State of Failure

by Jonathan Schanzer

  “What happened in these two years, as we see it now, is a complete destruction of everything we built,”103 he said. He also condemned the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of his own Fatah faction, saying, “The position of the Palestinian leadership and the Fatah [movement] is that we are against the operations claimed by the Brigades.”104

  With the violence of the intifada raging and world leaders growing desperate to find a way out of the current impasse, Abbas, after years of fulfilling the role of a dutiful functionary in the shadow of Arafat, soon emerged as the viable alternative. Abbas had credibility among Palestinians because he had been with Fatah from the early years. But he also had credibility in the West because he was seen to have kept a distance from Fatah’s terrorist activities. In addition, as the New York Times noted, Abbas had “good contacts with both Israelis and Americans.”105

  Something else helped pave the way for the rise of Mahmoud Abbas. As a result of widespread Palestinian nepotism, poor governance, and destructive behavior, donor states (led by the United States) pressured the PA during the intifada to bring in a prime minister for some oversight. Here again, due to the widely held perception that he stood against Arafat’s ossified political machine, Abbas was a logical choice.

  In March 2003, amid an American campaign to sideline Arafat due to his continued involvement in terrorism against Israel, the New York Times reported that diplomats were actively “pushing for the appointment of Mr. Abbas as part of an Israeli and American initiative to strip Mr. Arafat of his executive powers.” By mid-March, despite opposition from Arafat and his inner circle, Abbas was nominated as prime minister of the PA.106

  In April 2003, Abbas was sworn in as prime minister and interior minister of the PA. Shortly thereafter, President Bush said he was “pleased with the new leader of the Palestinian Authority.”107 But this did not mean that Arafat was defeated; the longtime PLO chief, using all of the formidable political tools at his disposal, did whatever he could to ensure that Abbas was sidelined when it came to foreign policy, negotiating with the Israelis, or Palestinian security issues.108

  Not surprisingly, given Washington’s ongoing feud with Arafat, the Bush administration openly threw its weight behind Abbas. As Powell noted, the White House believed that a stronger Abbas would pave the way for “a much more active American engagement” in the Middle East, specifically peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.109 To this end, on April 30, 2003, the Bush administration officially launched a formal policy designed to put the peace process back on track: the roadmap.110

  In June 2003, the New York Times editorial board declared that Abbas was “the most important reason there is renewed hope for progress in the Middle East.” As a result, the paper called on the Arab states to “strengthen the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.”111 This seemed all the more wise as Abbas continued to call for an end to the intifada, explicitly calling for a cessation of Hamas and Islamic Jihad attacks against Israel.112 As former Palestinian official Ghaith al-Omari recalls, “The anti-Arafat thing was serious. There was good reason to be optimistic about him [Abbas] at the time.”113

  The Bush administration rewarded Abbas’s calls for an end to the intifada with plans for new financial packages to bolster the prime minister’s authority.114 In July 2003, Abbas met with President Bush, who declared him to be a man of “vision and courage and determination.”115 Abbas’s visit to the White House was the highest-ranking visit by a Palestinian official under the Bush administration. Arafat never received an invitation.

  Arafat refused to tolerate this challenge. He turned the PLO power structure against his prime minister, making it virtually impossible for Abbas to achieve anything short of drawing praise from the West. As a result, in July 2003, Abbas resigned from the Fatah Central Committee, and a few months later, in September, he resigned as prime minister.116 Ahmed Qurei, aka Abu Ala, widely regarded as an Arafat loyalist, succeeded Abbas.

