Who Will Lead Them Now?

By Johanna McGeary

Just a few months after Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo peace accord in 1993, Yasser Arafat lamented, as a man without a country, that even his final resting place was uncertain. "Can you imagine what it means to be a Palestinian?" he asked TIME. "I don't know where I am to be buried." He had always hoped it would be in a Jerusalem that was the capital of the state of Palestine.

Neither of those wishes came to pass. Arafat was interred last week in a temporary grave at the battered West Bank compound where he spent his final years, imprisoned by Israeli tanks. The closest he came to the Jerusalem holy site that Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount was the handfuls of dirt brought from the shrine to cover his casket. Palestinians attached handles to his marble tomb, to be ready for the day they can move it to the capital of their dreams.

After Arafat, might that dream be closer? For all the expressions of Palestinian grief as his body was returned to Ramallah on Friday, there were also quiet intimations of hope around the world--hope that the death of the unyielding Palestinian leader might bring a fresh opportunity to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the White House, President George W. Bush spoke of an "opening for peace" and offered hints that his second term might usher in a reinvigorated American role. Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could not bring himself to mention the name of his old nemesis, he said that "recent events are likely to constitute a turning point in Middle Eastern history." Arab rulers saw reason for encouragement in the moderate cast of emerging Palestinian leaders and said Muslims were ready. As a senior Arab official put it, "If we all step up to the plate, we are in business again."

Yet a host of obstacles that have wrecked previous opportunities lie in the way. The chaotic tears and gunfire that accompanied Arafat to his Ramallah grave were emblematic of the conflicted, dangerous void he leaves behind. Despite the exhortations of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called peace in the Middle East the "single most pressing challenge in the world today," Bush came out of a conclave with Blair last week offering no tangible sign--such as the naming of a special envoy or the convening of an international conference--to prove the U.S. was ready to back up its talk of cautious optimism by taking control of the peace process. Sharon indicated Israel would not budge from its policy of shunning contact with the Palestinians until new Palestinian leaders brought terrorism to a halt. And Arafat's successors--four men will take on the titles he alone held--face an uphill struggle just to legitimize their right to rule, much less to back away from Arafat's violent, uncompromising course.

Just which forces take hold--the optimistic or the pessimistic--will start to emerge in the weeks ahead. But already the prospects pit hope against harsh reality.

Palestinian leaders dampened the potential for an immediate political crisis by smoothly reorganizing power in the wake of Arafat's death. A new set of more pragmatic leaders came to the fore. Within hours of Arafat's death, Mahmoud Abbas, 69, the moderate former Prime Minister and longtime No. 2 in the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.), stepped into the top slot as chairman. He shares authority with another Old Guard moderate, current Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, 67, who will continue to run day-to-day government operations. And as Palestinian basic law dictates, Parliament speaker Rauhi Fattuh, 55, a largely powerless functionary, was named caretaker President until elections can be held.

The vote for a new President, optimists say, holds the key to progress. Bush had joined Sharon in spurning peace negotiations on the grounds that Arafat let violence flourish under his corrupt, incompetent authoritarian rule and so was not an acceptable partner for peace. For more than two years the U.S. and Israel turned their backs on the Palestinians. For those who construed Sharon's rejection of Arafat as an excuse to avoid negotiations altogether, the prospect of new management offers the Palestinians a chance to call the Israeli leader's bluff--though Israel was happy to ignore Arafat's legitimacy as elected President of the Palestinian Authority. A democratic vote could empower Palestinians with the mandate to make peace. And that could present the Bush Administration with an opportunity to press Sharon into expanding his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza into a negotiated pullback from much of the West Bank.

Many analysts believe that Abbas could win the election. If he did, his record is encouraging. Born the son of a shepherd in northern Galilee, the trained lawyer known as Abu Mazen was an exile for 50 years, a dedicated nationalist and, like Arafat, a founding member of Fatah, the primary faction in the P.L.O. As the big man's deputy, he charted his own path. In the 1970s he opened channels to Israeli peace activists, and in the early '90s he led the Palestinian side in the secret negotiations that culminated in Oslo. Under pressure to reform the dysfunctional Palestinian Authority in 2003, Arafat appointed Abbas as Prime Minister. Abbas called for an end to the armed uprising. Unable to compete with Arafat's autocratic ways and undercut by Israel and the U.S., Abbas quit in frustration after four months but worked to position himself as Arafat's likeliest successor.

Abbas and Qurei have signaled their intention to go ahead with elections, viewing them as essential for a credible post-Arafat government. Even the radical outfits Hamas and Islamic Jihad have called for a vote and a "collective leadership," which could bring them inside the political circle. The Bush Administration has signaled its willingness to assist the Palestinians in setting up a vote. A White House official says the U.S. has "already conveyed our concern that the elections be facilitated by Israel." That means leaning on Sharon to open up travel in the tightly constricted territories and to make arrangements for a broad vote.

