Arafat's soaring popularity in free-fall as Palestinians reassess his leadership
By Charles A. Radin
SPECIAL TO THE STAR


NABLUS, West Bank — The popularity of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which skyrocketed during the months he was besieged by Israel in Ramallah, is plummeting now as Palestinians reassess the results of his leadership of their long, bloody uprising.

Less than two weeks after the lifting of the siege, criticism of the 72-year-old father of the Palestinian national movement is everywhere — from the rubble-strewn streets of Nablus to the ruined Palestinian Authority offices in Ramallah to the economically stricken shops of East Jerusalem.

Militants are enraged at his statements this week that suicide attacks constitute terrorism and must stop. The hardliners threaten civil war if he makes the sort of crackdown on armed fighters that the United States and Israel demand. This time the threat seems credible.

Moderates are insisting that Palestinians acknowledge their inability to defeat Israel through armed struggle, and are demanding new, non-violent tactics. Even some who renounce terror say Arafat's statements represented nothing more than a bow to U.S. and Israeli pressure.

Militants and moderates alike say that it is time for housecleaning at the Palestinian Authority. Long-whispered complaints about corruption in Arafat's inner circle and his failure to allow Palestinians to develop a democratic government now are expressed loudly, and publicly.

Arafat "should resign," said Hassan Atiti, 36, a lawyer in Nablus who said he is not affiliated with any faction. "He failed to get a homeland for the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority is corrupt ... and it was a big mistake for him to say that the martyrdom attacks (suicide bombings) are terrorism. This will hurt the resistance."

Half a block into the ancient casbah of Nablus, where Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops fought a fierce battle last month, a group of college-age youth — unable to attend classes because of Israel-imposed limitations on movement between West Bank cities — is boiling with anger at Arafat.

"Sharon helps his people; Abu Ammar hurts his people," said Amer Ghanem, 22, using Arafat's nom de guerre. "He only watches out for himself and the people close around him. They blundered away our country."


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Arafat `only watches out for himself and the people close around him. They blundered away our country.'

Amer Ghanem

22-year-old Palestinian

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A dozen other young men stand around smoking, listening, chorusing agreement when he said the Palestinians should have elections, build strong leadership and gain control of all the land of Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Special animus is reserved for Arafat's cronies. "These people were poor in Lebanon" when the Palestinian leadership fled there, "and now they are rich," said Ghanem, an articulate engineering student one semester short of graduation. "Where did the money come from?"

Even the name "Abu Ammar," which means father of construction, has become a target of ridicule for some Palestinians, who now punningly refer to Arafat as "Abu Dammar," father of destruction.

Mahmoud Abu Katish, 37, a cook who has been unemployed for a year, since the Palestinian uprising put the hotel where he worked in Israel out of business. Katish said dispiritedly over afternoon coffee in Saladin Street, the main drag of Arab East Jerusalem, that Arafat "should not have come here in 1994."

That was the year Arafat and the other leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, weak from defeat and banishment by Israel, Jordan and Syria, returned from a decade of exile in Tunis under terms of the U.S.-brokered Oslo agreement in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority was to have gradually taken control over the Palestinian population and to have laid the foundation for a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But the Oslo accord faced opposition from extreme nationalists in Israel and Palestinians and was eventually undermined.

"We were better off before," Katish said, recounting his experience when he tried to set up a dairy in Ramallah two years ago. "The Authority set in front of me a million obstacles, and I went to" a cabinet minister "who told me to go see this other guy. It turned out I had to bribe them. If there has been transparency and democracy, it would have been different."

Ominously, for Arafat and his circle, the spectrum of Palestinians who contend that their leaders have bungled militarily and strategically extends to armed fighters like Ammar Akub, 32, of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an affiliate of Arafat's Fatah movement.

Looking over the wreckage of his apartment, Akub said: "We should change this leadership, using all means, whether peaceful or not peaceful. These leaders are traitors."