Insofar as fascism means a system of autocratic gov’t headed by an
undemocratic leader, which suppresses all opposition, I think the
Palestinian Authority under Arafat perfectly fits the bill. I think
this study is very informative on the subject:
Soon after the White House ceremony in September 1993, when Yitzhak
Rabin shook the hand of Yasir Arafat, the New York-based journal
Foreign Affairs presented an important debate on "The Palestinian
Future." In it, Amos Perlmutter of the American University predicted
the Palestinian Authority (PA) would become a dictatorship, while
William Quandt of the University of Virginia said it would be a
democracy.
Looking back after four years, which of them hit closer to the mark?
For an answer, we examine the record of the Palestinian Authority in
key areas: are elections free and fair, is there a meaningful
opposition, is there a free press, are human rights respected, is
corruption under control, do civilians rule?
I. ELECTIONS
One of Israel's goals in signing the 1993 Declaration of Principles
with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was to transform
the latter from a terrorist gang into a political party.
Accordingly, the Palestinians held elections in January 1996,
choosing their ra'is (leader) as well as the eighty-eight members of
the Palestinian Council, a parliamentary-like body.
Although the election was under international supervision, many
signs pointed to the elections not being really democratic. The PA
stifled the opposition's ability to communicate with the public by
closing down newspapers, restricting access to telephones, and
intimidating its campaign workers. Arafat also bribed opposition
candidates to withdraw from the elections. He personally shut down
the PLO's own attempts to adopt democratic procedures. When Fatah
primaries resulted in victories for young members of the intifada,
Arafat voided the primaries and replaced the victors of those
contests with hand-picked candidates from establishment Palestinian
family clans.
Nor did Arafat permit any opposition party to run against his hand-
picked candidates. Those who persisted in challenging his wishes
could run only as "independent" candidates, that is, isolated
individuals running without the benefit of party affiliation or
party logistics. To finish off the process of intimidation, the PA
police had an unobstructed view of voters' choices in over 100
polling places as people voted, thereby making a sham of the notion
of a secret ballot.
The fact that, despite these obstacles, thirty-three independent
candidates won seats to the 88-member Palestinian Council suggests
that Arafat's methods of intimidation did not have complete success;
that he may not be as popular as his 80 percent vote suggests; and
that democracy does have a certain resilience among Palestinians,
despite Arafat's best efforts.
II. DEMOCRACY
A hint of Arafat's problem with democracy occurred at the
Palestinian Council's swearing-in ceremony, when he refused to
disband the PLO, on the grounds that the struggle against Israel
continued. The PLO's continued existence undermines the council as
the locus of political power in Palestinian society. By keeping the
PLO active, Arafat maintained it as a rival to the PA for the PA's
legislative functions. Had he disbanded the PLO, Arafat would have
sent the message that he intended to govern through the fifty-five
members of the Fatah faction who comprise two-thirds of the council.
Instead, he retained the PLO and continued his old divide-and-rule
style of governing. When the council and the PLO locked horns over
the issue of which group would write and ratify the PA's Basic Law,
for example, Arafat came down on the PLO's side, allowing the
Palestinian Council only some input at the final stages. Virtually
no legislation emerged from the council. Two years after its
election, it had passed just "thirty-seven resolutions, laws on the
budget, political parties and press freedom."
The council made itself felt by publicly criticizing the Palestinian
Authority, providing hopeful signs that Arafat and his minions have
not snuffed out the democratic spirit. It took a significant step in
calling for the members of Arafat's inner circle to resign—something
well beyond its delegated powers under Oslo II. Of course, none of
them did so. But in January 1998, the Palestinian Council handed
Arafat an ultimatum: If in three months he had not taken several
steps (sack corrupt members of his cabinet, approve the resolutions
and laws passed by the council), it would pass a no-confidence
motion and resign. Arafat toughed it out by trying to get the
members of his Fatah faction to block the no-confidence vote. But
they, remarkably, refused to bend. Arafat's agreement in June 1998
to reshuffle his cabinet in the face of the council's ultimatum may
be the equivalent of the English barons getting King John to meet
with them at Runnymede.
