in Gaza and Jericho, and this
week assumed responsibility for
paying its own civil servants,
PECDAR is still not functioning
and apparently remains ineligi-
ble to receive the funds.
New methods of filling the
PLO leader's coffers were tried.
First came the abortive efforts to
harness Daimler-Benz and Das-
sault to the cause. Then, also last
month, Mr. Arafat's men in-
formed the international media
that journalists who wanted to
accompany the PLO leader into
Jericho would have to pay be-
tween $4,000 and $20,000 for the
privilege, the higher fee buying a
seat at the leader's own dining
table.
It was estimated that revenue
from the scheme, which was to
have been paid into the account
of an Austrian public relations
company, would net Mr. Arafat
some $7.5 million, but when the
media balked and the cash did
not materialize the project was
buried and PLO officials now
adamantly deny Mr. Arafat's in-
volvement.
As various means of "fund rais-
ing" proved increasingly prob-
lematic, Mr. Arafat became even
more irrational and there were

"The PLO does not
have experience of
accountability in
financial matters."

—Yitzhak Rabin

signs of panic. One sign was ev-
ident in his extraordinarily im-
prudent statements at the
Johannesburg mosque when he
declared a "jihad for Jerusalem"
and suggested his agreement
with Israel was no more than a
tactical truce on the path to
greater goals.
Another was his "falling out"
with influential Palestinian busi-
nessman George Hawwa over his
allegedly "unauthorized" finan-
cial dealings in Gaza and Jericho
— "unauthorized" only because
they bypassed the PLO chair-
man. So incensed was Mr. Arafat
that he had been cut out that
when Mr. Hawwa arrived in Tu-
nis from London last week, he
was promptly arrested by PLO
security officials and is still in-
carcerated.
One complicating factor is that
the businessman is the uncle of
Mr. Arafat's wife, Suha, and ac-
cording to the leading Arabic-lan-
guage newspaper Al-Hayat, Mr.
Arafat's snap decision to leave
Suha at home when he makes his
triumphal journey to Jericho lat-
er this month is directly con-
nected with this tawdry episode.
In an interview with the BBC
in London, Israeli Prime Minis-
ter Yitzhak Rabin warned that

Gaza was facing a financial cat-
astrophe this week as the burden
for paying its 7,000 civil servants
passes from Israel to the PLO.
Unable to hide his contempt
for the PLO leader, Mr. Rabin
summed up Mr. Arafat's dire
predicament, caused by his in-
ability to demonstrate financial
credibility and convince the in-
ternational donors to honor their
commitments, in a characteristi-'
tally terse, understated sentence:
"The PLO does not have experi-
ence of accountability in financial
matters."
Yet the PLO leader stubborn-
ly clings to the cash pot, howev-
er meager its resources might
now be and however agitated the
voices of dissent are becoming
within his own ranks.
At an emergency meeting in
Paris last weekend, PLO officials
appealed to the international
donors to deliver the $200 mil-
lion-plus that is needed to cover
the budget deficit of the Pales-
tinian National Authority during
its first month of operation.
"Uwe don't get this behind us,"
said Hassan Abu Libdeh, direc-
tor of PECDAR in the territories,
"a number of our people will not
receive their salaries by the end
of June."
At the same time, anxiety is
growing in Gaza: "Nobody knows
where our salaries will come
from," said one disenchanted
Gaza civil servant this week 'The
PLO blames Israel, but it is our
leaders who are to blame. They
have been fighting for this for 27
years and now that the time has
come to run our own affairs, they
cannot get their act together."
Nabil Sha'ath, a close confi-
dante since the start of Mr.
Arafat's reign and chief PLO ne-
gotiator with Israel, moved swift-
ly to defuse the growing unease
when he announced that foreign
donors had stepped in to help pay
the Palestinian police. Mr.
Sha'ath, who had earlier made a
fleeting visit to Gaza to deliver a
case stuffed with $300,000 in
cash as an interim payment for
the force, was quoted as saying
the PLO had been forced to bor-
row $60,000 at the beginning of
May.
The harsh political reality for
Israel is that Mr. Arafat remains
the indispensable partner in
peace-making. It has taken the
Palestinians a quarter-century
to create him and it will not be
easy to replace the man who has
come to symbolize and personify
the Palestinian cause.
Given that, Yassir Arafat is the
PLO's greatest strength. But his
inability to make the switch from
terrorist wheeler-dealer to inter-
national statesman has also ex-
posed him as the movement's
greatest weakness, the poten-
tially fatal flaw in the process of
peacefully transferring power
from the Israeli military to the
Palestinian people. ❑

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