Doubts Over Leadership Stir Palestinian Fears

The moment President Clinton sets foot in Gaza and the West Bank in a few days, Palestinians will celebrate what they see as the supreme endorsement of their creation of an independent state.

Whether or not it was the U.S. intention, Clinton’s visit will add to the stormy debate over recognition of a sovereign Palestinian nation, a 50-year-old goal that Palestinians are finally beginning to believe is inevitable. Their leader, Yasser Arafat, has repeatedly announced his intentions to declare independence in May. The Israeli government has repeatedly stated its intentions to oppose that.

But for many Palestinians, lurking behind the public euphoria are nagging, soul-wrenching questions about what their state might look like--and whether the Palestinian leadership is equipped to run a democratic government.

Given its dismal track record of little democracy and a lot of corruption, the Palestinian Authority under Arafat does not inspire great confidence, according to many Palestinian human rights activists, politicians and ordinary residents. All cherish the ideal of statehood; some are troubled by the way it is evolving.

“We are not ready,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, a member of the Palestinian legislature. “How can we establish a state without first establishing democracy, human rights and laws? We are without laws, and without laws we cannot organize a democratic life.”

The Palestinian Legislative Council on which Qader sits is a good example. Elected in 1996, two years after the Palestinian Authority assumed power in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, the 88-member council has passed dozens of laws. Arafat ignores most of them.

Most significantly, for two years, Arafat has refused to sign the Basic Law, essentially a constitution that would be the foundation for forming democratic institutions. Among other things, it outlines--and would limit--the powers wielded by the branches of Palestinian government, including the presidency.

‘We Are Running Out of Time,’ Critic Says

Critics say that Arafat continues to rule the Palestinian Authority the way he ran the Palestine Liberation Organization while in exile in Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan, with centralized authority and no power-sharing. The 69-year-old leader, now in poor health, has failed to make a complete transition from an underground guerrilla mentality to modern, open governing. Succession is deliberately unclear.

“The old mind-sets and old habits are hard to change,” said Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian politician who bolted from Arafat’s Cabinet this summer in a dispute over what she and others saw as his continued tolerance of corruption and mismanagement. “We are running out of time.

“As the leadership loses support, the leadership will resort to other nondemocratic means. What I thought would be a temporary transition is becoming the emergent system.”

Complaints about Arafat’s autocratic style are not new, but they have taken on urgency as Palestinians assume many of the trappings, if not the substance, of statehood, and as Arafat’s May deadline looms.

And, as a byproduct of the new U.S.-brokered peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel, Arafat’s government has cracked down on dissidents and arrested scores of opponents and critics, further tarnishing a dubious human rights record. Many of them--although not all--were Islamic fundamentalists detained in the stated interest of fighting terrorism, moves praised by the U.S.

The ambivalence that many Palestinians feel toward their future state is rarely voiced openly, but there are indications. A recent poll taken by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, for example, reflected widespread disappointment with the Palestinian leadership, which was seen as corrupt and ineffective.

Of even more interest, those polled said democracy and human rights were better respected in Israel than under the Palestinian Authority. In fact, Israel was rated higher than the U.S.

And Arafat scored his lowest level of support in four years of polling by the center, based in the West Bank city of Nablus.

In the seven weeks since the peace agreement was signed, Palestinian security forces have opened fire on fellow Palestinians on at least two occasions. In Nablus this week, police shot it out with demonstrators protesting against Arafat; in late October in Ramallah, two days after the peace accord was signed, an attempt by one security agency to confiscate weapons from another led to a firefight in which an 18-year-old student was killed.

Later, at the young man’s funeral, thousands of Palestinians marched through Ramallah, led by a banner that proclaimed, “We do not deserve a homeland where we cannot protect our own existence.”

Khalid Halo, a 39-year-old physician, was among the marchers.

“What we have seen so far of a Palestinian state does not live up to our dreams,” he said. “The Palestinian Authority has not tried hard enough to meet the real aspirations of those wanting a homeland and a democratic society.”

Palestinian rule is certainly less heavy-handed and more fair than the norm in most Arab countries. But the difference for Halo, for Qader the legislator and for many other Palestinians is that their expectations also are higher.

Many Palestinians who were exiled from their homeland were schooled in the West and have seen what democracy is supposed to look like. Those who stayed in the occupied territories also could look across the line to Israel, where democracy, at least for Israelis, means open public debate, vibrant media and relative economic prosperity.

The potential for real nation-building may lie in the Palestinian grass roots and with midlevel professionals and new-generation political activists--not with Arafat and his cadres, say international experts and numerous Palestinians.

“I am cautiously optimistic that in the long run--15, 20, 25 years down the line--there will be a generally democratic government here,” said a U.S. official who advises the Palestinian Authority.

Intifada Veterans Have Higher Expectations

Palestinians who remained in the West Bank and in Gaza, and who fought in the intifada, or uprising, against Israel, also have high expectations--expectations that often clash with those of Arafat’s former PLO commanders, said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the director of a Palestinian think tank.

Many of those forced to flee lost everything they owned, he noted, and are using their ascent to mini-power as a means for recouping financial losses and status. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind got used to resisting occupation and fighting the system.

“They were accustomed to criticizing, they were raised on the stones of the intifada, and they had nothing to be afraid of,” Hadi said. “All those years, the PLO was their sole legitimate representative. But the PLO that they had dreamt of and were expecting [to return] is not the PLO they got. That is the crisis.”

The debate over the timing of the creation of a state divides into two schools of thought: Is it better to have a state that is flawed but sovereign; or will a state that is bad backfire when Israel can point to its shortcomings and undermine its ability to function?

With no control over its boundaries, and with official corruption siphoning off millions of dollars in aid and investment, the Palestinian-ruled areas have suffered economically since the 1993 Oslo accords set the peace process in motion.

Palestinian leaders hope that the opening of an airport last month--the flashiest of their newly acquired signs of statehood--will boost the economy by facilitating commerce.

Clinton is scheduled to fly into the airport. After Israel got wind of the possibility that Air Force One might touch down at the Gaza facility, the uproar subsided only when the Israelis were assured that Clinton would travel in a less ostentatious helicopter.