December 5, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 19, 1422

LONDON: The missiles that slammed into Yasser Arafat’s sprawling seafront compound made a nightmare scenario for the Palestinians seem dangerously real on Monday night: that Israel was bent on the personal destruction of their leader and the administration he has indifferently headed for the last seven years. The highly symbolic attack on Arafat’s official residence in Gaza was the crowning act in a concerted military, political and economic offensive against his Palestinian Authority. Seven years after the arrival of limited self rule in the West Bank and Gaza, and 14 months after the start of the Palestinian uprising, Arafat’s cash-strapped, administration is listing within inches of collapse.

Weeks ago, the notion would have been unthinkable. Although rightwing allies of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, have been clamouring for months for the destruction of the Palestinian Authority, the idea was seen as extreme. No longer. Even before the weekend of carnage to Al Quds and Haifa, the idea of deliberately destroying Arafat’s regime had become part of Israeli public discourse. It became instantly popular on Monday in the wake of the suicide bombings.

Security officials warned that the demise of Arafat’s authority, which was granted self-rule over isolated areas of the West Bank and parts of Gaza under the Oslo peace accords, would lead to chaos, and strengthen Palestinian groups adamantly opposed to peace with Israel. But in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israeli armoured bulldozers demolished the headquarters of Arafat’s elite Force 17 security detail last month, Palestinians are convinced otherwise.

“They are trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority, and all its institutions,” said Abu Bilal, who was in overall command of the Force 17 headquarters in the West Bank. “They are trying to create a state of chaos. They want to stop the Palestinian Authority from doing its work, and to create a confrontation between the PA and the people.”

The multi-fronted assault is part of a strategy to put pressure on Arafat to crack down on Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers. The hardline approach this week appeared to have won the support of Washington after the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said he doubted Arafat had control over his people. The breaking point could arrive as a result of renewed Israeli and US pressure on Arafat to crack down on fighters. Arafat has promised to do so, but the arrests so far have provoked riots, and fuelled Palestinian frustrations against Israel, and his own administration. He can no longer count on his security forces. At least one of the gunmen who rampaged through the northern Israeli town of Afula this week was a member of his own police forces.

Palestinian security officials say the defection is a product of an Israeli military strategy which has destroyed scores of security installations in the West Bank and Gaza. They say Israel’s targeting of Palestinian police posts makes it impossible to hunt down and arrest fighters, or to safeguard against infiltration by groups such as Islamic Jihad. Before the Israeli bulldozers destroyed the Force 17 headquarters in Ramallah, soldiers carted away files of the names and address of 1,500 troops. Abu Bilal argues this puts Force 17 members at risk of assassination. “How do they want us to work like this?” he said. ”This is sabotage.”

The Israeli military offensive has hastened the decline of the second concrete accomplishment of Oslo: the self-rule authority which was the first elected government in the history of the Palestinians. Since the onset of the intifada, the Palestinian legislature has ceased to function. The economy is moribund, and Arafat’s bureaucracy is broke. Before the uprising, the PA received $400 million a year from international donors for infrastructure. Its monthly revenues were $90 million, of which 60 per cent came from tax revenues collected by Israel. Since then, Israel’s refusal to hand over the money it owes the Palestinians has shrunk monthly operating revenues to $18 million.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military siege of the West Bank has stranded thousands of civil servants in their homes, and paralyzed administration. The crisis is particularly acute in the Palestinian hinterland - the so-called Area B where Israel maintains security control. But it also affects Arafat’s strongholds in Ramallah and Gaza City. When the tanks rolled into Ramallah last month, work at five ministries under Israeli occupation ground to a halt.

Instead, the PA has been reduced to a bizarre make-work project, with a bloated payroll of 114,000 employees serving as the sole sustenance for extended families. The PA is managing to pay salaries only because of grants from Arab states and the EU. Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 30 per cent and even the well-to-do have exhausted their savings. The World Bank estimates half of Palestinians now live below the poverty line of $2 a day. By most accounts, only the health and education ministries and the postal service function in Gaza and the West Bank. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.