Propping Up Yasser

By LISA BEYER/GAZA CITY

November has not been kind to Yasser Arafat. He has suffered unprecedented public protests against his rule in the Gaza Strip, including the humiliation of being ousted from a funeral by jeering constituents. Palestinian authorities disclosed a rare outbreak of cholera, after initially denying the news. And, worst of all, Arafat's Islamic opponents pledged to continue their campaign of violence against Israel, and to include his security forces among their targets. Late last week a suicide bomber bicycled into a group of Israeli soldiers and police near the Israeli settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip and detonated the explosives strapped to his body, killing three, wounding six and injuring five Arab bystanders, including a Palestinian police officer. Arafat's government responded to the suicide attack by rounding up 115 militants and banning rallies by opponents of the peace accord. No wonder Arafat complained to an aide, "Everything is coming down on my head."

Until the suicide attack, Arafat had managed to put his adversities to use in his most recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Palestinian's standing in the Gaza Strip had dropped so low that the Israeli leader -- though no fan of Arafat's -- felt it necessary to prop him up with promises to ease an economic boycott and expand Palestinian autonomy, which is limited to enclaves in the Gaza Strip and Jericho, to the rest of the West Bank. "The situation is alarming," said a senior Israeli negotiator. "We are worried that our agreements will be overturned if the Palestinians don't show progress."

The Israelis shared some of the blame for Arafat's mess. After a series of brutal attacks in Israel by Islamic extremists, Rabin barred Palestinians from crossing into Israel for day jobs. Last week Israel agreed to allow a total of 23,000 Palestinians to cross daily. Still, 40,000 others who had worked in Israel before the violence were left jobless -- and furious. As Rabin and Arafat met last week, several hundred laborers protested at the main crossing point into Israel. Asked whether he was demonstrating against Arafat or Rabin, Nabil Fami, a truck driver, replied, "What's the difference? They belong to the same Establishment, which is treating us like pigs."

Israeli authorities had also made public a threat to liquidate the perpetrators of Islamic violence. Thus when Hani Abed, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad, was blown apart by a car bomb in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago, Palestinian fingers pointed to Israel. Many Gazans also blamed Arafat, since the assassination occurred under his watch. At Abed's funeral, the crowd turned on Arafat, called him "collaborator," tugged off his kaffiyeh and forced him out the back door of the mosque.

Sheik Abdullah Shami, spiritual leader of the Islamic Jihad, apologized to Arafat and warned his followers that "the Palestinian street" should not "drown in side battles." Earlier, however, he issued a provocative message, pronouncing that in the future the organization's "guns will not know any difference between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police." The militants had previously avoided such talk out of fear of igniting a civil war.

To make matters worse, frustrated aides report zero progress in persuading Arafat to change his habit of managing by dictate. He still refuses to create an accounting system that would satisfy would-be givers of international aid. As a result, of $550 million in assistance pledged for this year, only $50 million has been received. Arafat is also hampered by bitter divisions among his lieutenants. According to two senior Arafat aides in the territories, Farouk Kaddoumi, the foreign minister of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote to donor countries from the group's former headquarters in Tunis stating that since their contributions might be misused by the Palestinian authority in Gaza, they should consult him before paying out funds. According to a senior P.L.O. official, Arafat later met with Kaddoumi in Tunis and told him, "I am the head of everything the Palestinians own, and he who is not happy with the way I'm running things can go and drink the sea." Kaddoumi, however, vehemently denies even implying in his letter that the funds might be misused, a refutation supported by another high-ranking P.L.O. official in Cairo who has seen a copy of the missive. Kaddoumi also insists his talk with Arafat was completely cordial. Though disappointed by Arafat's performance, Israeli officials still believe his leadership offers the best chance for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus this week the Palestinian authority is scheduled to take charge of tourism and social welfare in the West Bank, and health and taxation by the end of the month. Next week negotiations are to resume on moving the Israeli army out of the Arab-populated areas in the West Bank, to be followed by elections for a Palestinian self-rule council. "There is no way back," says an Israeli negotiator. "Nobody can undo the agreements, so the only option is to go forward." The month of November, however, is only half over.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Tel Aviv, Dean Fischer/Cairo and Jamil Hamad/Gaza City