The conventional thinking in Israel is that the military pressure on the Palestinians is leading to cracks in Arafat’s power. Soon the thinking goes, a more amenable leadership, not “tainted” by terrorism, will arise in the territories. Of course this is just arrogant nonsense. Arafat’s corrupt regime was imposed on the Palestinians by the Israelis. In Rabin’s famous quote, he said that Arafat “doesn’t have to worry about Bagatz or B’Tzelem.” — the former being Israel’s Supreme Court which forced Rabin to reverse the exile of Hamas militants to Lebanon; the latter being an Israel human rights group that exposes war crimes in the territories. Moreover, the Palestinians negotiating in Madrid, were far less flexible vis-a-vis Israel’s demands, than Arafat’s representatives in Oslo.
In this article, Zvi Bar’el points out that the fight against corruption in Palestine is totally rooted in Palestinian society, and is not the result of Israeli or American pressure. The regime that emerges from Palestinain elections on January 20th, should they be held, will not exactly be to Arik Sharon or George Bush’s liking.
From the beginning Palestinian opposition groups criticized corruption and repression in Arafat’s regime. Did Israel encourage such democratic signs? Quite the contrary. In one of the most symbolically horrific acts of wanton destruction in the so-called “Operation Defensive Shield” Israeli troups wantonly destroyed the television station run by Daoud Kuttab. Kuttab was jailed at one point because of his out-spokenness against the Arafat regime, and is just the sort of leader Bush should be supporting when he calls for “democracy and transparency” in Palestine.
A few days after this destruction occurred, I saw a debate between an Israeli journalist from Israel’s TV station Channel One, and a correspondent from Al Jazeera. When the latter raised the Katoub case as an example of Israel’s disregard for human rights, the Israeli correspondent replied: “There isn’t an independant TV station in Ramallah, because everyone knows no such thing as independent journalism exists in the Arab world.” If I hadn’t heard this bit of incredible arrogance with my own ears, I would be hard pressed to believe that an Israeli journalist would be so stupid as to say this on CNN, of all places. Of course now that CNN has been forced off-the air in Israel, that beacon of independant journalism in the Middle East, doesn’t have to worry about what anyone says on that station.