Soccer Dad: Not ready for governing time players

January 31, 2006

Not ready for governing time players

Not a surprise that "Some Palestinians See End of Secular Dream"

(What to make of the sub-head

Election Win by Islamic Group Hamas Clouds Prospects for Arab Nationalism

though? Hamas doesn't contradict any notion of Arab Nationalism that I'm aware of. It posits that Israel is an illegitimate entity in Muslim territory. Pretty standard Arab nationalism to me.

It's also worth noting that the article sensitively avoids any mention of potential taxes that Hamas might levy against Christians for the privilege of living in their Islamic paradise.)

However there's a section that just cries out "explicate me"

Many of those involved in Fatah's autopsy trace the decline to the creation of the Palestinian Authority after the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel and Arafat's return from exile with his legions from the Palestine Liberation Organization.

"These were freedom fighters, good boys, but they didn't know how to build a state," said Mohammed Milhem, a former member of the PLO's executive committee. "They deserved medals. But we needed the doctors, engineers and scientists."

Arafat filled the government with allies, many of them unqualified. Large economic concessions were awarded to his inner circle, and resentments grew -- particularly in the Gaza Strip, where the government took shape.

Actually that's not quite right. They didn't build a state because they didn't know how to; they didn't build a state because they didn't want to. Read Daniel Pipes's "How Important is the PLO?' from 1983. Understand that while it was in Lebanon, the PLO operated as organized crime. And that's how it operated in Gaza and Jericho when it finally got the chance to put that experience to work in 1994.

Because the PLO was deemed essential to peace (according to the formulation of a group of unelected dictators at the Arab summit in Rabat) being the "sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people" no matter how committed to terror it was, no one in a position of power ever demanded that it shape up. Except maybe Binyamin Netanyahu and he was marginalized as an extremist for his troubles. (So yes President Bush isolated Arafat but didn't push for real reform. But Clinton before him excused every excess.)

The PLO that was so experienced at kidnappings and extortion became a real government learned to rely on foreign aid to fund the lavish lifestyles of its principals when it cut down on some of its terror activities. It did not become a functioning government, but a repository of privilege for those in Arafat's good graces.

Refusing to deal with Arafat was a gutsy move by President Bush and he caught a lot of grief for it. Though it was a necessary move for cleaning up the PA it was not, by itself, sufficient to change a thing.

Technorati Tags: Palestinian Authority.