AL-QUDS: About the same time as Yasser Arafat’s black limousine glided to a halt outside British prime minister Tony Blair’s London offices at Number 10 Downing Street on Monday, a furious crowd converged on a Gaza refugee camp to bury a law student shot dead by the Palestinian leader’s own police forces.

The conjuction of events encapsulates the Palestinian leader’s paradox. Despite the warmth of his reception by Tony Blair, Arafat’s popularity among his people is ebbing. The consummate political survivor is no longer master of his own destiny.

After signing on for Washington’s war on Afghanistan, Arafat’s future now depends on persuading radicals to uphold that decision, and respect a much resented ceasefire with Israel.

His audience in London is the first concrete achievement of the Bush administration’s new initiative to end a year of bloodshed, and to restart negotiations for a permanent peace in the Middle East. For the Palestinian leader, it is the first instalment of his expected reward for his support of Washington’s war coalition: a viable Palestinian state.

But on his home ground, the Palestinian leader has never appeared so out of step with his people. As thousands of mourners marched behind the coffin of Hithan abu Shamala, 20, one of three people killed when Palestinian police opened fire on rioters, there was scant belief in Arafat’s overseas mission, or in international diplomacy.

“Arafat may be getting stronger so far as America and Britain are concerned, but among his own people, he is getting weaker and weaker,” said Fayez abu Shamala, a relative of the dead man and the deputy mayor of Khan Yunis. “People here may still respect him as their leader, but they hate his Palestinian Authority, and his security system.”

A year into the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the people of this wretched refugee camp feel they have nothing left to lose. They gave only grudging support to the ceasefire declared by Arafat last month.

“It has always been a fact that the public is as angry with the Palestinian Authority as it is with Israel,” said Khalil Shikaki, a pollster and analyst in Ramallah.

As the first Arab leader to wholeheartedly support Washington’s war the Palestinian leader is taking a tremendous gamble. “If Arafat can get some advantage for the people by supporting America, then he will benefit. But if there is no payback, and the coalition does not gain anything for the Palestinians, he will suffer,” said Abu Shamala, who is a member of Arafat’s Fatah faction.

Over the last few months, Arafat’s grip on his people has slipped. In the meantime, popular support for Hamas has grown by 60 per cent.

The assassination in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday of the second Hamas activist in as many days is a further blow to Arafat’s authority. Unless he can demonstrate the ceasefire will improve the lot of Palestinians, Arafat will find it increasingly difficult to enforce it. The rage he saw last week on the streets of Gaza could easily explode again.

A Palestinian working for an NGO said: “Arafat was never corrupt but he allows himself to be surrounded by people who are not clean.”

He echoed a widespread view that while Arafat was a good revolutionary leader, he is useless at nation-building. His waning authority is expected to lead to more chaos — and more violence against Israel. Both those developments could overwhelm any US or British efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.