Palestinians do not exist as a single whole without Arafat. There are Gaza Palestinians, West Bank Palestinians, and the Palestinian diaspora. On the other hand, Arafat, who had the chance to help realize the Palestinians' dream about a state of their own, did everything he could to prevent this. He did not need a Palestinian state, small and poor, where he would be held responsible for unemployment, police rackets, bureaucratic domination, corruption, and low living standards.
It was easier for him to carry on as a revolutionary leader and not as president, which allowed him to blame the Palestinians' plight on Israelis, rather than bear responsibility for it. It is not surprising therefore that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused to talk with Arafat - he thought that it would be useless to talk with a man whose promises and guarantees did not mean anything.
Arafat invariably refused to play by any rules other than his own. And he had always played for the destruction of Israel. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist who outplayed all of his political partners in Israel's right- and left-wing camps. The only way not to lose to Arafat was not to play with him, which Sharon came to see. To his dying days, Arafat remained a master of deception, a great destroyer and liar, and a politician who always got off scot-free.
By getting rid of his rivals in a sanguinary and ruthless battle, Arafat created a unique situation where he was the one and only. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) did not have a mechanism for handing over power or delegating it. The first and second premiers of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei, speaker of the Legislative Assembly Rawhi Fatouch, former Interior Security Minister Muhammed Dahlan and Arafat's security adviser Jibril Rajoub, and the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad cannot claim the role of the national leader.
The national hero Marwan Barghouti is serving a life sentence in Israel and hence does not stand a chance in the race, unless the Israelis let him out as "a little Arafat," meaning a leader with whom one cannot deal by definition. PLO veterans are not popular and do not have armed groups of their own; they could only seize power in a coalition with law enforcement and security heads. The latter have the ability to make short shrift of their rivals and Islamic organizations, but they do not have a system of foreign policy relations that is necessary for winning international legal recognition. Islamic organizations will most certainly try to seize power, but they will hardly succeed, not even in Gaza.
None of the Palestinian politicians has the necessary financial, personnel and military resources. But the main thing is that none of them can escape from Arafat's shadow. The only way to avoid a civil war is to form a coalition. This model was adopted for the period until presidential elections. But how long will the rivals manage to act jointly and suppress their ambitions?
The Palestinian authority is facing a grave political crisis; any, even the slightest, difference may push Palestinians into a civil war. Those of the current Palestinian politicians who survive will determine the future of Palestine for years ahead. It will take a long time for a true leader to appear in the Palestinian elite, who would consolidate the interests of different clans and factions and lead the people. There is no such man in Palestine now.
It would be logical to assume that if the Palestinians fail to maintain order in their territory, there must be somebody else in the region who will assume this responsibility. There are no aspirants so far: Egypt and Jordan do not want this questionable honor, let alone Israel, whose only task is to prevent anti-Israeli terror. Nobody likes Palestinians as neighbors now and nobody wants them as subjects. The Palestinian establishment should settle the problem of power and economic ruination in its territory. The only successful enterprise there now turns out Qassam missiles and shakhid belts. Palestine is bankrupt. Arafat and his inner circle stole the money that could have built an infrastructure for it. And who would provide more money now?
The struggle for power may split Palestine, initially into Gaza and the West Bank, and subsequently into small "cantons," as prominent right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Liberman has long predicted. On the other hand, there are no more left-wing politicians supported by the electorate in Israel. Five years of the bloody intifada and hundreds of victims of the "peace process" have taught Israelis to be realists without any left-wing liberal illusions. However, right-wing politicians have reached a crossroads, too.
The Palestinian policy of Ariel Sharon and the plan for unilateral disengagement were linked to Arafat. The old enemy is no more, and obstacles to talks with Palestinians disappeared together with him. But will the situation improve under his successors? There is no answer to this question so far; the inter-party coalition created by Sharon is falling apart, and there is no firm material for the creation of a new one. Nobody in the Israeli establishment knows what strategy should be applied to Palestinians. Tactics are quite another matter: the key tactic is to ensure the security of Israel. This is why Arafat's remains will not be moved to Temple Mount in the historical perspective, as this will automatically make him a saint for Islamic fanatics around the world and provoke a new outbreak of violence, with unpredictable consequences.
Palestinians and Israelis will have much trouble ahead. Experts think it will take 25-50 years to settle relations, one or two generations during which the current irreconcilable hatred and mutual distrust should become bygones. These troublemaking feelings should be replaced with neutral indifference, which can become the basis for neighborly relations and cooperation. The interference of the Arab countries, Europe, the USA, Russia or the UN can only slow down the creation of such relations, as has happened more than once in the past 50 years.
Eventually, Israelis will talk only with a Palestinian leader who has proved in deed that he can control the situation in Palestine. Nobody cares how he does this, because Israelis see international pressure as a minor problem and the safety of their children as an eternal value.