  In the months to come, Abbas was clearly sidelined. Arafat ensured that he was blocked from any major PLO decisions. As al-Omari recalls, “He had no allies during his time out of office.”117

  The New York Times reported that Abbas’s decision to resign “stunned Bush administration officials . . . and raised fresh questions about the administration’s strategy of trying to marginalize Yasser Arafat.”118 One administration official conceded, “We knew that this process could lead to a train wreck, but it’s the only path worth pursuing.”119 But as Bush later stated, “Prime Minister Abbas was undermined at all turns by the old order—that meant Mr. Arafat.”120

  But Arafat would not obstruct Abbas for long. As the intifada dragged on, and Arafat continued to have a hand in the violence, the Israelis pinned him down in his presidential Muqata compound in Ramallah. He remained there, surrounded by Israeli tanks and troops, from September 2002 to October 2004. The standoff ended when Arafat fell gravely ill and required medical attention. He was taken to Paris for medical treatment in late October 2004 and died there of mysterious circumstances on November 11, 2004.

  Following Arafat’s death, Abbas was elected head of the PLO. In addition, the Fatah Revolutionary Council endorsed him as Fatah’s presidential candidate. He was certainly not the most popular man among the Palestinian leadership, but he was the logical choice. Now that he headed the PLO, it seemed only natural that he become the official leader of the Palestinians’ caretaker government. On January 9, 2005, Abbas was elected as president of the PA, winning 62 percent of the votes.121

  Reports, however, suggest that “the election was plagued by inconsistent voter lists, limited media access, and curbs on freedom of movement.”122 Nevertheless, the election was widely viewed in the West as a victory for peace and better Palestinian governance. Bush affirmed that the United States stood “ready to help the Palestinian people realize their aspirations” and was heartened to see Abbas, the man he had backed as an alternative to Arafat, win at the polls.123 In his victory speech, Abbas committed himself to Bush’s vision: “Let us start implementing the roadmap . . . and in parallel let us start discussing the permanent-status issues so that we can end, once and for all, the historic conflict between us.”124

  Abbas addressed the question of violence head on. But doubts about the PA’s governance lingered. After all, it was the same PA. As Elliott Abrams recalls, after Abbas was elected, there was not a sense in Washington that “now is when to go to [Abbas] and say ‘Let’s root out the corruption.’ That was not the stance of the US government. . . . On corruption we never had a program. We did not have a five-point plan.”125

  While that may have been a lost opportunity, Washington’s concerns about Abbas’s ability to lead may have trumped concerns about governance. Filling the void left by Arafat was no easy task. Arafat had established almost absolute control over every aspect of the PA.126 He had created short chains of command that all reported to him directly. He had bought the loyalty of his subordinates through a patronage system which ensured that his people were paid well for their allegiances. Moreover, he had created an intricate network of rival security and intelligence operations that competed for power and budgets that only he could bestow.127 This pyramid scheme of corruption, fostered over nearly four decades, began to crumble without the man at the top. It was virtually impossible for Abbas to step in and make sense of the mess that his predecessor had created.

  But the problems weren’t only financial. Abbas was still working to bring all of Fatah’s violent factions, spawned during the intifada, back under his control. The younger generation of Fatah fighters, who for more than a decade had sought to share the power and patronage systems, was difficult to rein in. Abbas was also forced to contend with disgruntled old-guard members who had lost power and prestige with the collapse of the Oslo peace process.128

  As part of the Fayyad program, the PA had already successfully consolidated a number of the security forces.
Following the death of Arafat, the Bush administration created the office of US Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the PA to help reshape the security forces that had been operating under, and were largely loyal to, Arafat and Arafat alone. The USSC was at first headed by Lieutenant General William “Kip” Ward and then by Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, whose name became the most closely associated with the effort. “Dayton’s Army,” as it was known, was widely regarded as another successful reform within the PA. These forces were trained in Jordan and deployed in the PA.129 The overall effort satisfied Fayyad’s reformist agenda while also yielding a benefit to the Israelis and the United States, who were working to clamp down on the violence of the intifada and the war on terror, respectively. This also served to strengthen Abbas.

