Backing seen weakening for Abbas

Boston.com / News / World / Middle East / Failed Abu Mazen Abbas -- Charles A. Radin : "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is being hailed internationally for his peacemaking efforts with Israel, is failing on virtually every important domestic front and is rapidly losing support in the territory he governs, Palestinian and Israeli officials, activists, and analysts say.

Violence has surged in the West Bank. Firing by Al Aqsa Brigades gunmen at Abbas' own headquarters last week was just the most widely publicized of numerous recent incidents in which militants disrupted public order and scorned efforts by members of Abbas' administration to rein them in. The same day, other gunmen torched a Palestinian Authority checkpoint in Tulkarem. Abbas' interior minister was fired on recently by Al Aqsa gunmen in Jenin.

Numerous attempts to disarm the gunmen have failed. Abbas's programs for injecting new blood into stagnant ministries and getting rid of ineffective and corrupt officials are stalled. And Abbas -- generally known by the nickname Abu Mazen -- is incurring deepening enmity both from the Palestinian establishment, which is resisting him at every turn, and from the young guard of the ruling Fatah movement, whose members believe he is not fulfilling his principal commitments.

''Abu Mazen promised us to unify the security forces, to fix the judiciary system, to arrest those involved in corruption and to put them on trial," said Issa Qaraqei, the West Bank leader of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, which supports Palestinians being held in Israeli jails on charges ranging from terrorism to engaging in banned political activity.

Qaraqei and many of the prisoners are members of the Fatah young guard -- middle-aged men who generally were excluded from power under the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat favored those who were in exile with him in Tunis before the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and the Palestinian political establishment is dominated by veterans of the exile -- the so-called old guard -- led by Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei.

Leaders of the old guard -- in particular Qurei and Fatah chairman Farouk Kaddoumi -- are openly confronting Abbas on issues that are critical to his success.

Qurei recently opposed Abbas's efforts to arrange an orderly Palestinian Authority takeover of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip when, as expected, Israel evacuates the settlements this summer. Palestinian, Israeli, and international analysts generally concur that an uncoordinated takeover could lead to attacks by Gaza militants on withdrawing Jewish settlers and to rivalry among Palestinian groups who want to take possession of the vacated areas.

Further complicating Abbas's efforts to end violence and restart negotiations with the Israelis is the strident opposition of Kaddoumi. Abbas and Kaddoumi are the only surviving members of Fatah's founders and have long differed over the central Palestinian political issue -- the relationship with Israel. Abbas first advocated ending hostilities and negotiating peace in 1969 at a Palestinian National Council meeting in Amman, Jordan. Kaddoumi has never accepted the Oslo peace accords that led to creation of the Palestinian Authority, and continues to call for armed struggle.

In a message to the Fatah Revolutionary Council, a leading unit of the movement, in Gaza last week, Kaddoumi resurrected the rumor that Arafat, who was 75 years old, was poisoned by Israelis with help from unnamed Palestinians. Kaddoumi then attacked financial reforms undertaken by Abbas and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad as ''too tight" and charged that the attempt to disarm Palestinian militias was a US and Israeli plot.

Qurei and Kaddoumi each lost a major fight with Abbas soon after the elections, and in both instances the result was an old guard loss of funding and some political power. Qurei was forced to accept a reformist Cabinet, and Kaddoumi lost control of the Palestinian representative at the United Nations, one of the Palestinians' most prominent international posts.

But Qurei maintained enough strength to engineer rejection of Abbas's proposed pension reform last week -- legislation that would have retired 2,000 veteran bureaucrats who are mostly old guard supporters. And Kaddoumi has kept control of dozens of other Palestinian embassies that have historically been run from outside the occupied territories.

Following last week's incidents involving gunmen in Ramallah and Tulkarem, Abbas replaced his national security chief and created two groups -- one for Gaza, one for the West Bank -- to work on disarming the militias. The presidential office said in a statement that the groups would be given two weeks to complete their work."

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.