher being having to butt heads with the elected president over placing the security apparatuses under the control of the government. The facedown was over an illusion -- it was founded on the assumption that "fighting terrorism" was contingent upon removing the security forces from Arafat's grip. If the prime minister had not resigned what would have come next? Civil war? The question is pending, all the more so now that Arafat's hold over the security forces has been compromised by his failing health. The internal collision with Arafat took place against the backdrop of US-Israeli declarations that the Palestinian president was politically defunct, regardless of whether they continued to discuss his expulsion or assassination. Wresting the security apparatuses from his hands was an extension of his political assassination; his biological death could follow at its own timing as far as they were concerned. Yet it is this latter that now looms as a matter of utmost importance. Day and night the Israeli media issues premature death certificates in the hope that the monotony of repetition will diminish his importance in life and in death. Arafat's death has become crucial, and it has done so because he proved too resistant to political assassination. Sharon had so intensified his incitement against the man in whom he personified all evil that Israelis asked him to stop talking and do something about it. If Arafat was the source of all problems do what it takes to get rid of him, they told him. So, with regularity, if only to assuage people's blood thirst for a while, the Israeli government swore to expel or otherwise eliminate Arafat. However, when it came to actual execution Sharon had to plead that the decision could not be implemented because the international community was two-faced. In fact, Sharon knew that any decision of the kind was unfeasible, not because of his government's lack of resolve, and not because of an international community that ostensibly doted on Arafat, but because Washington would not put up with actions the consequences of which could not be gauged. The US does not like dealing with chaos. Nor could Israel's own security agencies make up their mind. Sometimes they encouraged the idea, sometimes they resisted it. And they were loath to create a martyr. Whenever the Israeli government announced a decision to get rid of Arafat, it was prompted by the following: they had received, for the first time -- it was always the first time -- information from a Palestinian source confirming beyond a doubt that Arafat, personally, stood in the way of any Palestinian who supported the changes for which the US and Israel were asking. The names of some of these sources were never cited publicly, others were whispered loudly down the corridors. (Time for an aside: readers may not care who runs to get their picture taken these days; some have abandoned the Muqataa or boycotted Arafat's office when it seemed that its time was up. Others came racing back in order to ride a popular wave and champion fixed principles in the face of Israeli dictates. Opportunism is in the nature of politics. Forget the old patriarchal cherchez la femme. Cherchez the opportunist -- and they are to be found hovering around cameras like moths to a flame -- is the byword these days. Opportunists are the key because they are attracted to the scent of power, however ephemeral that power or even if it is prone on a sickbed, and they stick to the scent until the scent evaporates, which is when they beat a hasty retreat. When opportunists start swarming in a certain direction you can be certain that is the way the winds of power are blowing. Unfortunately, their long-term calculations are often as weak as their sensory receptors are strong, which is why they often end up with mud on their face.) But what if they had gone ahead and removed the stumbling block called Arafat? What if that stumbling block goes away by itself? Death, after all, is the fate of us all. The Muqataa, as it has existed throughout the years of the siege, feeds only the illusion of the existence of power. That illusion has to go. Even to create government cabinets is a mistake because everyone is under occupation, from the minister down to the cloakroom attendant. The end of Arafat will not usher in a new authority but rather it will destroy the illusion of authority and bring us back to the pre-Oslo period. It will be better when the lines are clear -- occupation versus the resistance -- and when Arafat won't be there to blame for every disaster. The argument does have a certain cogency. But Israel is not occupying the Palestinian population directly and in the absence of a Palestinian authority there will be no one around to administer the occupied territories, even partially, as was the case in the first Intifada. What we will have is chaos. Or to put the matter more bluntly, if the Palestinians do not opt for of an organised national liberation movement their choice will be between chaos or a new authority more dependent on Israel. Arafat has sought refuge with the Palestinian people time and time again. The thinner the reality of the man the fatter grew his symbolism, echoing the drive to transform the president as symbol in to a symbolic president. The vacant seat is the last vestige of this transformation. What need has anyone for an empty chair? Fill it with somebody who will not bow to Israeli dictates. To leave it vacant while the man is still alive, or after his death, will avail no one. Loyalty to the absent leader symbolised by an empty chair does not compensate for political vacancy. As Israel sank deeper in its own violence it could come up with nothing better than the unilateral disengagement plan, designed to toss the roadmap in to the rubbish bin. The newly reelected president in Washington has promised to fish out the roadmap, but this will only be to consign it to another bin. We should be wary of celebrating any US-Israel action in the absence of Arafat, for that action will have a clearly constructed ceiling, as couched in the letters of guarantee Bush gave to Sharon. There was nothing personal in the Palestinian prime minister's resignation, even from Washington's perspective. Washington never places all its chips on an individual, regardless of the fact that the prime minister received more than his share of compliments from the US president at a time when the US had no need to flatter