Arafat's death served Israel well, leaving the Palestinians in disarray, says Ghada Karmi* Last week I visited Arafat's mausoleum in Ramallah. It was a cold and rainy day, and I was among the only four visitors. At each corner around Arafat's tomb stood a stiffly upright soldier, solemn and respectful. The marble-lined mausoleum was simple and filled with light. Outside in the courtyard, on a white plaque, Mahmoud Darwish's eternal lines of tribute to Arafat were engraved, glistening in the rain. Standing there paying my own silent tribute, I wondered what, if he could come back to life, Arafat would think of the tragic chaos, division and internecine fighting that are destroying the Palestinians he led for four decades. In the last years before his mysterious death on 11 November 2004, it had become fashionable to denigrate Arafat and belittle his accomplishments. While he languished, a prisoner in two small rooms in his bombed-out Ramallah compound after 2001, his critics and enemies grew stronger. People spoke of change, and a new beginning, as if Arafat had been the cause of the Palestinian problem and his removal would solve it. Four years later, the Palestinian situation is dire and infinitely worse than when Arafat left it. The civil war that had threatened Palestinian stability and was a danger they constantly dreaded has now been unleashed in all its destructiveness. However much Arafat's critics might complain about him, and there was much to complain about, this was one outcome his presence would have averted. Arafat's departure from the political scene is the real backdrop to the civil war now raging between Fatah and Hamas. During his lifetime, Arafat's dominance over Palestinian politics was such as to make the current developments almost impossible to imagine. Despite disagreements and rivalry, his authority was unquestioned and his capacity for smoothing over internal divisions legendary. I met him several times, and was always struck by his political adroitness, charm and control of events. It is easy to forget that unifying a fragmented and geographically dispersed people, prone to political disharmony, as he did, was a remarkable achievement. No successor has been able to command the same authority or enjoy such affection and respect amongst Palestinians. Certainly not their current president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose low popularity ratings amongst Palestinians must call into question his capacity to represent them. With the rise of Hamas after the first Intifada of 1987-1991, Palestinian politics changed. As the 1990s drew to a close, Hamas had become a significant player and a challenge to the previous status quo of Fatah dominance in the Palestinian Authority and in the Palestine Liberation Organisation. It was Arafat's skill that kept Palestinian ranks united, in spite of this imbalance. The split between Fatah and Hamas that strengthened after Hamas's election as the major party in the new Palestinian Authority in 2006 would have been unthinkable, had Arafat been alive. And the conflict between them would never have reached its current vituperative and vicious levels. How tragic that in this mini-war the real enemy, Israel, has been all but forgotten. A meeting in Cairo to draw together the Palestinian factions was scheduled for this week. The idea, devised by the Egyptian government, was for talks aimed at forming a "national consensus government" that would unite Fatah, led by President Abbas, now ruling in the West Bank, with Hamas, under Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed prime minister, now ruling in Gaza. The new government would have the task of reforming the security services, and setting a date for presidential and legislative elections. As things stand, the Palestinian president's term expires on 8 January 2009. Hamas has said it will not recognise Abbas's presidency after the January deadline, and there have been persistent rumours that Abbas is considering extending his term of office without elections. It is clear to Palestine's people and the rest of the Arab world that the dangerous breach between the two rival parties must be healed. Several Arab states have threatened this week that, if the Cairo talks fail, they will boycott all Palestinian governments and terminate financial and political support. Yet, it is hard to see how the talks could have succeeded, given the level of mistrust, mutual insults and attacks that have become the norm for Fatah-Hamas dealings. Hamas had already threatened to boycott the talks if the 200 Hamas prisoners held in Fatah jails in the West Bank were not released, and Fatah rejected the release of anyone with a criminal conviction, in an eerie echo of Israel's refusal to discharge Palestinian prisoners "with blood on their hands". In this atmosphere of recriminations even before the start of the Cairo meeting, it was unlikely that anything would come of it. Unsurprisingly, Hamas has now pulled out. Previous attempts at bringing Hamas and Fatah together, brokered by the Yemeni and Senegalese governments respectively, have also come to nothing. For the major cause of these failures is the malignant interference of Israel and its Western backers in internal Palestinian affairs. When the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government was elected in 2006 Israel, the US and the European Union immediately imposed harsh sanctions, still in operation. At the same time, they set about strengthening the Fatah president's position and arming his forces in a blatant attempt to defeat the elected government. In June 2007, the anti-Hamas plots reached new heights with an attempted Fatah coup in Gaza, aiming to overthrow the Hamas government altogether. Preempted by Hamas, which anticipated the coup, it came to nothing but led to vicious internecine fighting between the two sides. Today, we have the spectacle of a Western-armed and trained Fatah force attacking Hamas supporters in the West Bank, and Hamas forces retaliating against Fatah members in Gaza. The only victor in this sorry scenario is Israel. The truth, well known to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at the time of Arafat's death, was that Arafat was the only barrier that stood between him and his determination to fragment the Palestinians and destroy their cause. Sharon's plan succeeded, Arafat was eliminated, and the Fatah-Hamas split is the result. Palestinian reunification now will be Arafat's best and most fitting epitaph. * The writer is professor at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, England and the author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine.
