Advertisement

Dissidents’ Detentions Stir Debate About Arafat’s Grip

Share
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ismat Shakhshir, in her 50s and a mother of four, doesn’t seem a formidable threat to the regime of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Nor does Bassam Shaka, a former mayor of Nablus left legless in a bombing nearly 20 years ago.

Yet the two are members of a group of prominent Palestinians, including nine legislators, whose scathing criticism of Arafat’s rule has roiled Palestinian politics like never before.

Arafat, furious at a blistering petition signed by the dissidents, has thrown most of them in jail--retaliation that has only added fuel to a firestorm of protest calling into question the aging leader’s legitimacy and popularity even as he pursues the most delicate phase yet of peace negotiations with Israel.

Advertisement

One of the dissidents, Nablus legislator Mouayiwah Masri, was shot and wounded Wednesday night by four masked gunmen who confronted him on the doorstep of his home.

At the heart of the debate is whether the Palestinian state that Arafat hopes to build will be a democratic one in which dissent is tolerated.

“This is not a matter of a few people signing a statement,” Shakhshir said Wednesday in her Nablus residence. “We are all one people suffering the same thing. We care about Palestine--and its people are boiling.”

Earlier this week, Shakhshir, a chemistry lecturer at An Najah University in this northern West Bank city, was ordered to police headquarters and grilled for 20 hours over two days after she and 19 other academics, professionals and lawmakers signed a petition accusing the Palestinian Authority of rampant corruption, injustice and betrayal. All but the legislators have been jailed or put under house arrest.

The meting out of justice under the Arafat regime has long been criticized by international monitors. Hundreds of people are believed to be held in jail without formal charges. Most, however, are alleged supporters of militant Islamic organizations such as Hamas.

The Palestinian legislature met Wednesday in a closed-door session in Gaza City to consider stripping the nine legislators of their immunity, which would have cleared the way for their arrest along with the other dissidents. In a stormy session, the legislature stopped short of that but condemned the dissidents’ “defamation and curses” and rejected what it called their “invitation to internal revolt.”

Advertisement

Masri had just returned to Nablus from the Gaza meeting when he was shot. Senior aides to Arafat decried the shooting.

The dissidents’ leaflet, which was made public Sunday, accused the ruling Palestinian Authority of “a systematic methodology of corruption, humiliation and abuse against the people” and urged Palestinians to “stand together against this tyranny.”

While accusations of institutionalized graft and heavy-handed repression aren’t new, the petition took the rare step of singling out Arafat for blame. The anger is part of a growing disillusionment with Arafat--and doubt that he is up to the task of negotiating a future Palestine.

The contentious matter comes as Israel and the Palestinians embark on the so-called final status negotiations aimed at resolving the most difficult outstanding issues as part of a definitive peace settlement. It also comes less than a year before Arafat’s deadline for declaring an independent state.

Instead of confronting the substance of the complaints against his regime, however, Arafat and his aides chose to attack their critics, accusing the petition signers of sedition and conspiracy.

“They are shooting themselves in the foot,” said Khader Shkeirat, director of a leading Palestinian human rights organization. “The arrests will shake Palestinian unity to the core. It proves the weakness of the Palestinian Authority.”

Advertisement

To be sure, some of the signatories are members of hard-line Palestinian factions that oppose the peace agreements Arafat has reached with Israel. But the protest packed its wallop because the complaints resonated among vast segments of Palestinian society.

Many Palestinians believe that their leaders have used their positions and the largess of the international donor community to get rich while ordinary people languish in poverty. They feel that the landmark Oslo accords and other treaties with Israel have benefited the Israelis with little advantage for the Palestinians, who watch as Jewish settlers continue to build in the West Bank and 3 million Palestinian refugees lose hope of ever returning.

A report this year sponsored by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations found that unregulated and unaccountable monopolies that the Palestinian Authority uses to import commodities such as gasoline and cement lead to secret commercial dealings by public servants and privileged access for some businesspeople. An audit in 1997 by the Palestinian legislature found that millions of dollars were being lost annually through corruption and mismanagement; no significant reform resulted.

Nabil Amr, a senior Arafat aide, defended the crackdown on the dissidents and said any other such protest would be similarly dealt with. “The Palestinian Authority will not tolerate such statements,” he told reporters this week.

Much of the protest originated here in Nablus, with people like Shakhshir and Shaka. Nablus has the strongest industrial base of any Palestinian city, and residents say they especially feel the pinch of corrupt officials. A tightknit society, Nablus is also home to strong nationalist sentiment and resentment of the Palestinian Authority.

Shakhshir, a modern and secular woman dressed Wednesday in slacks and a houndstooth blazer, said Arafat has neglected Nablus in favor of building up Gaza, his principal power base.

Advertisement

“We feel that Abu Ammar [Arafat’s nom de guerre] is the president of Gaza, and we are secondary,” she said. During her interrogation, security agents tried to get her to recant her statement and then ordered her not to talk to the media, she said.

Shaka, a longtime critic of Arafat whose influence has declined through the years, said he signed the manifesto because Palestinians can no longer trust Arafat and his government to defend their interests.

“As usual, the Palestinian Authority believes it can threaten people, believes it can buy a few people and believes it can make deals with the Israelis freely without anyone saying anything about it,” he said. Arafat put him under house arrest, but Shaka said he ignored the order.

Shaka, 69, uses two prosthetic legs and a pair of metal crutches when he leaves the house, hobbling along with an unwieldy gait that nevertheless gets him where he has to go.

Also Wednesday, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, several thousand Arafat supporters marched through the streets. Many fired guns into the air and chanted their loyalty to the Palestinian leader.

In Gaza, the session of the legislature was tense but also allowed both sides to back off from the brink of what had been shaping up to be a major showdown. The body, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council, accused the dissidents of besmirching the good name of the “symbol of the Palestinian struggle and revolution, leader Yasser Arafat,” and formed a committee to monitor the behavior of the legislators. At the same time, Amr, the Arafat aide, promised that those in jail will be released soon.

Advertisement

One of the legislators who signed the document, Hassan Kharaisheh, spoke on behalf of the group to announce that the signatories stand by their allegations.

“We will not apologize,” he said.

Advertisement