Issue No.587
Opinion
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23 -29 May 2002 Issue No.587 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Familiar agendas dog reform
The obvious conclusion is that yet another attempt to overhaul Palestinian administration will be stillborn, writes Mouin Rabbani, and for many of the same old reasons
In a 14 May address to the plenum of the Israeli parliament, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated his recent demands for reform of the Palestinian Authority. Emphasising that "there can be no peace with a corrupt terror regime which is rotten and dictatorial" and that "there has to be a different PA," Sharon insisted that the process of reform must be completed prior to the beginning of political negotiations. As for the scope of the change being sought, Sharon stated that the PA "must be reformed in every respect: security, politically, socially, financially and legally -- everything must be overhauled."
Later that evening, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat convened the Central Council of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) and the Palestinian Leadership (consisting of the PA Council of Ministers, the Executive Committee of the PLO, and heads of the main security services). The subject of Palestinian reform was similarly prominent on the agenda of these meetings, if in less strident terms. And in a televised address to the Palestinian Legislative Council on 15 May, Arafat unhesitatingly accepted responsibility for the collective failings of the leadership; "It is time," he concluded, "for change and reform" and "speedy elections."
Recent press coverage suggests that the theme of Palestinian reform is a novelty initiated by Israel and the international community to foster good governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip while, in fact, demands for structural change leading to greater accountability by those in positions of power are almost as old as the contemporary Palestinian national movement. In the late 1960s popular disillusionment with the leadership style of PLO founding Chairman Ahmad Shuqairi facilitated Arafat's election in his stead, and similar sentiments -- most notably in the early 1990s -- almost proved to be Arafat's undoing until the Oslo agreements again catapulted him to centre stage.
In the years immediately preceding Oslo, Palestinian demands for the reform of PLO institutions centred on several issues. One was the increasingly autocratic leadership of Arafat. While hardly a new phenomenon, his inclinations in this respect were reinforced by the gradual elimination from the scene of Fatah leaders of genuine stature such as Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), individuals who possessed independent authority and power bases in the movement and thus could act to limit Arafat's freedom of action. The process was further accelerated by the decline of the Palestinian left, whose loss of influence was hardly compensated for by an emerging Islamist movement that remained largely outside the PLO framework.
Closely related to this was growing opposition to Arafat's very personal control of PLO finances. While his simple, indeed Spartan, lifestyle is legendary, he is equally renowned for what Palestinian scholar Yazid Sayigh has termed "planned corruption" -- ie. the systematic abuse of funds not for personal gain but rather to buy the loyalties and where necessary compromise the reputations of associates, detractors, and institutions.
A second set of factors has revolved around the increasing paralysis of Palestinian institutions. Often led and staffed by individuals selected for the purpose of rewarding or acquiring their loyalty rather than on account of their merits, such institutions evolved into bloated bureaucracies incapable of undertaking significant roles, least of all those required to meet their stated objectives. If talk of a "crisis in Palestinian institutions" so current in the early 1990s was exaggerated, it is only because so many such outfits -- which seemed to be endlessly proliferating -- could not legitimately be characterised as institutions.
The rapid depletion of PLO funds in the wake of the second Gulf War placed these and similar issues in ever sharper focus. Numerous proposals were floated for a structural overhaul of the PLO, its decision-making organs and institutions. Such enterprises sought to make the PLO a more democratic, accountable and effective organisation, more responsive to popular needs and demands, better capable of sustaining the uprising in the occupied territories and meaningfully assisting Palestinians in Lebanon in their struggle for survival. Nothing came of such initiatives, both because Arafat had little difficulty consigning them to oblivion, and because the leaderships of the various PLO factions were fundamentally opposed to changes that affected the "quota system" which guaranteed them a fixed level of representation in the organisation's various bodies.
Aside from independents, the most active proponents of reform within the PLO were second- generation cadres, many of them from within Fatah, who either felt excluded by existing arrangements or else who recognised that the contrast between PLO immobilism and Islamist efficiency was a main factor behind the continuing rise of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Ten years on and the Palestinian agenda for reform is little changed. Autocracy, corruption, structural and institutional crises, only now in the guise of the PA rather than PLO, remain the fundamental themes, with democratisation, accountability, and enhanced performance still the principal demands. What appear to be new issues arising from the governmental character of the PA, such as separation of powers, transparency, and respect for human rights, in fact have antecedents in the pre-Oslo era and have simply been accentuated by virtue of changed circumstances.
While it might appear that Palestinians are joining a debate they have been given the freedom to participate in on account of its sponsorship by Sharon, George W. Bush and the EU, the reality is somewhat different. It is precisely the widespread perception that reform is required to empower Palestinian society to successfully confront the Israeli occupation, and the all but universal belief that the absence of structural transformation is intimately related to Israel's military and political victories during its recent re-occupation of Palestinian cities, that unleashed the torrent of Palestinian demands for change.
If the residents of Ramallah, the members of the Israeli cabinet and the Bush administration agree on the need for revamping the Palestinian security services, they do so for very different reasons: the US would like to see a security force committed to and capable of eliminating Palestinian paramilitary organisations; Israel hopes for the emergence of a new centre of power to displace Arafat, Palestinians demand the creation of an effective military apparatus which will offer effective resistance next time the tanks are ordered into PA territory.
