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Arafat steps centre stage as showdown with Abbas approaches
By Hisham Abdallah Agence France-Presse
Jordan Times
Friday-Saturday, August 29-30, 200
RAMALLAH — Yasser Arafat, the great survivor of Middle Eastern politics, stepped centre stage yet again Wednesday as he called on renegade Palestinian factions to sign up once more to a moribund truce. Arafat's call, made in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency, overshadowed the deliberations of an emergency Cabinet called by his moderate premier, Mahmoud Abbas, and added a new twist to what is becoming an increasingly public power struggle.
The United States and Israel had been hoping to render Arafat irrelevant by shutting him out of all negotiations, choosing instead to talk only to Abbas who was appointed in April in the face of immense resistance from Arafat.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell recognised Arafat's continued influence when he appealed to the 74-year-old Palestinian Authority chairman to work with Abbas to stop a recent spiral of violence which has threatened to completely torpedo a Washington-backed roadmap for peace.
“We are witnessing now a return of Arafat to the centre,” said Ali Jarbawi, a professor from Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.
“It's clear that the failure of the roadmap and ... the fact that we are back to square one shows that the argument that he is the one to blame was not correct.”
Arafat and Abbas, who have worked together since they formed the mainstream Fateh organisation in the 1960s, are both tussling for control of the multi-headed Palestinian security apparatus.
Arafat placed Jibril Rajoub, the former head of preventive security in the West Bank, in charge of a revamp of the security services on Monday.
Rajoub is seen as one of the few men strong enough to stand up to the current Palestinian security minister, Mohammad Dahlan, a close ally of Abbas and the former head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip.
Arafat is under heavy US pressure to hand over complete control of the security apparatus to Abbas and Dahlan so they can crack down on hardline Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad who recently broke off a truce against Israel.
Abbas currently controls three of the many Palestinian security branches — the civil police, civil defence and preventive security force.
The 35,000-40,000 strong national security force and other branches such as intelligence, the navy and border police, are still under Arafat's command.
In a sign of the challenge facing Abbas, some members of youth groups linked to Fateh denounced Dahlan as an American spy as they marched through Ramallah Wednesday.
Abbas now looks likely to try and garner legitimacy to take on Arafat by seeking a vote of confidence from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), or parliament, in the coming week on his first 100 days in office.
“I think ... that Abbas is trying to transfer the battle between Arafat and Abbas to the PLC playground,” independent PLC member Azmi Ash-Shuyabi told AFP.
Jarbawi said that the outcome of the showdown would soon become clear.
“I believe that the internal battle among the Palestinians is about to be decided very soon,” he said. “It will be decided in the PLC.”
Jarbawi first said he didn't “want to say who will be the winner” but, when pressed, tipped Arafat to come out on top.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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