A day in the life of the Palestinian Ben-Gurion
Salam Fayyad is one of the few people who wakes up in the morning to work to build a state for his people.
By Akiva Eldar Tags: Salam Fayyad Israel newsThere are tens of millions of people in the world who glory in the title "public servant," but Dr. Salam Fayyad is apparently the only one who wakes up in the morning and goes to work to build a state for his people. Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, is not calling for peace talks, for violent resistance to the occupation or even for civil disobedience. That's the department of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The most violent protest in which Fayyad participated was a ceremonial bonfire of goods produced in Jewish West Bank settlements. His weapons are responsibility, efficiency, transparency - and above all, patience. Lots of patience.
The power centers in Israel have no idea how to deal with an economist who looks like a bank branch manager and has never held a pistol in his life. In the mid-1990s, when Fayyad was appointed International Monetary Fund representative in the territories, no one imagined he would one day become a key political figure in the West Bank.
Last Tuesday we accompanied the Palestinian prime minister during his workday as a state-builder. Early in the morning his black Mercedes left the well-guarded villa in the Beit Hanina neighborhood on Jerusalem's northern outskirts. There Fayyad lives with his wife and his younger son, a student at a high school in the city. His eldest son is a student at the University of Texas, and his daughter is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston.
By 8:30 A.M., Fayyad has already presented a description of his "start-up" state to a German parliamentary delegation. In a week, he will launch the 1,000th project - this one in Qalqilyah - in the two-year state-building plan he revealed last August. On the assumption that salvation isn't going to come from the peace process, he drafted a detailed work plan for building infrastructure and institutions - the elements of a state.
In the past two years, more than $150 million has been invested in building hundreds of schools, clinics, libraries, and new buildings for government ministries and municipalities; and in improving the electricity, water and sewer infrastructure as well as roads. The Gulf states, the United States and Europe have all contributed to the effort.
Fayyad is promising that this year, more than half the PA budget ($1.8 billion out of $3 billion) will come from tax revenues, especially indirect taxes. He hopes the Palestinians will no longer be dependent on the kindness of foreign countries and will be able to fill their own needs.
At 9:30, Fayyad warmly greeted Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, an old acquaintance. A bit before 11, the prime minister loosened his tie and set out from his office in Ramallah back toward Jerusalem. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Fayyad goes out to mingle. This time he went to the Dahiyat al-Barid neighborhood in A-Ram, on the border of Jerusalem. The separation barrier has torn it in two, destroyed the income of hundreds of families and separated many Palestinian men from their East Jerusalem wives and children, who have blue Israeli identity cards.
"Despite everything," Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, Fayyad declared. He promised to come, inshallah, to the Old City as well, and he promised that no separation fence would divide Jerusalem's Palestinians.
The retinue continued to the new medical center in Dahiyat al-Barid, funded by the government of Oman. Fayyad unveiled a plaque, examined the modern equipment and asked how the doctors and nurses were doing. He clearly has learned to enjoy the contact with what our politicians call "the street."
But his "street" isn't party branch offices. Fayyad's Third Way party has no branches, and it hardly has any voters. Fayyad is not a member of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank. In 2001, under pressure from the Bush administration, Yasser Arafat appointed Fayyad finance minister. Within a few months Fayyad had sent home 40,000 superfluous PA bureaucrats and shut down dozens of Hamas charitable institutions that served as fronts for the organization's political and military activity.
At the beginning of 2006, before the elections to the Legislative Council (the Palestinian parliament), Fayyad, Hanan Ashrawi and Yasser Abed Rabbo established the Third Way, but they won only two seats.
The appointment of the "bureaucrat" as prime minister in July 2007 peeved many top Fatah officials. However, for Abbas, Fayyad is an existential asset. As long as the prime minister is scooting around the West Bank, the president can scoot around the world as much as he likes.
About a year ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even informed the international Quartet members that if the Palestinians were to decide to go without Fayyad, they would also have to manage without American money - a $500,000 annual donation.
Jerusalem too has realized that Fayyad is a rare species. With negotiations stuck and terror attacks largely halted, Israeli diplomats are having trouble responding to the "price tag" he is wreaking for the occupation's damage. This includes anti-Israeli resolutions in international forums such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization. The recent reports of alleged corruption among top PA officials is causing Fayyad a certain amount of embarrassment, but the affairs do not involve him or his close associates.
