Arafat’s Woes Just Beginning

Yasser Arafat’s confinement may be coming to an end, but his political and diplomatic troubles are just beginning.

Inside his ruined compound, Arafat looked heroic to his people merely by enduring Israel’s siege. Once outside, he must address growing--and often conflicting-- demands from Palestinians and the international community to change his ways.

President Bush has said Arafat now “must prove himself to me” by leading his people away from violence and restoring security cooperation with the same Israeli government that says it would still like to banish him from the Palestinian territories. Palestinians are looking for Arafat to prove to them that their sacrifices were not in vain.

Some Palestinians are clamoring for reforms. Others are clamoring for revenge.

Arafat’s security forces are in disarray. Israeli forces encircle every important West Bank town and no longer hesitate to enter Palestinian-controlled areas to hunt down militants. The Palestinian economy is shattered and many of the trappings of statehood are gone.

Arafat is faced with somehow rallying his shellshocked people, rebuilding his ruined bureaucracy and developing a strategy to counter what he and many Palestinians believe is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to block the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Even before Israel agreed to free Arafat, his ministers were squabbling about reconstruction efforts and Palestinian opposition figures were calling for elections, an end to corruption and greater democratization.

Some Palestinian analysts fear that the destruction the Israeli army inflicted during its monthlong sweep through the West Bank is so profound, and demoralization so widespread, that Arafat will be unable to rebuild the Palestinian Authority, which was created under the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

“The Palestinian Authority is no longer relevant,” said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and political analyst. “Now militias will rule the streets.”

But Arafat’s aides say he is determined to rebuild, and quickly. In meetings with U.S. and European representatives, Palestinians have estimated that they will need $350 million to repair roads, homes, businesses and ministries. So far, said Mohammed Shtayyeh, executive director of PECDAR, the Palestinian Authority’s development corporation, they have received pledges of about $150 million.

“We have quite an image of the destruction,” confirmed Jean Breteche, the European Commission’s representative to the Palestinian Authority. “Everybody is working fast to respond to it. We want to help the population, reestablish the Palestinian administration and work with them as closely as possible to come back to a normal situation, to create an environment that is conducive to peace.”

Breteche said the European Commission is seeking assurances from Israel that it will not again destroy infrastructure that international donors pay to repair, and that it will allow Palestinian institutions to function.

“Our position is that we need a good administration in Palestine to manage the civil society and the economy,” Breteche said.

Many Israelis would agree on the need for a strong Palestinian administration but agree with the Israeli government that Arafat is incapable of building it. The Palestinian Authority president emerges from more than a month of confinement in his offices very much a man on probation.

The Israeli mainstream “is divided between those who want to kill Arafat and those who want to expel him,” former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on CNN Wednesday night.

Only the “loony left” still considers Arafat a partner for negotiations, said Netanyahu, who is widely expected to challenge Sharon in coming months for the leadership of the right-wing Likud Party.

But Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the success of the military campaign now winding down “depends on the speed in which we’ll enter the political negotiations. Otherwise, we’ll return to where we were before the operation.”

Even though the Israeli government has deemed Arafat an enemy, Ben-Eliezer voiced hope that the Palestinian leader will now seek a negotiated settlement.

“All the goals Arafat set for himself . . . have been crushed before his very eyes,” Ben-Eliezer told reporters as he toured a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. “The only chance to resolve this problem is not through arms and terror, but by sitting around the negotiating table.”

But Sharon’s offer to negotiate nothing more than long-term interim arrangements with the Palestinians, and his insistence that no Jewish settlements will be abandoned, is unlikely to bring Arafat back to talks. Palestinians say they have not endured 19 months of bloodshed and economic hardship to again see the prospect of statehood delayed indefinitely.

A renewed Palestinian suicide bombing campaign in Israeli towns would trigger another military operation in the West Bank and possibly the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army and government have warned. Many Israeli analysts say a resurgence of Palestinian attacks--regardless of who claims responsibility--also will result in Arafat’s immediate expulsion.

Palestinians view Israel’s intentions with equal skepticism. Many of them now are convinced that Israel will never allow a Palestinian state to exist alongside it.

“Sharon has pursued a checklist of destruction,” Shtayyeh said. “He has destroyed both our infrastructure and our superstructure.

“We spent all these years preparing for the state, but he doesn’t believe in this manifestation of statehood. He is pursuing the total repositioning of Israeli security forces and the reoccupation of the West Bank. The West Bank was our state-in-the-making, and Ramallah was the administrative capital of that state.

“He has created chaos here.”