Despite these efforts, however, the council has not become the
governing body optimists had hoped for. It stands up to Arafat on
the issue of corruption in his government, but little else—
supporting him on arbitrary arrests, the torture and killing of
prisoners, and the killing of real estate dealers who sell land to
Jews. In the end, council members accept that the gun, not the law,
remains the source of real power in Palestinian society. They
exercise the trappings of democracy, not its fundamentals.
III. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinian press had developed into one of
the freest in the Arab world. Operating mainly out of Jerusalem, it
distributed a variety of newspapers throughout the West Bank and its
reporters served as stringers for international news agencies.
Publications represented the views of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad,
and those Palestinians opposed to PLO leadership. There was instant
coverage of Palestinian events and interpretation of those events,
as well as investigative reporting.
Things changed as soon as the PA came into existence; Arafat
instantly tried to muzzle the press from criticism of his rule. For
example, PA police confiscated all the copies of a Palestinian
newspaper, An-Nahar, when it criticized his position vis-à-vis
Jordan. Journalists can be arrested for "libeling and spreading
false information about the president and Palestinian Authority," an
offense that carries a sentence of three years in jail. During the
elections of January 1996, Arafat closed several newspapers critical
of his regime. Bassam Eid, a human rights activist and former
journalist for Al-Nahar, himself several times arrested and beaten
by PA police, subsequently explained the significance of
this: "There is one red line the press cannot cross, which is to
write critical articles against Yasir Arafat or his leadership. But
I am afraid of other red lines that might develop in the future."
Arafat shows particular dislike of discussion about corruption
within his inner circle. In May 1997, Daoud Kuttab, director of Al
Quds University's educational television station and a leading
newspaper reporter, was arrested and detained for a week for the
crime of televising a meeting of the Palestinian Council. A month
later, whenever Kuttab broadcast Palestinian Council sessions
dealing with the corruption in Arafat's government, the PA began
jamming his station's signal with a solid black rectangle and noise
on its frequency. Kuttab's detainment was no rogue action; "American
officials were told by the Palestinians that Mr. Kuttab was detained
on orders of Mr. Arafat." His arrest was intended to intimidate
journalists and to shape what the television station broadcast about
the PA. As Kuttab later explained: "They didn't break me. They tried
to advise me, ‘You're a journalist. Watch what you say.'"
Arafat banned books opposing his approach to the peace process, most
notably Edward Said's The Politics of Dispossession, a polemic that,
among other things, calls Arafat's signing of the Oslo Accords
a "capitulation." When two book stores in Ramallah were told to
remove Said's book from their shelves, the Financial Times commented
that this "ban fits into a widening pattern of abuses by Mr.
Arafat's increasingly autocratic administration."
Freedom of education has also been severely curtailed. On July 2,
1997, Fatih Ahmad Sabah, a lecturer in education at Al-Azhar
University in Gaza, was arrested and his exams confiscated for
giving an exam that contained a question on corruption in the PA.
This dramatic case symbolizes a more widespread problem: that
educators routinely look over their shoulder to make sure they do
not raise questions that will raise Arafat's ire.
Even complaining about the lack of freedom gets one in
trouble. ‘Iyad Sarraj, a Palestinian human rights activist, deemed
that "there is 100 times less freedom of expression under
Palestinian rule than there was under Israeli control." After making
this assessment, Sarraj was arrested by the PA police and held for
nine days. Palestinian political dissidents are getting the message:
dissent is not tolerated in the PA. The fact that, lately, fewer
newspapers are being closed results not from greater PA toleration
of dissent but from strict self-censorship by the press. In all,
while the PA does not yet resemble the closed society of a country
like Saudi Arabia, it is certainly moving in that direction.
IV. HUMAN RIGHTS
Interviewed in an article for the American Bar Association Journal
that appeared in early 1994, Arafat and Raji Surani, a Palestinian
lawyer, assured their American audience that the PA would vigilantly
protect human rights. But much evidence contradicts these bright
plans and Palestinians themselves have judged the PA's record on
human rights as "torture on a large scale." Other human rights
organizations have used such terms as "little cause for optimism,"
and "several disturbing trends" to describe the gross violations of
human rights by the PA.
