Jericho’s Guessing Game: When Will Arafat Arrive?

A five-bedroom villa has been rented, the town’s merchants are finishing their cleanup campaign, the Palestinian Scouts are practicing their marching and drumming, and vantage points have been found for nearly 100 television cameras around Jericho’s main square.

But no one in Jericho has an answer--one that is not rank speculation--for the question that everyone is asking: “When is Yasser Arafat coming?”

Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the head of the new Palestinian Authority governing the Gaza Strip and the Jericho District in the West Bank, readily gives out hints--”before the end of this month,” “within days,” “soon”--but he has not yet said precisely when.

“From Tunis, we hear everything and nothing,” a Palestinian official said of the PLO headquarters in the Tunisian capital. “Every day we get new possible dates, new scenarios, new requests, but none of it amounts to a plan. . . . Well, if Rome was not built in a day, neither, I suspect, will Palestine.”

Yet the uncertainty is bringing Angst to Palestinians here in Jericho, in the rest of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, for Arafat’s ceremonial return to his homeland is intended to symbolize not just the end of Israeli occupation but the start of Palestinian rule.

“These men are preparing the way, just that,” Ahmed Abdel Rahman, 48, a merchant visiting from the West Bank city of Hebron, said as he watched a squad of the new Palestinian police cart furniture and files into a government office building. “Only when Arafat arrives will we have self-government.”

Although Saeb Erekat, the minister for local government in the Palestinian Authority, denied it with vehemence, ticking off the 22 departments that have been staffed and the 393 official forms that have been printed, Jericho and Gaza have fallen into an interregnum with the end of Israel’s military government and the fumbling start of Palestinian autonomy.

Letters cannot be mailed from local post offices because the Palestinian Authority has not printed any stamps, Israeli identification cards are still used by all, including the newly arrived police offices and PLO officials, and local merchants are providing almost everything on credit because the new government has yet to open a bank account.

“Only a fool would think that we could reverse 27 years of Israeli occupation in a month,” Erekat said. “In fact, we are engaged in something even larger and more profound--the establishment of the first Palestinian government and eventually the first Palestinian state.”

For most Palestinians, however, Arafat is the symbol of that process--and his absence is equally significant.

With his black-and-white headdress starched and artfully draped in the shape of historic Palestine, his military tunic and his seemingly permanent three-day stubble, Arafat became the emblematic figure in the national struggle for self-determination.

“Certainly, people are impatient for Arafat’s arrival for it represents our takeoff point,” Erekat said. “The Israeli withdrawal, the Palestinian police, PLO cadres arriving--all is preparatory. In the minds of the people, autonomy begins when Arafat crosses the Allenby Bridge into Jericho.”

Arafat, who spoke with Erekat by telephone from Tunis on Saturday on a variety of issues, said only that he would be here “very soon.”

Arafat has ordered most of the PLO headquarters to leave Tunis by Wednesday, and PLO officials here were given a similar midweek deadline for all arrangements.

But little, it seems, can be done without Arafat, whose autocratic manner of leadership has long been a problem within the PLO.

Arafat retains the authority on all policy rulings, delegating very little even to ministers like Erekat, and he will make the key decisions, he has said, after assessing the situation personally.

Arafat’s primary appointments here and in Gaza have been almost solely police, security and intelligence officials and, at Israel’s insistence, two-thirds of the governing council; other appointments can wait, he has said, until he arrives.

And Arafat has kept control of the Palestinian Authority’s funds, both those that will come from international donors for the operations of the new government and economic development and those of the PLO that he has stashed away over the years.

“Arafat is letting the tension build deliberately,” said a leading member of the opposition Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, asking as most Palestinians do that he not be quoted by name in discussing Arafat. “He wants to demonstrate his centrality to the political process--that without him, nothing will be done--and he wants to ensure that he retains control.”

Arafat’s efforts to script his return for maximum political benefit were evident in his demand this month for the release of operating funds from Western donors as a condition for his arrival here.

On Friday, the donors allocated $42 million in immediate assistance, enough to last through August.

Arafat must also clear his visit with Israel. He promised Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin two weeks’ notice, and he has not given that yet.

Finally, he wants to arrive with all the pomp due a national leader who brought the reversal of his people’s fortunes.

“Arafat wants more than a royal welcome,” said Mohammed abu Rish. “This is to be the welcome for a conquering hero, a leader who freed his people.”

Paradoxically, Arafat has also made it clear in recent weeks that he will be visiting Jericho and probably Gaza but that he probably will spend most of his time in Tunis for a while.

Trusted Arafat lieutenants, sent from PLO headquarters in Tunis, are planning his arrival, and they talk of mass jubilation, an outpouring of emotion, a celebration that will echo around the world from this sleepy oasis town.

“Tens of thousands of people will pour in from around the West Bank,” said Mohammed Shaker, a police spokesman. “We expected maybe 100,000, if the town can hold that many. The rest will watch by television. You have to understand how long we have waited for this moment.”

Transformation of Hisham’s Palace, the main hotel with 30 rooms, into a press center with 100 international telephone lines and impromptu television studios will be completed shortly to serve the anticipated 3,000 journalists expected to descend on little Jericho, population 20,000.

U.S., European and Japanese television crews have made arrangements with local residents to rent their balconies and rooftops, generally at a cost of $3,000 to $5,000, to cover Arafat’s arrival and anticipated speech from City Hall in Jericho’s main square.

Jericho, meanwhile, is enjoying a boom as the interim seat of the Palestinian government.

Land prices have soared, and a shopping center, office complex and new hotel are under construction. Jobs are so plentiful, residents say, that Palestinians are coming from the Jerusalem area, 20 miles west, to work.

“Nobody knows when the president (Arafat) is coming, but we’ll be ready,” said Lt. Col. Munther Ersheid, the police officer presiding over the town government. “The paving is coming along, street lights are being fixed, the shopkeepers are painting up--it is a start on the changes we want to see all over Palestine. It will be a big day, but when it will come I can’t say.”