After the lengthy tenures of the historic leader Yasser Arafat and, later, his successor Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians appear to have grown accustomed to the permanence of the man at the top. This is despite the personal and political differences between the two, whose common denominator remains Fatah and its central place in Palestinian national life and the institutions embodied by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
During Arafat's long years in office, he embodied a distinctive style of leadership, paying little heed to whether it conformed to prevailing models of governance—whether those of the "Third World," with its one-man dictatorships; the socialist world, with its one-party rule; or the Western world, with its strict traditions and institutional procedures for the transfer of power.
Arafat inherited a relatively simple political system from his predecessor, the PLO's founding chairman, the late Ahmad al-Shuqayri—whose nom de guerre, coincidentally, was also Abu Mazen. He introduced extensive modifications and additions until the expanded framework came to be known, quite appropriately, as "the Arafat system." Throughout his long leadership, his policies and initiatives faced opposition, while splits and rebellions periodically erupted, some coming close to unseating him. Yet his exceptional political talents enabled him to survive them all and consolidate his leadership for life.
The system built during Arafat's era bore his name, but it was in fact the product of integrating diverse national forces through his remarkably shrewd use of an umbrella framework that accommodated all currents and affiliations: the PLO. Arafat became inseparable from the system, just as the system became inseparable from Arafat, until his death brought his era to an end and his longtime colleague Mahmoud Abbas succeeded him.
The environment that had sustained Arafat's leadership changed fundamentally once the PLO, by consensus, embarked on the path of negotiations with Israel—first through the Madrid peace process and later through direct participation in the secret Oslo negotiations. Oslo consigned Madrid to the past and created a new reality marked by far more ambiguity, uncertainty, and danger than by the beginnings of the settlement Palestinians had hoped for: ending the occupation and establishing an independent state.
Arafat died after striving to redirect the Oslo process, including by returning to armed struggle, which many had assumed was over. He was succeeded by Abbas, who had earned the title of "the architect of Oslo," making him the logical figure on whom to pin hopes of rescuing the faltering project. Who else seemed better suited to such a task?
Abbas might indeed have been able to save the Oslo project from complete collapse had Israel's decision-makers not changed. The partners disappeared and were replaced by adversaries, leaving Abbas stripped of the advantage once associated with being Oslo's architect.
Over the two decades since he succeeded Arafat as the foremost Palestinian leader, nothing has remained of Oslo except its burdens. Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu dismantled every advantage the accords possessed on paper, leaving Abbas to play the role of leader amid the ruins of a structure he had helped design.
The peace process that began in Madrid and moved to Oslo was not the only casualty of Israel's reversal. Another victim emerged from within the Palestinian arena itself: Palestinian unity. The political system fragmented, and the authority of the top leader no longer extended over a vital part of the homeland. For the first time in the history of the Palestinian national movement, the country became divided geographically, politically, socially, and in terms of legitimacy. The world was forced to deal with two political systems and two competing sources of legitimacy, handing Israel an opportunity it could scarcely have imagined: strengthening its control over both sides of the divide through a war of extermination in Gaza and a campaign to establish absolute dominance in the West Bank.
The Palestinians no longer have a single political system as they did during the PLO's years in exile and under Arafat's leadership. Nor does the head of that system any longer serve as the fully representative voice of the Palestinian cause. Israel continues to erode the already limited authority he exercises in the West Bank, while Gaza has remained beyond his control since Hamas seized power there, even as Hamas's own rule continues its slow decline.
Palestinian anxieties eased somewhat when President Abbas issued decrees calling legislative elections, setting a date and establishing the legal framework under which they would be held. Yet concern persists over separating the legislative elections from the presidential vote, as well as over the possibility that the decrees could be reversed under pressure from the "old guard" seeking to preserve its influence—or whatever remains of it. These developments have fueled doubts about the seriousness of the timetable and the electoral procedures while adding fresh momentum to the quiet and open struggle over succession—not only in the familiar rivalry between Fatah and Hamas, but also within Fatah itself, where the recurring phenomenon of multiple electoral lists bearing the movement's name has resurfaced.
As for the presidential race, no one knows whether there are any candidates besides Marwan Barghouti, who would campaign from his prison cell without any guarantee that he would be allowed to contest the election as a free man—the most basic prerequisite for any genuine electoral competition.
The anxiety continues to deepen, while meaningful remedies remain, regrettably, elusive.
