Wanted: Dead Nor Alive

Yasser Arafat might
not be dead, but how long can they keep him alive? 

On Friday, Israel's Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said Arafat was being kept
alive artificially, but the source of his information was not clear. "We
all know that clinically he's dead but we won't interfere with internal
Palestinian affairs. They'll announce his death when they find it
proper," he told Associated Press Television News.

A Palestinian spokeswoman denied Lapid's assertion. "He is in a coma.
We don't know the type but it's a reversible coma," Leila Shahid, the
Palestinian envoy to France, told French RTL radio. Shahid suggested the coma
occurred after Arafat was put under anesthesia for medical tests including an
endoscopy, colonoscopy and a biopsy of the spinal cord. She said doctors do
not yet have a diagnosis.

His existence may be less a matter of fact than a matter of state. An
official extension of Arafat's time on earth would give the pretenders to his
throne more time to bury the hatchets in each other's backs. The vultures
have already gathered at his bedside.

Many members of the Palestinian leadership, Arafat's closest aides, and his
wife, Suha, gathered in Paris. Many were staying at the Intercontinental Hotel
in the Opera neighborhood of Paris. Observers said that the power struggle
within the Palestinian leadership was already taking place, even in Paris as
members gathered by their leader's bed.

It's unclear what anyone can gain from a man unable to anoint a successor and
who may never waken again. Perhaps the mere fiction that Arafat still lives and
occupies the Palestinian Presidency will be enough to prevent an open claim to
the supreme position. The demons may be momentarily held back; but only just.
Yet the inherent instability is that the fiction cannot
be sustained indefinitely.

But while French medical sources said Arafat was technically still alive,
they added that he was brain dead and was breathing only with the help of life
support machines while in an irreversible coma. Technically, Arafat is
"not dead", one source said on condition of confidentiality. But
there was no hope of his leaving his vegetative state and recovering basic
bodily functions such as breathing without assistance. Such artificial care
could be "extended for several days or several weeks thanks to the
machines", the source said.

Then the real weakness of the position, the absence of stable Palestinian
institutions, will soon manifest itself with a vengeance. Once internecine
struggle breaks out each faction will call for international backers in a kind
of bizarre, winner-take-all casino game where human lives are chips. The
prospect of striking a deal with the eventual survivor is called 'finding a
partner for peace'. Dennis
Ross says:

"Certainly with Arafat out of the way, you have an impediment
removed," Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East negotiator for the first
President Bush and for Mr Clinton said. But, he said, the Bush administration
must expect a protracted, potentially tumultuous process for replacing Arafat,
and should begin pressing now for elections in which Palestinians choose a new
leader. If Arafat passes from the scene, whoever is elected or appointed to
replace him "couldn't be worse" from the US viewpoint, said Ross,
who recently wrote a book titled The Missing Peace on his experiences
negotiating with Arafat and other leaders in the region.

The only reason why the gang of scoundrels which make up the Palestinian
leadership may opt for election, which is the least familiar tool of their
polity, is if they fear intramural warfare will consume them all. But they may
turn to the gun anyway out of sheer habit. The Israeli
Defense Force has prepared contingency plan "New Leaf" against the
possibility that all hell will break loose.

IDF commanders were instructed, should such a situation arise, to do
everything in their power to prevent a flare-up and reduce friction between
troops and Palestinian demonstrators in West Bank and Gaza towns. Even so,
commanders were also told to make every effort to prevent demonstrations from
overrunning IDF roadblocks and settlements in the territories.

The French may have performed a valuable service by admitting Arafat to a
military hospital in Europe which will reduce the risk of imputing his death to
Jewish poisoning, a rumor that has already made the rounds in the Middle East.

in Jerusalem, after it was reported that Arafat had died, several dozen
Jewish demonstrators celebrated in a city square, declaring that one of the
greatest enemies of the Jewish people was "on his way to hell". ...
The head of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Mohammed al-Hindi, said the high committee
of Palestinian and national Islamic factions would meet at the Gaza offices of
the Palestinian parliament. "We will discuss the dangerous situation,
especially what will happen if the president were to die," Hindi said.
The high committee is an umbrella forum of 13 factions including Arafat's
Fatah party, the Islamist movement Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the leftist
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Even after Arafat dies the various terrorist factions can mark some time by
making his place of burial an issue.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he would not permit Arafat to be
buried in Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians as
their capital. Army chiefs said they had also ruled out a burial in the
Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis in the West Bank.

Sooner or later a day with neither Arafat nor his ghost must dawn, but even
in life he was a phantom; the counterfeit of a peace process rather than its
reality, maybe the only specter ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The
greatest tragedy that could attend his passage is for the diplomats to select
yet another shadowy figure rather than the hard reality of stable Palestinian
institutions upon which to found their slim hopes of peace.