Nonetheless, a quarterly survey conducted in December by Dr. Khalil Shikaki's Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that only 13 percent of the residents of the Palestinian territories wanted Fayyad as their vice president - more said they preferred the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti or the prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh. However, about 40 percent of the respondents graded the Fayyad government's performance as "good" or "very good," as opposed to 25 percent who called it "poor" or "very poor."
Fayyad's biography has nothing indicative of qualifications for leading a national liberation organization. Fayyad, 58, was born in a small village, Dir Rasun, in the Tul Karm district. His family neither fled nor was it expelled from its home in 1948, and he himself has not spent even a single day in an Israeli prison. When his peers were planning terror attacks in Israel, he was studying economics at the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1980s, as Yasser Arafat was fleeing to Tunis, Fayyad completed his doctorate and was appointed dean of the economics faculty at Yarmouk University in Jordan.
In 1993, when Abbas signed the Oslo agreement at the White House alongside Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and was preparing to return to the territories, Fayyad was ensconced in the offices of the World Bank in Washington.
"When the peace process began, I felt uncomfortable," said Fayyad in a conversation. "I was not living in peace with myself. As I read the newspaper with my coffee in my yard, I felt a need to be a part of the story. This is something much greater than comfort and a career."
They uproot, we plant
As the premier's workday continued, he made a stop at a new park at the edge of A-Ram. It was the Tree Festival - the Palestinian Arbor Day. Fayyad declared that the Jewish settlers are uprooting trees, while the Palestinians are planting saplings.
"Our roots," he added, "are deeper than the separation wall."
The Palestinian anthem played on the loudspeakers, and the police saluted. "We are so close that I am sure the settlers can hear our anthem," Fayyad said.
Even Fayyad, considered the ultimate moderate, sees East Jerusalem as an integral part of Palestine, and its Jewish neighborhoods as settlements.
The retinue proceeded to a meeting with representatives of nongovernmental organizations, also in A-Ram, in an auditorium packed with hundreds of people.
Fayyad later told us that he had encountered initial skepticism regarding his plan to build a state while still under occupation, but added that he has been sensing positive reactions: No one, after all, is forcing Palestinians to come en masse to his public meetings.
A woman from an environmental organization asked him to help promote awareness of the issue, as two elegantly dressed men sitting near her exhaled cigarette smoke into the crowd. Another woman complained about the lack of shelters for battered women, and a man in the front row protested the lack of handicapped access at government offices. Judging by the type of problems being raised, Fayyad's state is indeed at hand - these are the problems of a state.
Fayyad's critics say that Palestinian policemen are filling the role previously played by the lsrael Defense Forces - fighting violent resistance to the occupation. The president of Al-Quds University, Prof. Sari Nusseibeh, has even suggested that because of Fayyad's policies, the PA should shut its offices and demand Israel annex the territories and give civil rights to the Palestinians. Israel's Oz immigration police unit operates in Ramallah with immunity, a few streets away from Fayyad's bureau, displaying the weakness of his dignified title.
But Fayyad doesn't miss an opportunity to say that security is in the Palestinians' interest, and that the PA isn't doing anyone else a favor when it imposes law and order. He promises the crowd that soon, Palestinian security forces will control all the West Bank towns. Nevertheless, Fayyad knows there is a glass ceiling separating him from 60 percent of the West Bank - Area C, which is under full Israeli control, and includes East Jerusalem, the border area and the Jordan Valley.
In the back seat of the Mercedes, as he rushed to a meeting with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Fayyad said he knows a state can't be built on its economy alone, nor on only law and order. But in less than two years, when he completes his project, the occupation will become an anomaly in the eyes of the world, he said.
In the evening, shortly before he presented his vision at the Herzliya Conference, Fayyad dined alongside President Shimon Peres at the table of Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, an acquaintance from his World Bank days. Peres, a close associate of Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, called Fayyad the Palestinian Ben-Gurion: He too is building a state while under foreign occupation - and despite foreign occupation.
