May 1, 2003

After the Strongman

By BRET STEPHENS

JERUSALEM -- All winter long it rained. To the north, in the Galilee, rainfall was 60% above the seasonal average. In Tel Aviv, it rained so hard streets flooded and sewage pipes burst. Lake Kinneret, our chief source of fresh water, rose by nearly five meters -- an estimated 773 million cubic meters in just three months. It will probably overflow its banks within weeks.

It is hard to overstate the sense of excitement this causes among Israelis. The last time Israel had rain like this was in the winter of 1992, after which we had 10 years of a progressively worsening drought. In a way, it was emblematic of the country's general slide: from the giddy promise of the first Gulf War -- when peace with the whole of the Arab world appeared to be within reach -- to the terror and futility of the present Intifada.

Now we're back to the brimming point. Saddam Hussein really is gone, and with a bit of luck an Israeli can drive from Tel Aviv to Baghdad, stopping only to switch cars at the Allenby Bridge. The prewar surge of Arab enthusiasm for Saddam has been replaced with a new surge of Arab self-scrutiny. In the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat has been forced to acquiesce to the appointment of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (better known as Abu Mazen) and his cabinet. On Monday, Mr. Abbas told a visiting European delegation that he plans to declare an end to the "armed struggle" in his inaugural speech. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not only speaks of "painful concessions" but has named some of the settlements from which he intends to withdraw.

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The credit for all this goes to the Bush administration, which yesterday unveiled its "road map" for Palestinian reform and statehood. A few weeks ago, while the war was still on, I had dinner with a senior European diplomat who expressed amazement at the idea that a U.S. triumph in Baghdad could have positive repercussions here. To Israelis this was perfectly obvious. "I can remember when an Iraqi column nearly cut Israel in two during the War of Independence," former Prime Minister Ehud Barak told me this week. A de-Saddamized Iraq now gives Israel the strategic depth within which a Palestinian state can be more safely accommodated. Equally important, victory in Iraq has given President Bush the leverage to impose his will on recalcitrant Arab leaders -- leverage Bill Clinton could have sorely used, but had long before squandered, when he came to the Camp David negotiations in July 2000.

The challenge now for the administration is to use its leverage to accelerate the process of Palestinian reform demanded by the president in last year's June 24 speech. By itself, the rise of Mr. Abbas offers no clear indication that this is what will happen. Mr. Abbas is widely depicted as a moderate for his current opposition to the Intifada: "By resorting to violence," he told a group of Fatah Party activists earlier this year, "we have played into the hands of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing." He is also said to be a firm believer in a two-state solution, and has close links to leading Israeli doves such as Oslo architect Yossi Beilin.

But Mr. Abbas's record is more blemished than these details suggest. He is the author of a 1984 book called "The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism," which purports to refute "the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed" in the Holocaust. (Mr. Abbas's figure is 890,000.) During the Oslo years, Mr. Abbas became suspiciously wealthy -- allegedly through kickbacks from the Palestinian Authority's cement monopolies.

As worrisome, Mr. Abbas is a hard-liner on the Palestinians' so-called right of return. "It is only natural that each refugee return to his home," he told an Arab radio station in August 2000. Yet one cannot simultaneously support a two-state solution -- one Jewish, the other Palestinian -- while also demanding that the Jewish state open its doors to the three or four million descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, a demand to which no Israeli government, left or right, will ever accede.

That said, it is also important not to write Mr. Abbas off. Whatever his other failings, he has one great, ironic virtue: He is weak. "Everybody knows Abu Mazen can't lead!" a Hamas spokesman once told me. Under the right circumstances, Mr. Abbas's weakness could be a blessing, for Palestinians above all.

Consider the example of his master. Arafat is the quintessential strongman -- one of the reasons the late Yitzhak Rabin thought he could be relied on to maintain order among Palestinians. In fact, the opposite proved true: His record of misrule never diminished his standing; he could unleash a hurricane yet remain in its eye untouched. He didn't have to deliver positive results to remain in power. Arafat's strength also meant he could dream big: not just of the presidency of a minuscule Palestinian state, but the symbolic leadership of the Arab cause. There is a reason Arafat's portrait always has the Dome of the Rock in the background: It's the iconography of the new Saladin, of the great Islamic redeemer. And it is a source of immense power.

Mr. Abbas, by contrast, can have no such immunity or pretensions. Unlike with Arafat, Palestinians feel entitled to have expectations of him. These expectations are mainly practical: an easing of the curfews and closures and roadblocks; an end to Israeli military occupation; access to the Israeli job market; and so on.

Mr. Abbas knows he will be held to account by Palestinians if he fails. He also knows he can deliver on none of this without the active cooperation of Mr. Sharon. But that requires a sustained crackdown on terrorist factions (including elements of Arafat's Fatah Party), which is why he insisted on the appointment of crackdown artist Mohammed Dahlan as the new minister for security affairs. It also requires a more orderly and less visibly corrupt administration, a task for which his finance minister Salam Fayyad is relatively well suited.

Put simply, whereas Arafat takes refuge in violence, Mr. Abbas's only security lies in stability. He cannot afford the punitive Israeli measures that invariably follow on terror attacks such as yesterday's suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv nightclub.

In Mr. Abbas's weakness, then, there lies his predictability, his sense of measure, the limit to his radicalism and to his ambition, and thus to his willingness to push for genuine reform. Yet in this weakness there also lies his vulnerability to Arafat, who sees in his prime minister's appointment an avenue to his own rehabilitation and continued grip on power. Arafat has no interest in ceding power to anyone, least of all to Mr. Abbas. To the extent that continued violence against Israel serves this end, Arafat will find ways to encourage it.

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For the Bush administration, there can be no finessing this point. Efforts to sideline Arafat by installing him in some symbolic role not only are doomed to failure, but also doom the Palestinian reform efforts on which Mr. Bush's road map hinges. Arafat must be made to depart, ideally by the Palestinians themselves, if necessary by some third party.

If the experience of Oslo holds any lesson, it is that peace in the Middle East is neither the outcome of a "process" nor the result of larger geopolitical forces. Rather, it is always about the man: Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin. So it could be too with Mr. Abbas and Mr. Sharon -- provided Mr. Arafat isn't around to sabotage it.

Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.