Finding the lost peace.

• Author: Ross, Dennis
• Position: Palestine, Israel

IN CONCLUDING my book last year, I suggested that we might find the missing peace when Yasir Arafat passed from the scene and it became possible to get beyond the dysfunction he cultivated. Little did I suspect he would die before the end of 2004. Now he is gone.

Palestinians saw, as one of his close colleagues observed, that Arafat would prefer to "destroy everything rather than let the world deal with someone else." Another of his senior colleagues confided to me after his death that he was the "father of our chaos." In truth, Arafat became an impediment to change not only between Palestinians and Israelis but among Palestinians as well. And judging from their change in mood after his death, Palestinians knew it. Think how ironic it is that only 45 percent of Palestinians said they were optimistic about the future before Arafat became ill, and nearly 60 percent said they were optimistic shortly after his death.

Arafat left a political system characterized by corruption, ineptitude and a destructive competition among rival factions, all designed to make it difficult for anyone ever to emerge as an alternative to him. Transforming such a system would be a daunting task in the best of circumstances. And, of course, even with the Israeli decision on disengagement, four and a half years of war have not made these the best of circumstances for Palestinians.

Managing the Succession

THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom at the time of Arafat's death maintained that Arafat was the only source of authority among Palestinians and that his departure would weaken and factionalize his Fatah movement and cause Hamas to challenge it for power. The leadership void would produce a competition for power that would likely turn violent.

I doubted the conventional wisdom--not because I questioned the existence of these factors, but because I knew Palestinians feared the eruption of violence and that this very fear would unify the factions in Fatah and make Hamas and others reluctant to challenge it--at least in the near term. In fact, there was virtually no Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence after Arafat's death. Instead, there was a smooth transition and quick agreement on holding elections. For all Palestinians, internal violence of the sort we have seen in Iraq was simply unthinkable. Palestinians fear dividing and weakening themselves further, and there is a strong predisposition against it.

There is no guarantee that intra-Palestinian violence will never occur; indeed, there have been many incidents of such violence, but the fear of civil war is deeply rooted. Moreover, the widespread support for elections as the mechanism for peacefully managing the competition for power caused Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades to reconsider turning to intra-Palestinian violence to undermine the voting.

Mahmoud Abbas--Abu Mazen--won the election to succeed Ararat, and he did so running on a clear anti-violence platform. On top of being consistently against the violence--the "militarization of the intifada"--Abu Mazen also tapped into the public's desire to restore normal life. Palestinians came to see in Abu Mazen someone who might he able to end the intifada. It had not ended the occupation, only cemented it. It had not ended Palestinian suffering, only extended it. It had not made life better, only produced more deprivation.

The Bir Zeit University exit polls taken on the day of the elections confirmed the desire for "normalcy." More than 83 percent of the Palestinians who voted wanted good governance and for the Palestinian Authority to function effectively; 81.3 percent wanted the economy and jobs to be restored; 80.6 percent wanted law and order to be imposed; 76.8 percent wanted the Israeli checkpoints lifted; and more than three-quarters wanted talks with the Israelis to be resumed.

Abu Mazen was seen as the agent of change--and he received a mandate. However, the test is still to come, particularly if the new Palestinian leadership decides to crack down seriously on those who are committed to using violence against the Israelis. To be successful, Abu Mazen will need to act out of character. He never craved power, and this made him appealing to the reformers--but it also calls into question whether he has the determination, tenacity and even ruthlessness that might be required to pressure different factions to change their behavior. In the past, he would walk away from the process whenever Arafat humiliated him. With Arafat gone, let us hope he will no longer consider such an option.

Assessing Abu Mazen's Strategy

ABU MAZEN has operated on the premise that Palestinians have the responsibility to provide the Israelis security. In return, the Israelis have the responsibility to provide the Palestinians freedom. On a number of occasions, he told me that Arafat had been wrong to permit the violence against the Israelis. Violence, he said, would "produce nothing from the Israelis and [would] cost us dearly." He was, of course, right, but how did he intend to end the violence?

His answer has been co-optation, not confrontation. He has focused on achieving an agreement among the militant factions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the popular resistance committees to stop all attacks against the Israelis. In 2003, when he was prime minister, he reasoned that the Palestinian public was weary of the violence and that the groups (and Arafat) would only ignore the popular mood at their peril. His assessment may have been correct, but it left the Israelis out of the equation. To be sure, he wanted to end all attacks as a way of getting the Israelis to lift the siege. And he believed that if there were no attacks against the Israelis, they would have no reason to maintain the checkpoints and attack or arrest the militants.

However, Abu Mazen failed to take into account how Israel would react to what it perceived...