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Elliot Chodoff is a political and military analyst, and a founder of Hamartzim Educational Services. Chodoff's analysis of the Mideast "situation" is available through the .
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By Elliot Chodoff
November 8, 2004
With Yasser Arafat apparently on his deathbed, all sides and spectators are gearing up for the great event of his passing. (We tend to believe that Arafat actually died quite a long time ago and was thrown back; he was bringing down the property values.) Funeral arrangements, travel plans and power grabbing or consolidation are all on the agenda for the new Middle East that will emerge in the wake of his departure.
The Europeans, along with the New York Times and some in the US Administration, have already begun the process of ushering in the new, moderate Palestinian leadership under former prime minister Abu Mazen. Touted as "studious, gracious, pragmatic and opposed to terrorism" by the Times, Abu Mazen is expected to change the course of the Palestinian Authority as he supplants Arafat?s impossible behavioral antics with graciousness while his business suits replace Arafat?s ubiquitous uniform. If only it were so simple.
All the players in this farce suffer from an unhealthy dose of wishful thinking fueled by an overpersonification of the conflict. This error is not limited to the Palestinian issue; it is present in analysis of the Iraqi situation and the terrorist war as well. These conflicts have been erroneously defined in personal terms: the enemies have been defined as Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden, respectively. Unfortunately, while each of these individuals is a problem, none of them constitute THE problem, which extends far beyond their personal influences.
In the case of the Palestinians, Abu Mazen is more a moderate in form than in substance. His real name, Mahmoud Abbas, is used primarily in the Western media, while among Palestinians he is referred to by his nomme de guerre, which he took along with the other Fatah (literally, the Palestine National Liberation Movement) terrorists in the early days of the movement. He remains a leader in both Fatah and the PLO, both still committed to armed struggle (terrorism) for the liberation of Palestine (given their names, what else could they possibly want?). His immediate in-house competition comes from Abu Ala (Ahmed Qurei), the current prime minister and another old Fatah hand, and Marwan Barghouti, head of the Tanzim branch of Fatah, and currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for murder. They are truly a group of liberal democrats.
Opposing them are the Islamic terrorists of Hamas in Gaza and an assortment of others who can make the transition interesting, if bloody. We are not predicting a civil war (although it is certainly not out of the question), but some armed confrontations are likely, along with attempts to launch large scale terrorist attacks in Israel as a means of gaining support on the Palestinian street.
And here lies the problem. No matter how soft spoken or raucous, the next generation of Palestinian leadership will have to overcome Arafat's deadliest legacy: the inculcation of murderous values in a generation of Palestinians who expect their leaders to continue to fight Israel rather than compromise and end the conflict. Until they succeed in reversing that attitude and surviving the effort, Arafat's terrorist ideology will continue to direct the course of events. Consequently his death will have no effect in moderating the conflict and may even lead to its escalation as those who attempt reforms will be branded as traitors to the legacy.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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