Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/061592/06159931.000

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                                                                                PALESTINIANS, Page 44

Better Without the Boss?


Discontent is at an all-time high within the P.L.O., yet there
is no obvious successor to Yasser Arafat

By LISA BEYER/JERUSALEM -- With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo
and Jamil Hamad/Amman


    As Yasser Arafat underwent surgery to remove blood clots
from his brain last week, it looked, for the second time in two
months, as if the Palestinian people might have to get along
without their enduring leader. But with the operation a success,
it is now clear they will have to carry on with him after all
-- a development that has many wondering which outcome would
truly have been the more convenient.

    Arafat's two intimations of mortality -- the plane crash
in the Libyan desert last April and the surgery necessitated by
bruising suffered in that mishap -- come at a time of
unprecedented discontent with his 23-year leadership of the
Palestine Liberation Organization. The chairman, his detractors
say, has become too autocratic, too out of touch, too
unresponsive to a changing world scene. "He's become the
Palestinian Leonid Brezhnev," complains a political scientist
at the West Bank's An-Najah University.

    The grumbling came to a head last month at a meeting of
the P.L.O.'s Central Council in Tunis. There Arafat was
lambasted for his organization's endemic corruption and his
tendency to make decisions alone or with a small group of
cronies. Said a council member: "Arafat got the message that he
is no longer above criticism and that if he doesn't lead the
reform in the P.L.O., the organization may break apart." The
chairman's response was to stall for time by establishing a
special committee to examine all complaints and offer solutions.

    Meanwhile, the discontent grows. In recent months the East
Jerusalem newspaper Al-Fajr has published two
uncharacteristically frank opinion pieces accusing P.L.O.
functionaries of pocketing funds meant for development projects
in the Israeli-occupied territories. "Where is all the money
that has been sent to the territories -- or was supposed to have
been sent -- and where and where and where?" one article
demanded.

    P.L.O. ineptitude and malversation were major factors in
the trouncing of the group's candidates in seven of the eight
elections for Palestinian bodies held in the territories in the
past 12 months. In balloting for chambers of commerce and
student and labor unions, Islamic fundamentalists have prevailed
each time except the last, the chamber of commerce elections for
the city of Nablus in May. There the P.L.O. slate won nine of
12 seats, but only after cynically inserting the word Muslim
into its title and emphasizing the religious credentials of its
candidates.

    The P.L.O.'s proxy leadership in the territories is also
going sour on Arafat over the way he has manipulated the ongoing
Middle East peace talks from the time negotiations began last
October. The Palestinian delegates, all of them residents of the
occupied territories at Israel's insistence, had first eagerly
pledged their fealty to Arafat. Still, the so-called inside
leaders expected to have some power in the process, in
recognition of the steady growth of their influence since 1987,
when the intifadeh broke out as a homegrown movement without
P.L.O. prompting. But instead of regarding the insiders as
partners, a prominent delegate complains, "Arafat is treating
us like puppets."

    At the same time, the chairman is under pressure from
other P.L.O. comrades to get out of the talks altogether; they
believe the negotiations are a waste of time and the P.L.O.'s
exclusion from them an intolerable insult. In Tunis only a
narrow majority of the Central Council approved continuing with
the process, and then only until October.

    Whatever Arafat's shortcomings, his grip on the P.L.O., a
coalition of disparate groups, is what keeps it from breaking
asunder over such differences. With no potential successor
having anywhere near his influence, Arafat's death would almost
certainly bring disunity. Among those mentioned as possible
heirs is Farouk Kaddoumi, the P.L.O.'s de facto foreign
minister. Kaddoumi, one of the founders of the mainstream Fatah
faction, considered a hard-liner, has international stature, but
he is unpopular among many of his P.L.O. colleagues, in part
because of his arrogant demeanor.

    Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Amer, both members of the
P.L.O.'s executive committee, are also contenders. Abbas, a
consummate Fatah insider, has made no real enemies among the
Palestinians and is considered pragmatic and level-headed. Amer,
an independent within the P.L.O., might emerge as a compromise
candidate, satisfying both Fatah, because he is a moderate whose
selection would avoid an internal Fatah split, and the radical
P.L.O. elements, because he is close to Syria.

    No likely successor, however, elicits much excitement, or
confidence, among the Palestinians as a whole. Which is one
reason why Arafat's recent triumphs over death have prompted
expressions of support from his people. The Palestinians know
that the chairman is the best they've got. Still, increasingly,
they also seem to be concluding that that isn't good enough.