Saturday, July 17, 2004
The current chaos in Gaza is illustrative of the bankruptcy of Yasser Arafat's regime. The depredations of the last few years has clearly undermined his authority, but the PA has always been riddled with corruption and Arafat has been unwilling to seriously focus attention on the problem - better to galvanize his people against Israel than to deal with the numerous internal problems of the Palestinian territories.
Frustrations like the ones finding expression in Gaza now can be deferred, but eventually they erupt and usually are all the worse for having been postponed. Arafat's sheer inability at state-building (as opposed to his relative success in fostering and hyping national consciousness) will leave his people remarkably nationalistic and fundamenalist, but still quite unable to deal with statehood.
Frustrations like the ones finding expression in Gaza now can be deferred, but eventually they erupt and usually are all the worse for having been postponed. Arafat's sheer inability at state-building (as opposed to his relative success in fostering and hyping national consciousness) will leave his people remarkably nationalistic and fundamenalist, but still quite unable to deal with statehood.
