Palestinians Struggling With Course of Reform

JERUSALEM —  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s demand that the Palestinian Authority reform itself from top to bottom poses this dilemma for Palestinians: What to do when you love the message but hate the messenger?

As they pick through the wreckage of their state-in-the-making after Israel recently ended its six-week sweep of the West Bank, many Palestinians are blaming Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat for failing to defend them or save their cities from temporary reoccupation. In an increasingly public way, they agree with Sharon and President Bush that the time for change is overdue.

Would-be reformers say they would like to see Arafat forced to restructure his bureaucracy, institute financial accountability and hold new elections. But even the Palestinian leader’s harshest critics want Palestinians deciding what needs to be changed and how to do it. They don’t want to be told by their most hated enemy.

“Maybe this time, the demand for reform is different,” said Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator from the Gaza Strip. “If we don’t do it ourselves, it may be forced on us, and it won’t be to our liking.

“We are worried because the kind of reform the Palestinian nationalists want to see is not compatible with what Bush and Sharon want,” Abu Amr said in a recent interview in Gaza City. “They want to solve security interests. We want to address Palestinian political interests.”

Sharon and Bush apparently want a Palestinian Authority that will jail gunmen and sign a peace accord with Israel. Many Palestinians want an authority that will stand up to Israel, back armed struggle and implement the will of the people.

“If there were a democracy in Egypt, it is reasonable to assume that we would not have a peace agreement with it,” Israeli political analyst Hemi Shalev wrote in the newspaper Maariv. “Israel’s supreme interest is not to confer rules of proper administration on the Palestinians but to establish a regime that wants and is capable of reaching an agreement with Israel.”

The United States and Israel, Abu Amr and other Palestinians allege, helped set up the Palestinian Authority as an autocratic and corrupt regime that has routinely violated the human rights of its citizens. Why should Palestinians believe that Washington and the Israelis are now truly interested in democratic reforms?

“A democratic Palestinian Authority would make Palestinians more insistent on human rights, on ending the occupation and on achieving a fair political settlement,” Abu Amr said. Such a government, he said, would cause headaches for any Israeli government because Israelis “have a vision they want to impose on Palestinians” of a final agreement.

‘Mixed Feelings’

Watching Arafat tour Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity on Monday for the first time since a 39-day standoff there between the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen was resolved, Palestinian entrepreneur and legislator Daoud Zeer said that, whatever the impetus, reform must come quickly.

More than 19 months of fighting have reduced the once-bustling pilgrimage city to a garbage-strewn ghost town of empty hotels and restaurants. Local businesses have died and foreign investment has disappeared, Zeer said.

“Right now, we have to fix our home from the inside,” he said. “We have to change and reconstruct, or we won’t have stability.”

For decades, first as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and later as president of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat has resisted every call for reform.

He has led his people from disaster to disaster--the PLO’s 1970 expulsion from Jordan, its 1982 expulsion from Beirut and its near-consignment to political oblivion after he chose to back Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But Arafat has beaten back every demand that he loosen his autocratic grip on power.

“The mixed feelings toward Arafat among Palestinians have been evident all along,” said Said Zeedani, director general of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights, a human rights organization with offices in Gaza City and the West Bank town of Ramallah.

“He is the unchallenged, recognized leader. But at the same time, there has always been criticism, particularly when it comes to institution-building--there, he’s the antihero.”

A Broken Bureaucracy

Now, Arafat’s bureaucracy is a shambles. His security services are in disarray, with the various chiefs openly sniping at one another and vying for power. Reconstruction efforts have hardly begun, and Israel is still threatening to duplicate its massive West Bank operation in the Gaza Strip if Palestinian militants resume attacks inside Israel.

“The Palestinian people are fed up,” said Ali Jirbawi, a Palestinian political scientist at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. “See how many people greeted him today in Bethlehem, in Jenin? The crowds were not large and not loud. People feel that everything has collapsed, and they blame internal corruption.”

Against that backdrop, what had mostly been griping around Palestinian dining room tables and in coffeehouses about the widely perceived corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority is now a lively debate in the Palestinian press and political circles.

And some senior officials are joining the chorus of complaints.

“The sooner reform is carried out, the better the Palestinian society will be,” said Arafat’s deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mazen. “Delaying the reform means consolidating the present situation, which means that we will not be able to win any political or security or economic battle,” Abbas said in an interview with the East Jerusalem Arabic newspaper Al Quds.

Abbas said the PLO leadership is holding a series of what he called “intensive” meetings with Arafat, discussing “the means of repairing the malfunction that occurred during the 34 days of occupation [around Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah]. We do not want the chaos that occurred to reoccur.”

Abbas has joined reformers in calling for elections for a new Palestinian Legislative Council and municipal leaders within a few months as a first step toward building real political institutions. But beyond holding elections, few of the supporters of reform can offer concrete proposals for how to strengthen democracy and end corruption.

“That is what is missing from the discourse: the mechanics of how we will make reforms happen,” Zeedani said.