Arafat Prevails in Standoff Over Cabinet Post

Yasser Arafat appears to have won again. A weeks-old stalemate between the Palestinian Authority president and his handpicked prime minister, Ahmed Korei, apparently came to an end Saturday with Arafat still in charge of the troops that he regards as his last stronghold of power.

After weeks of negotiations, Korei failed to name Nasser Yousef, a Palestinian general who was expected to stand up to the ailing Arafat, to the key position of interior minister. Instead, Korei and Arafat struck a murky compromise that Korei said will “most likely” leave an Arafat ally as interior minister -- and the militias under the control of the National Security Council, which is headed by Arafat.

The struggle over the security force is the same issue that drove Korei’s predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas, to resign after just a few months on the job.

It’s unclear why Korei held out for so long, only to relent in the end -- but the battle of wills has had a powerful effect. By standing firm, Korei brought the government to a stop and forced a crisis so deep that many Palestinians came to believe that his Cabinet had no legal claim to power because of the manner of its formation.

“There is no government now,” said Palestinian Authority Finance Minister Salam Fayyad on Saturday, after Arafat extended the life of the emergency Cabinet on Tuesday by a week. “It’s illegitimate and opens us to a legal challenge.” The former International Monetary Fund official said he would not go back to work until he was invited to join a legitimate Cabinet with parliamentary approval.

With their government ground to a halt, dozens of academics and lawmakers gathered last week in a Gaza City hotel to mull over the fate of the Palestinian Authority. The ensuing debate was frank, contentious -- and wholly pessimistic.

“We are suffering because of this special, unchangeable group,” complained former Information Minister Nabil Amr, who served under Abbas until his government collapsed in September. Amr called Arafat and his loyalists “sacred cows” who should finally step aside.

“We have to break the taboo -- we can’t accept that the leader can be the leader forever,” he said. “Even if we have to have elections under occupation, we must do so.”

Korei’s standoff against Arafat won the prime minister some sympathy from Israel, where most officials dread the mere suggestion that the Palestinian government might fall. When Korei was tapped by Arafat in September, he was dubbed an Arafat loyalist by Israeli press and officials, who said he would have to prove his worth.

By last week, however, the Jewish state seemed to be scrambling to shore up Korei’s rule. Palestinians were granted a batch of permits to leave the impoverished Gaza Strip for day jobs in Israel, and some of the checkpoints and closures in the West Bank were eased. Most importantly, Israeli officials said abandoned peace talks could resume once Korei seated a government.

“The political leadership is worried,” Israeli analyst Ephraim Yaar said. “They don’t want to see a total collapse -- they’re afraid of it.”

From petered-out peace negotiations to the theatrics of Arafat and his ruling Fatah party, the governmental misadventures of the past months have sent a surge of grass-roots anger swelling through the Palestinian territories.

Many Palestinians are keen for a change, but there is no consensus on how to proceed. Some lawmakers are calling for general elections. Others want to depose Arafat and his “old guard” stalwarts to make room for a younger set of leaders. Some are even pushing the radical notion that the Palestinian Authority be dismantled.

“The Palestinian Authority should dissolve itself, and Israel would have to face the consequences,” Palestinian analyst Ali Jarbawi said. “It’s either they give us a state or we’ll go down with them.”

Jarbawi’s argument is extreme. He believes that without serious progress toward a Palestinian state, Palestinians would be better off letting the West Bank and Gaza return to Israeli administration. That, Jarbawi argues, would be the first step toward demanding equal rights in a single, Jewish-Palestinian state.

Such suggestions are rare in the Palestinian territories, where the dream of a homeland remains strong. In Israel, the idea of a binational state is considered an almost unmentionable threat to the country’s identity as a Jewish nation, because Palestinians would almost certainly be in the majority.

But Palestinians are casting about for some political boost. While their leaders bickered these past weeks, Jewish settlements have grown larger in the West Bank, and a controversial “separation fence” is slicing through Palestinian territory. The bloodshed seldom lets up -- four Palestinians were killed Saturday by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We are not in a comfortable position to wait for conventional solutions,” former Palestinian Culture Minister Ziad abu Amr said. “Our entire land is disappearing, and we’re fighting about the interior minister.”