anyone. Bush was courteous enough to laugh at a joke made by one of the members of the Palestinian prime minister's delegation to the Aqaba summit. If you soften when ordinary people laugh at your jokes, imagine the effect if you extract a chuckle from the US president. You are bound to think that you have become an international leader. That the US did not give Israel the green light to attack Arafat's headquarters as soon as the prime minister resigned had nothing to do with courtesy or other personal considerations. A new prime minister was what was called for and Washington dealt with him, and there was nothing personal in that either, as will be the case in the post-Arafat phase. Only Arafat became a personal matter for the US, because Arafat was expected to cooperate in marginalising himself. His job was to go on living in order to legitimise the person who replaced him, for which thankless task that person is not even supposed to extend him the courtesy of inviting him to pull up a seat. America's demand to Arafat to appoint a person to replace him reminds me of an Israeli bra commercial of the 1970s that went: "It's there but you feel it's not". That is what the Americans wanted from Arafat: he was supposed to make them feel as though he was not there. But Arafat refused not to have his presence felt. As for Sharon, he neither wanted Arafat there nor to feel he wasn't there. That is because Sharon has nothing to offer that might lead to an acceptable agreement; all he has are unilateral dictates and assassinations. A structural contradiction must be afoot when, interiorly, the legitimacy of the leadership, including that of Arafat, is rooted in the language of a national liberation movement, and when, exteriorly, the language of terrorism and anti-terrorism produces other, unaccustomed sources of legitimacy for this leadership, including the electoral process. There has been a lot of talk recently about the legitimacy of Arafat as an elected president versus a terrorist, whereas there has been no mention of Arafat as the leader of a national liberation movement. Elections or terrorism, a state or a terrorist movement -- these are the stark choices in the discourse of the moment, when the national liberation movement has vanished from political culture. This contradiction can only lead to crisis, and the contradiction did not disappear with the changing of the prime ministerial guard. The current prime minister has adopted a position that is not fundamentally different from the policy of the prime minister who resigned, but, as expected, faces the same problems and predicaments, from which there are only two ways out. The first is to accept the Israeli dictate, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian entity of limited sovereignty on 40 per cent of the West Bank, even if this acceptance is understood as a long term interim phase. The path to this state, as they will call it, leads through the provisions of the first roadmap, which are most accurately summed up as a recipe for a Palestinian civil war. At the end of the tunnel there will not be light but rather an entity and leadership structurally bound to Israel. The second alternative is to take the route of national liberation. Apart from these two alternatives, there is only the game of waiting and seeing: waiting for the US electoral results, waiting until Sharon falls, waiting until Arafat dies... waiting until the horse talks. And thus we cross the threshold into the post-Arafat phase. In Arafat's absence the Palestinian leadership behaved most appropriately in their handling of the affairs at hand. The PLO Executive Council secretary, the prime minister, the rest of the cabinet -- all performed the duties as required by the offices they occupy. This is a healthy and encouraging sign, but it is not enough to answer the big questions. These will only be resolved through a conflict between and within the various political forces or through the unification of these forces. These two alternatives must be borne in mind as Palestinians contemplate their next steps. The option, suggested to Abu Mazen, of accepting the conditions Arafat had rejected in order to reach an interim deal with Sharon means that those in favour of this course must be prepared for infighting within Fatah and then a head-on collision with Hamas. We have seen infighting and revolts against Arafat while he was alive. Imagine how these will play out once he is gone. Recently, in their attempt to settle squabbles in their favour, his adversaries brandished pictures of Arafat -- he is a symbol, after all, so what is to prevent using the symbol against the man? Palestinians must be careful. Whether Arafat lives or dies, they must do their utmost to tighten ranks and safeguard national unity. Under the current circumstances this requires the realisation of two conditions. The first is to form a unified national leadership committed to a collective political programme. The second is to adopt a rational resistance strategy to which all are bound. This strategy must proceed from the premise that there are no viable political solutions on offer as long as Sharon is around, but it must simultaneously reject the logic of spontaneous retaliatory actions and reactions. It must work to rally the ability of the Palestinian people to hold out over the long term and to otherwise furnish the needs for an organised, sustained and solid resistance movement capable of addressing the international community and public opinion in the US and Israel, and above all capable of keeping its sights on its ultimate objective: liberation from occupation. But who will choose? The pursuit of the answer to this question should usher in the historic opportunity to subject the past to scrutiny and to embrace the values and ethics essential to a democratic national liberation movement. Only such a choice can withstand Sharon's and Washington's dictates and, moreover, counter with a democratic alternative of its own. But perhaps choices of this kind are only ever an illusion. Positing theoretical options assumes political leaderships, with no will of their own, making shopping lists of options as if they were items on display on history's shelf. It may well be that the first choice of the new leadership will be to stay in power, even if the price of that is becoming itself an item displayed on history's shelf, just like the surrounding regimes.
