Palestinian reform? Don't count on it

By Avi Davis   
June 5, 2002

The first blush of youth has already faded on the cheeks 
of the New Look Palestinian Authority. Less than four weeks 
after Yasser Arafat's acknowledgement of "mistakes" and 
promise of elections, the PA looks about as reformed as a 
resilient Bill Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky 
scandal. 

Elections have been indefinitely postponed, wanted terrorists 
remain at large and suicide bombings continue. Beneath the 
welter of corruption, indecision and lack of leadership, 
Western minds might wonder why Palestinians can't then rouse 
themselves to be rid of Arafat and shrug off his oppressive 
Tunisian mafia once and for all. 

It will not happen and for a good reason. Grass roots 
movements never force change in Arab countries. The revolutions 
of the Arabic world since independence have almost all been 
carried out by military coup. 

The back room strategists of Arabic revolutions are not 
dissatisfied citizenry but almost always colonels and generals 
who unseat a monarch or assassinate a president only to 
install a more vigorous form of dictatorship. Examples can 
be found in Syria in 1949, Egypt in 1952, Iraq in 1958, 
and Algeria in 1965. All instituted military regimes that 
have endured until this day. 

By contrast the Palestinian military is either too weak 
or does have not have enough ideological distance from Arafat 
to consider usurping him. Most of them have for years owed 
their livelihoods (and wealth) to Arafat's patronage and 
since he still controls the Palestinian checkbook, they are 
loath to challenge him. 

But there is one further reason. The patriarchal structure 
of Arab society stands in the way of any serious challenge 
to Arafat. When Egyptian President Abdul al Gamal Nasser 
offered his people his resignation following the debacle of 
the 1967 Six Day War, furious demonstrations shook Cairo. 
Mobs gathered, but they did not call for Nasser's 
imprisonment or trial. They called for his reinstatement. 
In Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein, an Arab 
leader who had led his people to an equally inglorious 
debacle, not only consolidated his power, but was lionized.

Why? The patriarchal structure of Arab society. 
The traditional nuclear family is dominated by the father 
whose authority is total. Mothers and daughters play 
submissive roles within this structure and have little 
influence on the family's destiny. In Arabic culture, 
sons are much desired, their role being largely to satisfy 
their father's sense of honor and secure his position in 
society. From childhood then, unquestioned obedience and 
respect characterizes the relationship between father 
and children. The political culture mimics that of the 
social order. 

Dictatorships thrive in the Arabic world in much the same 
way autocracy has always flourished in Russia: the leader 
is a father figure, whose unquestioned authority and 
arbitrary power will, it is assumed, always be exercised 
for the good of the people. 

The adulation of the mob that receives again and again the 
failures of such leaders as Nasser, Saddam Hussein and 
Moammar Ghaddafi is directly related to the urge of the 
Arab street not to be left either fatherless or orphaned.

No one can now doubt that Arafat's diplomatic failure at 
Camp David in the summer of 2000 plunged the Palestinian 
Authority and the Palestinian cause itself into a spiral 
of despair. It compounded years of failures, first in Jordan, 
then in Lebanon and now in the Palestinian heartland itself. 
Its infrastructure crushed, its militias wiped out or 
neutralized, its authority severely weakened.

Arafat has gained nothing for his people after 20 months of 
fighting except death and diplomatic isolation. With such a 
record, any other leader would have found himself quickly 
macheted. Yet Arafat remains, accepted by the world and 
his people as a legitimate leader. 

With such redoubtable social and political muscle, Arafat 
has little incentive to reform anything. He knows that any 
stirrings of democracy will inevitably challenge his 
stature as the Rais - which is not only his political 
designation but a social one.

For Israel and the West, the answer to the question of 
Palestinian reform is therefore not to be found in pressure 
on Arafat to transform the Palestinian Authority into 
Luxemburg. It originates in fostering an acceptance 
among Palestinian citizens that it is neither Israel, 
the United States nor the West that is responsible for 
their desperate condition. Arafat has betrayed them. 

This is not a simple exercise. It will require more 
propaganda from the West than it is usually prepared 
to indulge. But without a new strategy to empower the 
Palestinian masses, they are condemned to more generations 
of keffiyeh-clad autocrats, all who bear a disturbing 
political and ideological resemblance to the corrupt 
and ineffectual profile of Yasser Arafat.

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The writer is senior fellow of the Freeman Center for
Strategic Studies and host of the University of Judaism's
program "Israel in the Arab Mind."