The streets of Gaza and the West Bank are not safe. Salah ash-Sha‘ir
was killed by the PA police when he and his friends got into an
argument with a policeman. Taysir al-Luzi was shot in the head by a
Palestinian militiaman as he sat in a car with friends in April
1996; the militiaman found the car "suspicious." After his death,
the PA police accused Luzi of drug-dealing and gun-running.
The PA's judicial system is like that of the PLO: under Arafat's
control. He has fired judges who have handed down decisions he
disagrees with. When Amin ‘Abd as-Salam, head of the West Bank
appellate court, found no legal reason for holding ten Bir Zeit
University students arrested during the Hamas bombing campaign of
1996, he ordered their release. Deciding the students should remain
in jail, Arafat and his attorney general Khalid al-Qidra fired ‘Abd
as-Salam and the students indeed remained in jail. Thus, Palestinian
courts cannot serve as a mechanism for reversing or correcting
abuses by Arafat's police. One commentator remarks that, "far from
striving to improve the judicial system, Arafat has largely divested
it of its independence—by ignoring some court decisions and even
dismissing judges who display too much independence." An independent
judiciary, a key building block of civil society, simply does not
exist in the PA.
Reports by human rights monitoring groups describe the use of
torture in PA jails as endemic. Detainees are routinely beaten,
starved, deprived of sleep, and kept in discomfort for hours on end;
some have had electric prods applied to them. People are held
without charge; Khalid Wahhaba spent nine months without even being
allowed to see a lawyer.2 Palestinian human rights groups say six
other detainees have been in jail for close to fourteen months
without charges being filed against them. After being charged,
detainees found that getting a trial was next to impossible. At
least 117 suspects were held for over a year without benefit of
trial. According to The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group,
the majority of the PA's detainees are contractors, businessmen, and
taxi drivers accused of petty crimes; one unfortunate victim was
arrested and tortured because the police thought he was a witness to
a crime.
Worse, some eighteen detainees were killed while in PA police
custody—one of them, ‘Azzam Muslih, was an American citizen. And
while Yasir Arafat is supposed to be conducting a war against
terrorism, none of those eighteen were charged with terrorist acts
against Israel. Quite to the contrary, they are typically charged
(after their deaths) with such crimes as collaborating with Israel
and selling land to Jews.
None of the accused terrorists has been indicted for murdering
Israelis or even for serious crimes against Palestinians. Rather,
(in the words of PA spokesmen) they are charged with such lesser
crimes as "conspiracies to affect general security" and "weapons
training without a license." Worse yet, they are often released:
On the orders of Yasir Arafat, Palestinians arrested for attacking
Israelis are tried almost instantly by special State Security Courts
and convicted and sentenced before Israel can begin extradition
proceedings. The courts often mete out sentences that seem severe—
but defendants rarely serve more than a few months behind bars
before they are reunited with their families, and allowed to move
freely in PA-controlled territory.
Nabil Sharihi, the member of Islamic Jihad who helped prepare the
bomb used in the bus bombing at Kfar Darom in April 1995, killing
thirteen (including American student Alisa Flatow), was released in
July 1997. Muhammad ad-Dif, responsible for two bus bombings in
Jerusalem in January 1996 (killing twenty-four and nineteen), was
never arrested by the PA police but was "living openly" in Gaza.40
Dif often met with Gaza's chief of police Muhammad Dahlan (a
childhood friend) during negotiations between the PA and
Hamas. "Knowing of Dif's involvement in the bombing, he did nothing
either to detain him or to prevent the next outrage."
Some accused terrorists have actually been appointed to positions in
Arafat's security forces. Bassam and Yasir Aram, charged by Israel
with attempted murder of Israelis, are currently members of the PA
police force. ‘Iyad Bashiti, charged by Israel of murdering two
Israelis, currently serves as an interrogator in PA military
intelligence. Bassam ‘Isa, charged with the murders of five
Israelis, is currently a member of the PA police. Yasir Abu
Samhadana of Hamas is currently the PA senior police commander in
Khan Yunis, Gaza.
Thus does Arafat jail political dissidents and release terrorists,
making a lie of his claim that the tough treatment of prisoners is
part of his battle against terrorism. While claiming to be waging a
war against terrorism, he is in fact securing his political power by
waging war against fellow Palestinians.
A final insult to human rights by the PA was the enactment of a law
prescribing capital punishment to anyone who sells land to Jews.