It is difficult to take Sharon's agenda seriously; his insistence on social reforms in the Gaza Strip and the introduction of new accounting procedures in the Ministry of Culture as prior conditions for peace negotiations -- with Israel the arbiter of when the required transformation has met its standards -- gives his game plan away. On the one hand, Sharon is seeking the creation of new positions of influence -- such as a powerful commander of a unified security force and a prime minister of the Palestinian cabinet -- the occupants of which will be more amenable to Israel, possess sufficient powers to marginalise Arafat and once safe in the saddle remove him altogether. Efforts to create an alternative leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, first pioneered by Sharon in the early 1980s and revived after his 2001 election, are being resumed under the guise of reform.
At the same time, as with his earlier demand for "seven days of quiet", which has been resuscitated in more extreme fashion, Sharon's insistence that the reforms must first be completed is yet another pretext designed to evade substantive negotiations on a permanent settlement. Incapable of offering a political initiative which will win widespread international support, if not Palestinian acquiescence, Sharon has opted for a panoply of delaying tactics designed to permanently avoid the day of reckoning. In the event -- or rather certainty -- that Israel's refusal to resolve the fundamental issues results in yet another bout of bloodletting, Sharon will simply exploit the situation to achieve by force what he cannot obtain by reform.
The American approach is somewhat different. Although Washington has no fundamental objections to Sharon's agenda and would not mind him succeeding, it doesn't think he can and wants to avoid the consequences of failure. Constrained from calling his bluff by its domestic constituencies yet wary of being dragged into another of his adventures, the Bush administration appears to have embraced Sharon's reform programme in order to reformulate it as part of its own agenda. Thus, Palestinian security forces will be rebuilt as a single entity with CIA assistance in order to perform their assigned role domestically and engage in effective security cooperation with Israel. If the process produces "regime change" or reduces Arafat to an impotent symbol, this will be viewed as a bonus rather than the criteria for success. Perhaps more importantly, Washington's agenda is predicated on an early resumption of the political process, with reform and negotiation reinforcing each other rather than being undermined as a result of being arranged sequentially. For their part, the Europeans appear to have chosen to once more assist in the development of PA civil institutions in the hope they can persuade the US to implement its "vision" of a Palestinian state before the fruits of their labour are destroyed yet again.
So what are the prospects for real reform?
While many observers could not but laugh at Bush's call for a Palestinian constitution during a photo-op with Sharon -- his reforming guest has yet to adopt one himself, and others have opined that Washington is seeking to protect Palestine from scandals of Enron proportions -- such comments do raise serious issues. Is, for example, Washington prepared to countenance a verdict by an independent Palestinian supreme court which abolishes military courts and forbids the detention of militants on the basis of unsubstantiated Israeli allegations, delivered on the grounds that such practices violate customary norms of due process? Are Israel and the US prepared to see their favourite Palestinians put behind bars or barred from public service on charges of corruption? Will the international community insist upon municipal elections if the polls predict Hamas control of a substantial number of local councils, thus acquiring the means to further expand its popular base? How will it perceive a legislative assembly empowered to force the executive branch to submit a peace treaty to a national referendum?
Arafat is well aware of the answers to such and similar questions, and understands all too well that while the struggle over reform may be framed in terms of lofty principles it is in reality about the preservation of his own power. He will thus seek to resist initiatives such as a unified security apparatus, both because the current arrangement of competing services operating under his patronage has served his interests so well and because he is concerned at the threat to his position implicit in the concept of a single and powerful force. If he loses, he still wins; if forced to accept a unified apparatus during CIA Director George Tenet's upcoming visit to the region he will play the "independence of Palestinian decision-making" for all it is worth to ensure that a sufficiently reliable and/ or discredited candidate heads this force. He will begin to dismantle it while keeping its form whole the moment Tenet leaves.
As so often during the past decade, the PA's primary conflict in matters of reform is not with Israel, the US, or Europe -- all of which will continue to accept PA corruption and abuse as a price worth paying for their various objectives while exploiting such conduct for political advantage -- but rather with its own people. It is, in fact, only the Palestinians who would like to see an independent judiciary, corruption trials, municipal elections, and a powerful parliament irrespective (and in many cases precisely on account of) the political consequences.
This notwithstanding, the prospects of changes which transcend the realm of the cosmetic remain dim. Powerful factions within the PA are already competing for the spoils of reform, in the process all but ensuring that none will take place. The groundswell of popular support for change is likely to suffer the same fate as that which attended the publication of the PA's corruption reports in 1997; adopted and led by independents, it was stifled by their co-option. The democratisation of political life as a result of the uprising could mean that less compromising forces -- particularly within Fatah -- are prepared to transform the demands of the street into an organised campaign and lead it in forcing genuine reform, but under circumstances of escalating conflict and appeals to their patriotism this remains unlikely. In the meantime, the international community is all too aware that if Arafat goes -- a demand raised only by Sharon and explicitly disavowed by Palestinian critics of the PA -- it will not only create a massive political crisis but result in the inability of those being fingered to lead a reconstituted PA to retain their powers and positions.
In the absence of an uprising within the uprising -- the prospects for which are virtually nil even though the series of recent deals forced upon Arafat by the emerging coalition of American, European, and Arab mediators has caused his popularity to plummet as suddenly as it soared during the recent siege -- the obvious conclusion is that yet another attempt to overhaul Palestinian administration will be stillborn. This is particularly so because Palestinians are keenly aware of the larger agendas at play and -- fortified in their convictions by Bush's recent ditherings -- remain to be convinced that the world's sudden interest in their civic and human rights is motivated by a desire to expedite rather than defer an end to Israeli occupation. Indeed, unless meaningful progress is made on the larger issues involved the global campaign for Palestinian reform is likely to go the way of previous international initiatives which sought to treat the symptoms rather than remove the causes of conflict, and in so doing exacerbated both.
The writer is director of the Palestinian American Research Centre in Ramallah, the West Bank.
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