  Abbas, however, struggled in other areas. Arafat had been a revolutionary figure who inspired his people and embodied the Palestinian cause. He wore military fatigues to business meetings, along with his signature keffiyeh, which when draped over his shoulder took on the shape of pre-1948 Palestine. He was “Mr. Palestine.” By contrast, Abbas was mild-mannered. He wore a suit and tie and carried with him the air of a Western politician. It is safe to say that the Palestinian street was not entirely sold on him.

  8

  The Rise of Hamas

  In November 2005, with Abbas seemingly well entrenched in his new position, Salam Fayyad announced his resignation as finance minister. The economist had scored some modest successes with his program of transparency and good governance. And now, with elections approaching in January 2006, Fayyad sought to throw his hat into the ring.

  A byproduct of the Bush Doctrine, a policy of democracy promotion forwarded by the US president, Palestinian elections were to be the first real test of democracy in the Middle East after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It was an opportunity for Palestinians of all political stripes to celebrate.

  Longtime PLO official Hanan Ashrawi joined forces with Fayyad in December 2005 to launch a party called Third Way (al-Tariq al-Thalith). The party platform was consistent with Fayyad’s overall approach to governance: land for peace with Israel, rejection of violence, rejection of Islamic law (shari’a) in Palestinian society, and an overhaul of the Palestinian security apparatus under a central command. The name of the party said it all; it was a response to the poor governance of Fatah and the violence of Hamas. It was a third alternative.1

  The elections that followed were, indeed, free and fair. However, Fayyad’s down-to-earth approach to governance and transparency could not compete with the political forces at work in the PA. Fayyad’s party captured just 2 out of the 132 seats in the Palestinian parliament. But Fayyad’s was not the only party to underperform. Abbas’s Fatah party also failed to gain a majority. Hamas captured the biggest bloc, setting off a crisis in Palestinian society that endures to this day.

  “Hamas Sweeps Palestinian Elections, Complicating Peace Efforts in Mideast,” read the Washington Post headline on January 26, 2006.2 That was an understatement. More than 1 million Palestinians voted. In the end, Hamas took 76 of the 132 seats (74 under the Hamas banner, plus independents), granting it the right, by Palestinian law, to forge a government.3

  Critics immediately lashed out at the Palestinian people for electing terrorists to power. But a legitimate argument can be made that West Bankers and Gazans alike were simply looking for new leaders after suffering for years under an ossified regime. Hamas ran under the banner of “change and reform,” and its message resonated for a reason. It was impossible to remove the problem of poor governance from the equation. As Elliott Abrams notes, President George W. Bush came to believe that “Palestinians voted for a party that looked clean. It was Hamas against a party that they knew was dirty, Fatah.”4

  Since Hamas’s inception in late 1987, Palestinians of all stripes increasingly came to view it not only as a violent organization committed to confronting Israel (which Palestinians increasingly found appealing) but also as a political movement that refused to take part in what was commonly seen as an irredeemable Palestinian political system. The widely held perception in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, handcrafted by the movement’s leaders, was that Hamas was a pious movement that was impervious to corruption. Hamas accomplished this by portraying the PLO returnees (a’idoun)—the Fatah figures who returned from exile to the Palestinian territories after entering into the Oslo Accords with Israel—as tainted by the riches they accumulated while in exile in Jordan, then in Lebanon, and then in Tunisia.5

  Concurrently, Hamas worked hard to portray itself as the political opponent of the PLO. Hamas was unequivocal in its rejection of the PLO-led peace process with Israel. And while the PLO continued to fend off allegations that its leaders were growing rich off international donor funds, Hamas continued to cultivate a wide social network, built with money that came from the Muslim world, to provide much-needed services to the Palestinian people. Through a preexisting social network cultivated by Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas controlled as much as 40 percent of the mosque network in Gaza.6 So, as the PLO tried to deflect criticism stemming from the misallocation of resources, Hamas provided monetary support to the families of suicide bombers while also providing food to needy families on holidays.