There should be no illusions that any of the above will come easily. Israeli intelligence predicts privately that the Palestinians will never pull together elections by Jan. 9, the deadline Qurei set last week. For a treacherous period, Palestinians will be in a state of anxiety as they mourn the loss of the father figure who symbolized their national aspirations. After years of fruitless struggle, Palestinians remain united only in grief and fear of chaos. Their economy has been shattered, their government is bankrupt, and militants continue to gain strength. Most Palestinians yearn for peace but doubt that whoever leads them next will achieve it. "I am not hopeful," says Fawzi, 35, a Ramallah phone-company worker. "The Palestinian-Israeli problem has reached the point of no solution."

Although the U.S. and Israel considered Arafat an obstacle, he was, for good or ill, the glue that held the pieces of Palestinian political life together. But his one-man rule crippled the development of potential successors and institutions that could provide stability after him. Now his death leaves a vacuum that could be filled by hard-line nationalists, warlords and terrorists. The dozen-plus security organs that Arafat set up have fought one another for dominance. In Gaza, a policy of armed resistance and generous social services has made Hamas the power to be reckoned with, whether or not it participates in elections. Some West Bank cities, cut off from central authority, have degenerated into separate fiefs.

Abbas and Qurei hold the loyalty of the secular Old Guard, but they are nearing their 70s. A younger generation is clamoring for power, including reformers who want a more open, honest government and militants who earned their spurs fighting Israel. Though locked up in an Israeli prison, Marwan Barghouti, 44, leader of Fatah in the West Bank, is the most popular figure there after Arafat. His word from the cell block could help or hurt new leaders. Another rising star, Mohammed Dahlan, 43, former head of preventive security in Gaza, has street cred, the loyalty of members of the Palestinian Authority's influential security services and close relations with the U.S.

Everyone eager to change the conflict's dynamic looks to the U.S. to step in with decisive influence. But the Bush team is still debating how to proceed. European allies and State Department Middle East hands argue that Washington should swing into action boldly, pushing for a full range of talks on all the thorny issues. They say the best way to strengthen moderate Palestinian leaders is for the U.S. to be clear about what the Palestinians will get if they make peace. Last June, an official involved tells TIME, Qurei and other top officials met quietly with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Berlin to push for progress toward Palestinian statehood. "They said, 'Why can't we jump to final status talks and start negotiating borders?'" says the official. Rice, according to the official, replied, "We're sitting in Germany. Its borders were settled in 1991, but by then it was a successful, democratic country. That's what you need to think about: building successful institutions of democracy."

That, says a White House official, is Bush's approach now. He's extremely wary of rushing into the fray before the Palestinians solidify a new order. He will sit back, talk up elections, offer commitments of aid and support if the Palestinians develop democratic institutions, and see how they do. In the short run, says the official, overt support for moderates would fatally discredit them in Palestinian eyes. In any case, the Administration believes that Arafat left Palestinians unprepared to make the concessions required to attain statehood, like restrictions of the number of returning refugees, limited control of Jerusalem and the loss of part of the West Bank. Bush's decision to play it cool for now was a bitter pill for Blair, who went to Washington hoping the U.S. would pay back his unpopular solidarity in Iraq with more assertive peacemaking in Jerusalem. Blair wants to give the Palestinians momentum, but Bush told him, "What we don't want to do is push too far too fast."

If the U.S. pushes at all, it will push the Palestinians, not Sharon--if the cadre of top advisers who have prevailed on most Arab-Israeli issues during Bush's first term has its way. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the advisers argue that Sharon is the man with the plan, so the best thing the U.S. can do is stay out of his way and support him if he asks for help. In Sharon's office, no one thinks a new set of Palestinian leaders will do what Arafat couldn't: dismantle the terrorist organizations. They might wear suits instead of fatigues and tone down the "revolution to victory" rhetoric, but Israelis still don't trust them. Privately, Israeli officials expect that the moderates' tenure will prove transitory. In any case, Sharon remains fundamentally less interested in negotiating a final settlement with a Palestinian partner than in setting in stone security for Israel on his own terms. And the Prime Minister, says an aide to Sharon, does not anticipate a burst of pressure from the Bush Administration to change course now. He took Bush's comments last week as a green light to continue his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank unilaterally rather than enter into new negotiations with the Palestinians. "The Palestinian Authority doesn't become an automatic partner," says the aide, "just because it's conducting elections."

That puts the burden squarely on the Palestinians to turn themselves into a model partner before the U.S. or Israel will stretch out a hand. Yet the Palestinians need help--diplomatic encouragement, money, a confidence-building concession or two--to take a new direction. Opportunities for peace have been squandered time and again by refusals to take risks. If anything good is to come from Arafat's death, it will require everyone involved to cut through that knot. --With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Matthew Cooper/ Washington; J.F.O. McAllister with Blair; Scott MacLeod/Cairo; and Matt Rees, Jamil Hamad and Aharon Klein/ Jerusalem

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi; Matthew Cooper/ Washington; J.F.O. McAllister with Blair; Scott MacLeod/Cairo; Matt Rees; Jamil Hamad; Aharon Klein/ Jerusalem