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Arafat's in the Driver's Seat

(Jerusalem Report) - Ehud Ya'ari Arafat was of course the loser in that he was obliged to "choose" Abu Mazen for the role of prime minister in the first place, and that he was forced to accept Dahlan as a cabinet minister. Still, he managed to plant a majority of his own loyalists in the government, and to demonstrate that Abu Mazen would not have a majority either in the Fatah institutions or in the Legislative Council unless "backed" by Arafat - thereby exposing Abu Mazen to the charge that he was anointed by foreigners, a consequence of massive American-European-Israeli pressure. Arafat has not been relegated to irrelevancy. He has been neither sidelined nor bypassed. He holds significant power within Abu Mazen’s cabinet and, ironically, he will try to exploit the very apparatus built to neutralize him as a bridge by which to escape his isolation and regain international recognition. Every gesture made to Abu Mazen will require a parallel payment to Arafat. Any rope given to the prime minister will mean a little extra for the president. We will soon see how the new government turns into a less important body when it comes to political decision-making than the Fatah Central Committee, the PLO Executive Committee, and the other bodies of the PLO elders in which Arafat sits securely in the driving seat. Alongside all the hopes that the Abu Mazen-Dahlan government indeed represents a turning point, a fair measure of skepticism is in order as well.
2003-05-09 00:00:00
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