Arafat explained the law as:
a Jordanian law that we inherited, which applies to both the West
Bank and Gaza, and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to
Israelis. . . . We are talking about a few traitors, and we shall
implement against them what is written in the law books.
Thus far, four real estate dealers have been found brutally murdered
near cities controlled by the PA. A fifth real estate dealer died,
allegedly from a heart attack, while in PA police custody.
Accepting the PA's claim that the population under its control
numbers 2.5 million, its police force of 40,000 puts the ratio of
policemen to civilians at sixteen police per thousand civilians.
European countries have between two and four police per thousand,
and the United States has 2.4 police per thousand. The number of PA
policemen per capita is some four to eight times greater than in the
West. Not only that; Arafat's police are also among the best armed
anywhere, possessing automatic weapons, such as Kalashnikovs, and
even anti-tank missiles. In fact, his police resemble on a miniature
scale the armies of Syria and Iraq; like them, it is both used
lawlessly against its own citizens and (in a move that may make the
Palestinian police unique in the world), to intimidate foreign
governments. In September 1996, Arafat's police force functioned
like an army when Israel opened the exit to an ancient tunnel in
Jerusalem; in response, together with rioters, the PA police
attacked Israeli troops and civilians. "For the first time, Israel
confronted armed Palestinian policemen along side stone throwing
youths."
V. CLEAN GOVERNMENT
Corruption exists everywhere but, as Transparency International
shows, it flourishes most in authoritarian regimes. Its presence at
the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority suggests how this
regime views its own people as ripe for exploitation. In 1997 a
report generated by the Palestinian Council "found that $326 million
of the Palestinian Authority's $800 million annual budget had been
squandered through corruption and mismanagement." The report gives
specific instances of Arafat's ruling elite pocketing funds:
• Information and Culture Minister Yasir ‘Abd Rabbo used $7,500 from
the ministry budget to pay for central heating at his home.
• Transportation Minister ‘Ali Qawashma accepted bribes to license
cars that did not meet road standards.
• Civil Affairs Minister Jamal Tarifi gave illegal exemptions from
customs duties for more than 4,300 cars, including a Jaguar for his
father.
• The Civil Affairs Ministry and Nabil Sha‘th's Planning Ministry
misappropriated funds from foreign donors.
Palestinians have noted that while teachers receive near-starvation
wages, members of Arafat's inner circle display extravagant life
styles. The per-capita income of Gazans may have fallen nearly 40
percent since the Oslo accords were signed in September 199352 but
members of Arafat's inner circle have enriched themselves through
corruption. For example, Abu Mazin, a likely successor to Arafat,
has built a million-dollar home. Nabil Sha‘th allegedly has a secret
fund for underwriting secret business deals for PA officials.
Survey research shows that Palestinians find the PA corrupt; for
example, in an opinion poll taken in June 1997, 62 percent of
respondents registered this view and just over 50 percent supported
a parliamentary motion of no-confidence in Arafat's administration.
The Palestinian population appears less upset by lack of progress in
the peace process than by his domestic policies: suppression of the
press, the abuse of human rights by the PA police, and corruption.
As Fawaz Turki notes:
All of us Palestinians were wrong about Yasir Arafat and
the "National Authority" that he has foisted upon the autonomous
zones he now controls in the West Bank and Gaza. . . . The heretical
editor was silenced, the human rights activist was hounded, the
recalcitrant labor unionist was jailed, and the innovative
intellectual was harassed and beaten. . . . Yasir Arafat has
unleashed destructive forces, dug up from the depths of the coercive
tradition, that are destined to stifle our dream for living as free
men and women.
VI. CIVILIAN RULE
When the Gaza-Jericho plan was first implemented, Arafat set the
tone of his military rule by staffing his government largely with
PLO exiles from Tunis and other places. From the outset, a tension
has existed between PLO staff coming from outside the territories
and political leaders of the territories; among other differences,
the latter were familiar with the workings of Israeli democracy, the
former were not.
