Better Without the Boss?

By LISA BEYER JERUSALEM

As Yasser Arafat underwent surgery to remove blood clots from his brain last week, it looked, for the second time in two months, as if the Palestinian people might have to get along without their enduring leader. But with the operation a success, it is now clear they will have to carry on with him after all -- a development that has many wondering which outcome would truly have been the more convenient.

Arafat's two intimations of mortality -- the plane crash in the Libyan desert last April and the surgery necessitated by bruising suffered in that mishap -- come at a time of unprecedented discontent with his 23-year leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The chairman, his detractors say, has become too autocratic, too out of touch, too unresponsive to a changing world scene. "He's become the Palestinian Leonid Brezhnev," complains a political scientist at the West Bank's An-Najah University.

The grumbling came to a head last month at a meeting of the P.L.O.'s Central Council in Tunis. There Arafat was lambasted for his organization's endemic corruption and his tendency to make decisions alone or with a small group of cronies. Said a council member: "Arafat got the message that he is no longer above criticism and that if he doesn't lead the reform in the P.L.O., the organization may break apart." The chairman's response was to stall for time by establishing a special committee to examine all complaints and offer solutions.

Meanwhile, the discontent grows. In recent months the East Jerusalem newspaper Al-Fajr has published two uncharacteristically frank opinion pieces accusing P.L.O. functionaries of pocketing funds meant for development projects in the Israeli-occupied territories. "Where is all the money that has been sent to the territories -- or was supposed to have been sent -- and where and where and where?" one article demanded.

P.L.O. ineptitude and malversation were major factors in the trouncing of the group's candidates in seven of the eight elections for Palestinian bodies held in the territories in the past 12 months. In balloting for chambers of commerce and student and labor unions, Islamic fundamentalists have prevailed each time except the last, the chamber of commerce elections for the city of Nablus in May. There the P.L.O. slate won nine of 12 seats, but only after cynically inserting the word Muslim into its title and emphasizing the religious credentials of its candidates.

The P.L.O.'s proxy leadership in the territories is also going sour on ; Arafat over the way he has manipulated the ongoing Middle East peace talks from the time negotiations began last October. The Palestinian delegates, all of them residents of the occupied territories at Israel's insistence, had first eagerly pledged their fealty to Arafat. Still, the so-called inside leaders expected to have some power in the process, in recognition of the steady growth of their influence since 1987, when the intifadeh broke out as a homegrown movement without P.L.O. prompting. But instead of regarding the insiders as partners, a prominent delegate complains, "Arafat is treating us like puppets."

At the same time, the chairman is under pressure from other P.L.O. comrades to get out of the talks altogether; they believe the negotiations are a waste of time and the P.L.O.'s exclusion from them an intolerable insult. In Tunis only a narrow majority of the Central Council approved continuing with the process, and then only until October.

Whatever Arafat's shortcomings, his grip on the P.L.O., a coalition of disparate groups, is what keeps it from breaking asunder over such differences. With no potential successor having anywhere near his influence, Arafat's death would almost certainly bring disunity. Among those mentioned as possible heirs is Farouk Kaddoumi, the P.L.O.'s de facto foreign minister. Kaddoumi, one of the founders of the mainstream Fatah faction, considered a hard-liner, has international stature, but he is unpopular among many of his P.L.O. colleagues, in part because of his arrogant demeanor.

Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Amer, both members of the P.L.O.'s executive committee, are also contenders. Abbas, a consummate Fatah insider, has made no real enemies among the Palestinians and is considered pragmatic and level- headed. Amer, an independent within the P.L.O., might emerge as a compromise candidate, satisfying both Fatah, because he is a moderate whose selection would avoid an internal Fatah split, and the radical P.L.O. elements, because he is close to Syria.

No likely successor, however, elicits much excitement, or confidence, among the Palestinians as a whole. Which is one reason why Arafat's recent triumphs over death have prompted expressions of support from his people. The Palestinians know that the chairman is the best they've got. Still, increasingly, they also seem to be concluding that that isn't good enough.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Jamil Hamad/Amman