RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Yasser Arafat was striding across the parking lot of his ruined compound with a confident smile, flanked by aides wearing suits and ties and by guards dressed in green fatigues and brandishing machine guns. There he was, the one-time revolutionary now under siege. The dust blowing off the piles of rubble from Israeli army raids added to the appearance that this was a person bravely resisting the forces arrayed against him.
After more than three years of bitter fighting with Israel, however, the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are increasingly disillusioned with Arafat and the government he leads, the Palestinian Authority. The forces arrayed against him include many of the people who had looked to him as the person who could best help them gain an independent Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority is the only formal government they have been able to claim as their own, but many Palestinians now consider it an experiment that failed its most basic tests -- keeping its citizens safe and allowing them to better their lives. Instead of expanding its power beyond the few cities it controlled when it came into existence a decade ago, the authority's reach has shriveled while Israel's has grown.
That 1 million students attend schools run by the authority is hailed as an achievement, and it is perhaps the authority's greatest accomplishment. There are courts but no jails. Motorists are required to have licenses, but there is no way to enforce traffic regulations or any others. Police officers can't write a parking ticket, much less carry a gun.
A deadly three-year uprising against Israel by Palestinian militias, some supported or encouraged by Arafat, has not produced any tangible victories. Instead of loosening Israel's hold on the West Bank and Gaza, the militant groups have undercut Palestinian officials and created a lawless society in which citizens complain more about the armed gangs than Israeli soldiers. Israel's government, meanwhile, is talking of a unilateral disengagement plan that would set provisional borders for a Palestinian state on Israel's terms. The European Union, usually sympathetic to the Palestinians, has joined the United States in backing the disengagement plan, and Egypt, too, is holding talks with Israel about the future of Gaza. Also, a growing number of Palestinian regard Arafat as a barrier to reforms. "There is one president, Mr. Arafat," said a member of the Palestinian Parliament who speaks regularly with Arafat. "Mr. Arafat is the obstacle."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.journal12jun12,0,4137133.column
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