Palestinian society today is ruled not by civilians but by the ten
or more security forces. As David Hirst of The Guardian explains,
these "act as autonomous agencies, without a chain of command or
defined responsibility. They compete with one another. All they have
in common is their subordination to one man, Arafat, who, playing
one against the other, perpetuates his control."7 Arafat's refusal
to disband the PLO and rely on his Fatah faction within the
Palestinian Council indicates that military rule will continue for
the foreseeable future. In the bitter words of Ghassan, a Gazan, the
Oslo accords brought little benefit: "One army left and another has
arrived."
REVIEWING THE DEBATE
These developments—the flawed elections, the lack of press freedom,
the arbitrary arrests, the torture, the hamstrung judiciary,
military rule—provide perspective on the Foreign Affairs debate held
in early 1994. In all, the pessimists' worry that the PA would
become an autocratic entity have thus far been largely fulfilled.
In retrospect, it is clear that Perlmutter's accurate prediction was
based on a hard-nosed evaluation of the PLO and its leader:
the PLO remains what it has always been—a loosely constructed
terrorist-guerrilla-propaganda structure whose cohesiveness is based
on loyalty to the man at the top. Arafat clings to his preference
for a secretive government that depends on loyalty to his person and
leadership. Perlmutter concluded that the Palestinian entity would
emerge as a police state.
Arafat will have to rely heavily on his security services, the
Mukhabarat, the old terrorist machine that has protected him from
the Israelis, dissident Palestinians and Arab foes for so long. As a
result, the police will have some military functions, while the
security services, rather than the political parties, human rights
organizations, or other institutions, will become the foundations of
Arafat's political power and administrative domination.
It is also instructive to see where Quandt went wrong. While not
predicting instant democracy, he argued that conditions made
democracy a likely long-term outcome. These include a predisposition
toward democracy among Palestinians based on their firsthand
observation of autocratic rule in the Arab states; the experience in
democratic ways that Palestinians have gained by living in western
Europe, the United States, and Israel. Israeli democracy,
ironically, strikes him as especially important for Palestinians;
much as they may abhor Israeli occupation policies, they have seen
what a free press can do, witnessed a working parliamentary system,
and seen mobilized electorate oust governments that failed to
deliver on promises. In an odd bit of logic, Quandt sees violent
conflicts within the PLO as a source of democracy. In his view, the
intifada provided youth with experiences that can foster democracy.
They have acquired the habit of participating in political life,
wielding authority, making decisions, and not always deferring to
the dictates of the Tunis-based PLO.
Yet Quandt's "urge for democracy" does exist and the Palestinian
Council serves as its leading expression. Its members, even those
belonging to Fatah, have tried to stand up to Arafat on such issues
as the Basic Law and corruption in Arafat's government. Although the
council's acts of defiance have not led to any governmental changes
and although its defiance of Arafat does not in itself make the
Palestinian Authority a democracy, it has kept the "urge for
democracy" alive and could provide an institutional basis to move
toward democracy in the future.
CONCLUSION
When asked at the time of the Oslo accords if the PLO could run Gaza
and Jericho, Arafat cited his "government" in Lebanon as a
credential. "We ran all of Lebanon until 1982; Gaza and Jericho will
be child's play." By this he implied that the Palestinian Authority
would be modeled on the PLO's state-within-a-state in Lebanon of
1971-83 that relied on terror, kidnapping, and murders to assert its
authority. As David Bar-Illan noted, it would take inspiration from
a regime "so corrupt and so savage that even the Syrians were
welcomed by the local population as a relief."
The chairman spoke the truth more than his listeners at the time may
have realized, for the Palestinian Authority does in fact closely
resemble that earlier PLO rule. In the assessment of a well-versed
European diplomat, Arafat
has begun to reproduce in Gaza the atmosphere of his days in Beirut,
with an administration marked by inefficiency, corruption and
cronyism, trying to keep all power to himself while juggling various
warlords, including half a dozen paramilitary police agencies, the
armed Islamic militants and criminal bands that control their own
turf for narcotics and car theft operations.
Anyone who thought the nitty-gritty of governing would transform
Arafat and his methods of governance was wrong. "Everything has
remained the same: Arafat's one-man rule, the manipulation of people
and groups associated with him, the work patterns"—as well as the
corruption and the violation of human rights. At the moment when
democracy is surging worldwide, Arafat is obstructing this process
in favor of his own autocracy.
― steven, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
eleven years pass...