Premier, Under Arafat, Faces Rocky Road to Palestinian State

After 50 years in exile, Mahmoud Abbas finally had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream: to visit the home where he spent part of his boyhood.

In 1994, he made the pilgrimage to Safed in northern Israel, which was part of British-run Palestine when he was born in 1935. Accounts of the visit say Abbas was moved and shocked by what he saw: moved to be back in his hometown, shocked to discover that his old house no longer existed, overtaken by time and new development.

The visit gave Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister-in-waiting, an opportunity to demonstrate his vaunted pragmatism. While he insists in principle that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to the land from which they were uprooted after Israel was established in 1948, he knows the reality argues against it.

“You will not return to the house or the neighborhood or the village in which you were born. Those houses, the neighborhoods and villages no longer exist,” Abbas told a group of Palestinian refugees recently, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “New towns were built on your land, and Jewish babies were born in your houses. You will join a Palestinian minority for whom the language of the state is not its language, nor its culture, nor its flag, nor its anthem.”

The question now is whether the graying, bespectacled Abbas -- a former businessman and lawyer with a doctorate in history -- can turn his pragmatic approach into a successful one as he assumes his post as No. 2 to Yasser Arafat’s No. 1.

Abbas faces daunting tasks as he waits for his Cabinet, which was announced Wednesday, to be ratified.

He must try to end hostilities with Israel while keeping feuds within the Palestinian Authority’s own ranks from spiraling into civil war. He has to crack down on militant groups that reject both Israeli and Palestinian attempts to stop suicide bombers from carrying out their attacks.

And he must find a way to establish his authority with Arafat looking over his shoulder and insisting on holding on to some, if not most, of the power.

“He is the man in charge now,” Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli Cabinet minister, said of Abbas in a radio interview Thursday. But “anyone thinking that his appointment would immediately transform him into the charismatic Palestinian leader and make Arafat shrink into a corner is, of course, wrong.”

At stake could be prospects for an independent Palestinian state, the cherished goal of both men. The U.S. especially is eager to start working with Abbas, who also goes by the name Abu Mazen, as an alternative to Arafat.

Before publishing the peace initiative, known as the road map, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005, the Bush administration insisted that Abbas present his Cabinet, preferably one as free of Arafat’s fingerprints as possible.

That prompted the first major tussle between the Palestinian Authority’s top two leaders, a bruising fight over how many of Arafat’s cronies would remain in the 24-member inner circle. In the end, a compromise was struck that allowed Abbas to put an ally in charge of the crucial security portfolio while Arafat kept many of his own loyalists in place.

Mohammed Dahlan, the man picked by Abbas to oversee security affairs, will be responsible for curbing the bloodshed that has stained the 31-month-old Palestinian intifada, an uprising in which more than 700 Israelis and 2,000 Palestinians have died.

All eyes will be trained on Dahlan, the former security chief in the Gaza Strip, to see whether he can prevent attacks like the suicide bombing outside an Israeli train station Thursday morning that killed an Israeli civilian in addition to the bomber.

There were conflicting reports as to responsibility for the attack; one possible perpetrator was the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the militant wing of Arafat’s Fatah faction. Arafat himself condemned the bombing.

Later in the day, in an unrelated incident, two Palestinians, including a 17-year-old, were shot to death by Israeli soldiers who said that stones were being thrown at them.

Abbas is believed to be serious about wanting to end the armed Palestinian struggle. His endorsement of more peaceful means of protest is an outgrowth of his pragmatism, friends and colleagues say.

Abbas knows that suicide bombings have cost the Palestinian cause some international support as well as some perceived moral legitimacy. He also knows that, like it or not, the nation of Israel will continue to exist. That eventually led him to embrace a two-state solution that he and other Palestinian officials once rejected.

“I started thinking about how to deal with people whom we did not know, and I began to put out feelers that we should recognize Israel,” Abbas said of the evolution of his views during the 1970s, when the idea of Israel was still anathema to most Palestinians.

In the early ‘90s, he played a behind-the-scenes role in the secret talks that culminated in the Oslo peace accords. Exactly what he did remains somewhat murky, with some calling him instrumental and others saying his role was marginal.

Abbas is no wholesale pacifist: Like many Palestinians, he draws a distinction between attacks on civilians inside Israel, which he now opposes, and attacks on Jewish settlers who have taken over land in the West Bank that Palestinians say is rightfully theirs.

International support for Abbas, including the backing of some Arab nations, has actually cost him some support on his home turf.

“Abu Mazen’s greatest liability right now is that he’s seen as a prime minister appointed by the U.S.,” said Michael Tarazi, a legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. “And the world community didn’t help at all over the last few days [with calls of support for Abbas] that encouraged the Palestinian suspicion that this is only about Israeli security and not Palestinian freedom.”

Since Abbas announced his compromise Cabinet on Wednesday, the Israeli government has reacted more cautiously than usual for fear that a ringing endorsement of Abbas would undermine his standing further.

A poll earlier this week by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion showed that more Palestinians continue to back Arafat than Abbas. In the survey, 55% of respondents expressed some degree of support for Arafat, while only 41% expressed support for Abbas.

But then, popularity has never appeared to be a goal for Abbas, a politician who has done next to nothing since his appointment as prime minister last month to cultivate any kind of public following. An inveterate insider, Abbas studiously avoided the press and the people throughout his standoff with Arafat, a cunning strategist only too happy to use the media to promote himself.

“He doesn’t appeal to the public,” said one of Abbas’ sons, Yasser, in a telephone interview Thursday. “He takes back-door diplomacy or closed-door diplomacy.”

Born into a family that herded sheep to support Safed’s famous cheese industry, Mahmoud Abbas and his family fled to Syria during the 1948 war that led to the birth of Israel.

He joined the PLO in the ‘50s, and in 1965, he and Arafat became founding members of the Fatah movement within the organization. He joined its top leadership in the ‘80s.

He is married and the father of three grown sons, one of whom died of illness last year. He is, by all accounts, a doting grandfather. Friends and colleagues describe Abbas as deliberate and determined but not particularly charismatic or confrontational.

Although he accepted the post of prime minister, Abbas appears not to be wedded to it. If he does not feel that he has the authority he requires, some analysts say he would be willing to chuck the job, the threat of which could be his most potent weapon in the weeks ahead.

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Special correspondent Ruth Morris contributed to this report.