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Out of the Barrel of a Gun
(Jerusalem Post) - Shlomo Avineri The future Palestinian leadership will not emerge out of the ballot box, regardless of whether PA elections take place on Jan. 9. The system imported by Arafat and his Tunis colleagues nipped in the bud whatever promises of an open society might have emerged in the Palestinian autonomous areas. Like other Arab potentates from Syria to Egypt to Algeria, the Palestinian Authority became a typical mukhabarat - secret police - regime. Dennis Ross recounts that when Arafat was asked why he needed seven security services, his answer was: "But Mubarak has 12!" There is no realistic chance that the Palestinians will develop a uniform and transparent security structure. The plethora of security services was not a sign of misadministration or bureaucratic inefficiency. It was the secret, the very foundation of Arafat's rule. Arafat's authoritarian rule has become deeply embedded in Palestinian life, which, like other Arab societies, still lacks most of the ingredients of a civil society: pluralism, tolerance, civil courage, non-conformism, and the theoretical and institutional anchoring of individual responsibility. All this will not change overnight. The writer is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.