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Intifadah Anniversary - Arafat Not Liberator, Time For Reevaluation "NOW THE TRIBES ARE BACK" IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE

        MER - Washington - 12/10/97:
            However disheartening it is to analyze the Arafat "Authority" as but the newest of the twisted Arab "client-regimes" in the Middle East; the more tragic thing done by the Israelis to the Palestinians is their decision to bring Yasser Arafat and cronies to further impliment their long-time policy of "controlling" and dividing the nearly two million Palestinians who live in the occupied territories and who gave rise to the Intifada quite independently of the Arafat cabal.
            When the Intifada began Yitzhak Rabin was the Defense Minister in the government of Yitzhak Shamir. He publicly made it known that his personal policy was to crush the Palestinians; and he literally gave orders to the Israeli army to do so, leading to the infamous telephoto pictures of Israeli soldiers holding Palestinians with their boots and machine guns while using big boulders to break their bones.
            Contrary to the much-hyped image of a Rabin suddenly transformed by shaking hands with Yasser Arafat; the actual reality is that Rabin's decision to use Arafat was very much in keeping with his long-held policies -- divide and demoralize, crush and subjugate, control and conquer.
            This article by long-time Middle East analyst Graham Usher, uncovers more of the realities of what the Israelis through Arafat have wrought:

ARAFAT REVIVES TRIBAL POWER By Graham Usher
     The governor's house in Rafah on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip used to be a gleaming white, three-storied apartment block on the edge of the town's main square. No longer. Today the house is a gutted shell, its vacant window frames smeared with soot and its ground floor garages protected by armed kaki-clad Palestinian soldiers.

     The destruction is the result of a chain of events in Rafah which, last week, saw thousands of Palestinians storm the governor's residence in violent protest over the way they are governed. But it is also emblematic of all that is wrong with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority(PA) in the areas it commands and perhaps, of what is in store should political reforms (as much as economic prosperity) not be forthcoming.

     Palestinians say the trouble started in "a fight over money" between two of Rafah's biggest clans, the Al-Dhair and Abu Samhadanah families. It should have been resolved between them or by the legal
system of the Palestinian Authority (PA). But, in Rafah, divisions between civil and political authority are not so neat, which is why a spat over money can -- in the words of one Palestinian from Rafah -- "become a tribal war in which one of the tribes is the PA." . . .

     Last year Yasser Arafat appointed Abdallah Abu Samhadanah Rafah's Governor. It was not a popular choice. In January 1996, Abdallah stood for the Palestinian Legislative Council(PLC) but failed to muster enough votes to be elected. His appointment as governor -- an entirely new position in Gaza, without historical precedent -- was widely seen to be due to the weight of his family and their loyalty to Arafat rather than as representing any mandate from the people. Abdallah certainly seemed to see it this way.

     Within months of his appointment, Abdallah's brother Odeh, was made chief of the Political Department in the PA's Interior Ministry. Another brother, Sulliman, was put in charge of the PA's Electricity Company for Gaza's southern area. . . . The dispensation of power and position in Rafah thus became a matter of family connections rather than any other criteria.

    And so, it appeared, was the administration of justice.   To settle his quarrels with the Al-Dhairs, Abdallah last month arrived at the latter's house escorted by a bevy of heavily armed policemen.
Unable to enter the house, the police opened fire, severely wounding Mussa Al-Dhair, the clan's muktar.   The Al-Dhair family placed a notice in Palestine's main Al-Quds newspaper, calling on the "masses and the governing authority...not to permit the law of the jungle to rule our nation". The call went unheeded -- until 22 October, when Musa Al-Dhair died from his wounds.

    Following his funeral the next day, about 2,000 Palestinians marched on the governor's house. The march was led by the Al-Dhair family but supported by others, including Palestinians from Rafah's
Shabura refugee camp, whose poverty stands in provocative contrast to the house's opulence. "It was neither a demonstration against the PA nor simply a clan dispute", said one Palestinian. "It was a cocktail of both."

     The cocktail ignited. In a street battle lasting seven hours, Palestinians threw rocks and molotov cocktails, torching the governor's residence and two more houses belonging to Yasser and Tayssir Samhadanah, both officers in the Palestinian police. In a desperate attempt to maintain order, the police opened fire with live ammunition, killing one Palestinian and wounding four others. . . .

     Since the PA was installed in 1994, Arafat has based his rule on two crucial constituencies. One was his Fatah movement, many of whose cadres were absorbed into the PA's burgeoning and often lawless security forces. But the other was Arafat's deliberate reempowerment of Palestine's traditional or tribal families, like the Abu Samhadanahs or, for that matter, the Al-Dhairs. In Rafah, the two constituencies have become one, with tribal and political loyalties so interwoven as to be inseparable.

     For Palestinian analysts like the sociologist, Isah Jad, the PA's "revival of tribal structures" is not only inimicable to Palestinian hopes for a law based and democratic society. It is corrosive of the modern national consciousness Palestinians have forged out of their conflict with Israel. For 30 years, says Jad, "the national movement conducted a long struggle to weaken loyalty to the family and the tribe and strengthen the concept of nationalism and loyalty to the homeland. Any rebuilding of tribal structures will reinstate the family and the tribe as the individual's first loyalty."

     Many Palestinians in Rafah agree. "During the intifada, people forgot about the tribes," commented a Palestinian from Shabura. "Resident or refugee, Christian or Muslim, we were one people. But now the tribes are back."

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