  But the rise of Hamas ran deeper than that. The movement represented a powerful amalgam of Islamism and nationalism—both of which appealed to broad swaths of Palestinians. Formed as a breakaway faction of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the early days of the first intifada, Hamas was openly challenging the political primacy of the PLO, which purported to be the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.

  On August 18, 1988, Hamas published its covenant, a document of 36 articles calling for a synthesis of Islamism and Palestinian nationalism. It envisioned Palestine as a state run according to Islamic law and declared that “jihad becomes a duty binding to all Muslims.”7 Further, it stated that Palestinians should not cede one inch of land. By simply publishing this document, Hamas broadcast an Islamist vision that openly challenged the PLO charter.

  Ties between Hamas and the Fatah-backed PLO deteriorated. Arafat’s men rightly viewed Hamas as entering into competition with them. Before long, sporadic conflicts erupted between Hamas and Fatah partisans.8 Arafat, in fact, described Hamas members as ants that his forces could crush.9 But the longtime PLO chief was not in a position of strength. Because the PLO leaders were in exile in Tunisia, they were obviously not able to be on the ground, standing shoulder to shoulder with the rock-throwing masses. In all likelihood, this prompted Arafat to seek a means to solidify his position of leadership among the Palestinians.

  In December 1988, Arafat tacitly recognized Israel’s right to exist. Almost overnight, Arafat was transformed from the leader of a terrorist movement to elder statesman. But Arafat’s move was not without its risks. While Arafat set out to demonstrate the viability of the PLO as a government for the Palestinian people, Hamas tapped into the general frustration that was brewing on the Palestinian street. West Bankers and Gazans alike interpreted Arafat’s recognition of Israel as a sign of weakness. Some questioned why the PLO had not succeeded in expelling Israel from the territories by force. Hamas portrayed these failures as an outgrowth of the PLO’s secular ideology, offering up Islamism as an alternative.

  As early as May 1991, analysts observed that the Palestinian political rivalry was intensifying.10 One academic report noted that sporadic clashes portended “a dangerous stage in the relations between the two groups, and instilled fear among Palestinians that such violence was a prelude to a Palestinian civil war.”11

  After the PLO and Israel inked the Oslo Accords in 1993, Hamas entered into a new phase of “resistance.” In April 1994, Hamas launched its first successful suicide car bombing in the Israeli town of Afula, killing eight and wounding dozens.12 After the bombing, both the United States and Israel called on the newly form
ed PA to crack down on Hamas. Arafat obliged, only too happy to curb the growth of his political rivals. But as one journalist from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted, “A delicate balance between the two forces was upset, setting in motion a chain of events that verged on all-out civil war.”13

  While Hamas attacks against Israel intensified, so did the internecine fighting. In the fall of 1994, one firefight between Hamas and PA forces left at least 13 people dead and 200 wounded in Gaza. According to hospital officials, more than 20 of the wounded victims had been shot with Soviet-model automatic

  rifles—the kind carried by Palestinian police. Eight people had apparently been shot point-blank in the head.14 After the altercation, the PA distributed leaflets charging that Hamas was attempting to establish “a government within a government.”15

  As Hamas opposition to the Oslo peace process intensified, the PA continued to crack down. PA forces illegally detained and even tortured Hamas members.16 The PA also raided Hamas mosques and charities to weaken the Islamist group’s base of support.17 However, it became clear that Hamas was resilient and not easily dismantled.

  Interestingly, PA documents indicate that Arafat attempted to lure in members of Hamas through the same financial incentives he used to control his own cadres. He had a number of Hamas leaders on his payroll.18 When Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin was released from an Israeli prison in 1997, Arafat even sought to buy him off with a Land Rover and a Palestinian diplomatic passport.19

  The perception of an ossified and corrupt PA, however, was one of Hamas’s greatest strengths. The Islamist group went so far as to drop leaflets throughout the territories, exposing alleged business ventures between PLO figures and Israel. This was a damning allegation, implying that business interests might trump the interests of the Palestinian people.20