Near Abu Dis, a West Bank neighborhood on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, a wall of concrete and barbed wire splits the area in two, leaving children and the elderly to scramble over the hulking cubes on their way to school or work. Israel says the wall is a security barrier meant to keep out suicide bombers. But there’s no doubt what the Palestinians think: “Ghetto Abu Dis,” somebody has spray-painted on the blocks.

The wall runs right through Yakim Rajabi’s small world -- his home is on one side; his carpentry shop is on the other, a few hundred yards away. “If we lived under Israeli administration again it would be much easier for us -- we wouldn’t have these walls,” said Rajabi, who spends his days passing wood to workers on the opposite side through gaps in the wall, and crawling back and forth like a crab over the rocks. The Palestinian Authority is meaningless, he said. “Israel will never let a Palestinian government succeed.”

The Palestinian Authority was designed as an interim government to bridge the gap between Israeli rule and Palestinian statehood. It was supposed to last five years at the most. But almost a decade later, it is barely creaking along, heavy with public despair, broken infrastructure and infighting.

“We are being compared, and compared unfavorably, to the Israeli administration,” griped a senior Palestinian Authority official. “We are losing the respect of our people every day. So why should we continue to exist?”

A majority of Palestinians polled last week said the existence of the authority had been rendered insignificant since the Israeli army reoccupied the West Bank during the past three years of fighting. One-third of Palestinians polled by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center said they thought the authority should be dissolved.

“We should always strive to have our own independent state,” said a woman who works as a civil servant in the Ministry of Civil Affairs. “But our frustration has never been so strong.”

Speaking on condition that her name not be used, the bureaucrat described a government mired in inefficiency.

“Nobody comes to the office on time, or they may not come at all,” she said. “The ministries are packed with people for no reason -- they don’t even have jobs that can be named. They’re chatting all day and taking a paycheck.”

Despite all its shortcomings, the Palestinian Authority is by far the largest employer in the West Bank and Gaza, with at least 130,000 workers on its payroll. But its finances have grown so precarious that it could run out of money for salaries within months, Finance Minister Fayyad said.

By all accounts, Arafat has jammed the political machinery ever since he was pushed aside by Israel and the U.S. Israel has long accused Arafat of funding and directing terrorism, and has refused to meet with him. It’s been more than a year since President Bush decided that Arafat wasn’t doing enough to stop terrorism, and banned U.S. officials from speaking with him.

Palestinians have said the attempt at isolation has only rendered Arafat more stubborn. Vulnerable and afraid of becoming irrelevant, he sees a potential threat to his power in even minute decisions, they say, and has become generally intransigent.

The trouble deepened in September. Abbas had resigned, Arafat was ailing from a serious stomach infection, and Israel was threatening to expel the Palestinian Authority president from the territories or kill him. After a Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 21 people in an Israeli restaurant, Arafat declared a state of emergency and hastily named a Cabinet.

That was seen as a desperate act of self-protection, and it was unpopular from the start. Palestinian officials fell into a row over whether Arafat had the authority to do such a thing, and some of the ministers refused to be sworn in. A precarious calm prevailed after Korei was designated prime minister and promised to craft a government by Nov. 4, when his emergency authority was to expire.

But Tuesday’s deadline came and went, and Korei failed to seat a Cabinet. Fearing a power vacuum, Arafat extended the emergency Cabinet’s mandate an extra week. That was too much for Fayyad, who believes that Arafat had no right to extend the Cabinet’s authority. After a stormy confrontation with Arafat, Fayyad went home -- and has stayed there.

Like Abbas, Korei is trapped between the intransigence of his boss and the demands of his office. But unlike Abbas, Korei appears determined to keep his job -- even if that means swallowing his pride and forgetting his threats to resign.

Korei had wanted Yousef for interior minister. The general had headed the security forces in the past, but was quietly moved aside after complaining that Arafat’s meddling made his task impossible. Ever since, Arafat has regarded Yousef as a loose cannon. Insiders say Arafat wanted an interior minister whom he could easily manipulate, somebody with nominal power who would stay out of his way. He chose Hakam Balawi, a longtime friend and prominent Fatah member, who is expected to do Arafat’s bidding.

Korei said Saturday that Balawi would probably be the interior minister. He will have civil authority, but no say in security, Korei said.

“Arafat sees the security forces as the root of his existence and legitimacy,” Palestinian analyst Khalil Shikaki said. “And in the end, Arafat will get his way.”

Times special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.