Israel Will Face Pressure After Arafat Is Gone
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

WASHINGTON – The death of Yasser Arafat, which is reported to be near, will prompt renewed international and possibly American pressure on Israel to restart negotiations with those functionaries that replace the ailing Palestinian leader.
With Mr. Arafat in a Paris hospital last night and Israeli sources expecting an announcement of his death as soon as today, President Bush, responding to the reports, said yesterday, “God bless his soul.” He also said he agreed with Prime Minister Blair of Britain on the importance of achieving peace in the Middle East, but deliberately avoided answering whether he thought, as Mr. Blair said, that this goal was the most pressing matter facing the world today.
On November 3, the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, told reporters that America would not pressure Israel, but then cryptically said, “We have issues that are on our mind. Prime Minister Sharon knows that, and he’s made commitments that he has told us that he intends to fulfill, and I think that’s the important part at this juncture.”
In Paris, Palestinian Arab officials surrounding Mr. Arafat confirmed that he was in critical condition and reports flooded news wires yesterday that he was already dead. The news has already created a crisis within the Palestinian leadership. The Jerusalem Post in today’s edition reported that Hamas, a terrorist organization behind dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, has demanded it be included in the government that forms after Mr. Arafat’s death.
For now, an interim government is likely to emerge headed by the leaders Mr. Bush had once hoped would have already replaced Mr. Arafat. Under the Palestinian constitution, the interim leader would the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rowhi Fattouhi. Mr. Fattouhi is technically required to hold elections within 60 days of taking office.
Another possible interim leadership scenario would involve the sharing of power between the current prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister who preceded him and stepped down in frustration last year because Mr. Arafat refused to relinquish control of the Palestinian treasury and security services.
Central to the question of who succeeds Mr. Arafat will be who controls the hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in his private bank accounts, and who controls the tattered militias in the West Bank and Gaza that the CIA helped create in the 1990s to disrupt organizations like Hamas and other terror groups.
Arab diplomatic sources in Washington yesterday confirmed that the only person who likely knows the exact accounts and banks that holds the money is Mohammed Rashid, a Kurdish aide to Mr. Arafat who has dealt with his finances for years.
As for the access to the militias, the two leading figures that will vie for power will be Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, the respective former chiefs of the West Bank and Gaza preventive security services. “Rajoub and Dahlan still command some street credibility,” a former foreign service officer who worked in the Middle East said yesterday.
On June 24, 2002, the president cut ties with Mr. Arafat and conditioned America’s support for an independent Palestinian state on it being free of terror and democratic. But since then he has also endorsed a “road map” for peace that pressures the Israelis to begin talks with Messrs. Qurei and Abbas, even though both men have been unable to disarm and disrupt terror cells inside the territories. Should the president conclude that the Palestinian arrangement that emerges after Mr. Arafat’s funeral meets the conditions of his 2002 speech, he will likely join Mr. Blair, the United Nations, and European leaders in calling on Israel to resume negotiations.
While Prime Minister Sharon has instructed all of his diplomats to say nothing about the situation with Mr. Arafat to the press for now, diplomatic sources in Washington said Israel’s Foreign Ministry was sharpening talking points on the conditions a new Palestinian leadership would have to meet in order for Mr. Sharon to enter new peace talks.
Politically, such a task for Mr. Sharon would be next to impossible. In the last month, he has persuaded his parliament to endorse a plan to dismantle settlements in the Gaza Strip, a move that split his own political party, Likud.
“There is a real danger that the Europeans and others will put pressure on Israel to start negotiations with whoever emerges after Arafat,” said the executive vice chairman of the conference of presidents of major Jewish organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein. “They will say you have to help the new leadership in the absence of an elected permanent leadership. I have no doubt the White House will not pursue a hasty negotiation.”
Others, however, are not so sure. The director for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Rachel Bronson, said yesterday, “I think the Bush administration will use this as an opportunity.” She said that with Mr. Arafat gone, a key obstacle to Mr. Bush’s vision for a democratic Palestinian state is now missing.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see the administration re-engage and send a high level representative or get a high level envoy to shuttle back between the two sides.”
The chairman of the Palestine International Bank, Issam Abu Issa, said he hoped that the president will continue to support “a democratic Palestinian state.” Mr. Abu Issa’s bank was seized by Mr. Arafat’s government, but this year he finally won a Palestinian court decision clearing his name of the charges. He is also the founder of an organization that opposed Mr. Arafat called the Palestinian National Coalition for Democracy and Independence.
“Negotiations should be a by-product to stop the violence, to try to cool down things. The Americans should start a process to start negotiations in general. Today it was good the president mentioned a free Palestinian state,” Mr. Abu Issa said.
When asked if would consider making a run for a leadership position in a post-Arafat government, he said that he would not make such a move unless he received full support from the White House.
“I want the United States on my side before I re-enter politics,” he said. “You need a lot of power to change things on the ground and the United States would use their political power to change things. Without their influence I cannot do anything.” In February, Mr. Abu Issa was turned away from America in New York’s JFK airport and his visa has still not been renewed.
The director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute, Meyrav Wurmser, said she thought that a new peace process would be a bad idea. “Right now you cannot restart a peace process, there is no one to talk peace to. Now is the time to push for a new leadership,” she said.
For now, there are more mundane concerns for the White House. Israeli officials have already said they would not allow Mr. Arafat to be buried on Israeli land, ruling out a burial on the Temple Mount, the East Jerusalem landmark that contains both the remains of the Temple Jews believe was destroyed by the Babylonians and the mosque where Muslims believe the prophet ascended to heaven.
The sole Arab representative on the 15-member Security Council, Algeria’s U.N. ambassador Abdallah Baali, told The New York Sun’s Benny Avni yesterday that it would be “a very big mistake” for Israel to prevent Mr. Arafat from being buried in Jerusalem.
“I don’t think that people in the Middle East and around the world would understand that the burial of someone is prevented from happening,” he said. “I don’t think there is any acceptable explanation for that. And it would be felt as another humiliation, another frustration to be inflicted on the Palestinian people.”
In the interim, an administration said yesterday that it was likely a fairly low-level American delegation would attend Mr. Arafat’s funeral.
“We are thinking about something on the ambassador level,” this official said. When Ms. Wurmser was asked about who should represent America at the funeral, she said, “This is someone who we said we did not want to deal with, why should we send anyone to his funeral?” After further reflection she said, “All right, we should send a State Department intern.”