Wobbles all round

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http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5327826&tranMode=none

Wobbles all round
Dec 20th 2005 | NABLUS AND JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

A split in the Palestinians' ruling party and a threat to the health of Israel's embattled prime minister could shake up Middle East politics all over again

JUST a month after the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, overturned Israeli politics by quitting the ruling Likud to form his own party, Kadima (“Forward”), a similar upheaval has hit the Palestinian Authority (PA). And to confuse matters still more, Kadima's own chances of keeping Mr Sharon in power after the election due in March took a knock after he suffered a stroke, albeit a minor one, on December 18th; his new party, after all, depends massively on the charisma of its 77-year-old leader.

Among Palestinians the uncertainty is just as great. After lengthy feuding over whom the PA's ruling Fatah party would field in the election for Palestine's parliament on January 25th, a crowd of ambitious politicians decided that the machinations of a few old stalwarts to lead the party list had gone too far. Primaries meant to resolve things fairly had collapsed in shooting and chaos. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the Palestinian president, was said to be drawing up a list that would put unpopular old-timers above genuine vote-winners. So, at literally the eleventh hour on December 14th, with registration due to close at midnight, the Fatah “young guard” announced its own party list, calling it Al-Mustaqbal: “the Future”.

It is the heaviest blow to Yasser Arafat's crony-ridden legacy since he died a year ago. Palestinian voters blame the corruption and ineptitude rampant in Fatah and the PA mostly on a small group of his loyalists. Yet even though Mr Abbas had fired some of the group, such as Arafat's cousin Musa Arafat (later murdered), earlier in the year, he was reluctant to move against other hangers-on, to the bafflement even of some of his close advisers.

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