[Mb-civic] A Golden Opportunity Squandered - Jackson Diehl - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A Golden Opportunity Squandered

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A17

Yasser Arafat's death last November created, it was commonly said, a 
golden opportunity for Palestinians to arrest their society's downward 
spiral into squalor and suicide bombing. It also set up a test for all 
those who believed that Arafat himself was the principal Palestinian 
problem.

The test went like this: Let's say Arafat were abruptly replaced, via a 
fair democratic election, by a civilized moderate with a long record of 
opposing violence and a clear commitment to negotiating a peaceful 
settlement with Israel. Amazingly, that happened six months ago, when 
Mahmoud Abbas became the Palestinian president. Let's further say that 
Israel decided to unilaterally withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and a 
portion of the West Bank -- as, almost incredibly, it appears ready to 
do just two weeks from now. What difference would we see in Palestinian 
behavior?

Here, so far, are the empirical results: With the Israeli pullout 
looming, the new Palestinian authorities are promising to rein in 
extremists who threaten to attack the withdrawing settlers and soldiers 
-- but so far their efforts have been weak. An experts' study recently 
concluded that Palestinian security forces remain factionalized, 
underarmed and undertrained, and that they are more easily commanded by 
local warlords than their official leaders. Corrupt hacks populate 
Palestinian ministries and dominate the legislature and the ruling Fatah 
party. Democratic elections scheduled for last month were indefinitely 
postponed.

There are fitful negotiations with Israel about coordinating the 
withdrawal and subsequent status of Gaza. But Palestinian leaders appear 
more focused on using U.S. mediators to extract concessions from Israel 
than they are on formalizing agreements with the Jewish state. In the 
end, they may prefer to remain passive and blame Ariel Sharon for a 
unilateral and chaotic withdrawal.

It all sounds, in short, very much like Yasser Arafat's Palestine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101034.html

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