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All Fayyad's policies are doing is aiding the normalisation of Israel's occupation. Netanyahu in his Bar Ilan speech called for economic peace without ending the occupation and that is exactly what Fayyad and Abbas are providing for Netayahu. Fayyad's economic peace is based on the service industry which serves the Palestinian elite and Western/european workers and is doing little to add the majority of Palestinians, particularly those in the rural area. Fayyad may be more polished but is just as much a collaborator who is selling out his people as Abbas is - the only difference is that his 30 peices of silver are much more visible than Abbas'
I don't know Salam Fayyad but that's what the Arabic of his name translates as. What does Ben Gurion's translate as?
You are a zionist hatemonger. Fayyad is a pro-West moderate who believes in a secure Israel and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. American, EU and Israeli officials who know him, and he is close to many Israeli politicians, are "enchanted with him." But you write, and lie, about him with the specific purpose of denigrating him. Your purpose must be to destroy, if possible, the persona of any Palestinian with whom Israel can work toward a peace agreement. Readers should know your objective. Fayyad is not the mouthpiece of a terrorist organization. That is a lie. Fayyad is not a member of Fatah, and is no more responsible for the death of an Israeli stabbed to death by a Palestinian (and neither is Fatah) than you are for the 6,217 Palestinians murdered on their own land by Jews from 29 Sept. 2000 to 5 Feb 2009. Fayyad is not the Prime Minister of a terrorist organization, he is Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, no more a terrorist organization than Likud.
I do think it is Israel who needs Nelson Mandela my dear Mary, and instead they keep getting John Vervoed!
Ben Gurion didn't need to use the Holocaust to persuade the US to do anything Roosevelt was all in favor and the 2 parties most responsible for pushing him into supporting the idea of the jewish state were: 1) Ernest Bevin British foreign secretary who was against allowing even a couple of hundred thousand jewish refugee to Palestine which Roosevelt was originally willing to settle for. When Bevin fought even that Roosevelt backed the jewish state idea. 2) The Soviet Union, they were all ready to recognize the new state so the US could hardly recognize it if the Soviets were. Ben Gurion did not control Haganah or Irgun. Haganah fought the British army and the hostile arab villages ( hostility between arab & jew drastically increased after the UN voted for partition in 1947 ) Irgun was an independent organization who made their own rules. When he became PM Ben Gurion forcibly disarmed Irgun because there could be only 1 armed force the IDF Why is Israel a threat to WORLD peace?
The Israelis, by their acts, will determine who is the "Palestinian BenGurion". Sayyad seems like one of the most competent pols in the area. But Israel could well force him to be portrayed as more Neville Chamberlain than BenGurion.
The reason Palestine is occupied and parts of it taken over to create Israel is due to our lousy leadership. I wish we had someone comparable to a David Ben Gurion.
Your deep-rooted apprehensions about seeking peace and accepting a man like Mr. Fayyad are certainly borne of genuinely conceived personal and political leanings. Unless you are able to understand, however, the extent of the suffering of the ordinary Palestinian, you will not be able to see peace in your lifetime. I encourage the Israeli government to look to South Africa and North Ireland as models for political reintegration. Most whites were strongly averse to working with Nelson Mandela's ANC, as it had committed acts of indiscriminate violence against its civilian population. Time proved, however, that brave leaders with a genuine drive for peace prevailed. I believe that Mr Abbas and Fayyad are such men. Because they have been associated with the Palestinian people's only (until now) organized resistance doesn't mean they are not potential peace-makers
deliver peace to the region if the fundamental understandings of a leader are not based on the essence that every civilized ethnicity deserves to live with dignity and economic sustenance, whether you're a highly educated PM Salam Fayyad or PM Benjamin Netanayhu. We've all met highly intelligent and accomplished people, but some lack compassion within their character. Both these leaders have demonstrated compassion and yearning for peace. Mind you, these two leaders have opposing personality traits and are intelligent, but they both must access reasonable concessions from their constituents to ever deliver a genuine peace. That's the challenge. For a start which is good, neither belongs to extreme ideological stances regarding their religious or ethnic backgrounds and are pragmatic individuals on the whole. When there is economic success of any nation, this enhances the relationships with its neighbours - look at Canada and U.S., U.S. and Mexico, Canada and Cuba, etc.
When prime minister Fayyad established the Third Way party Yasser Abed Rabbo WAS NOT part of this party.
with Mr Fayyad, the Palestinian PM.This reporting has open our eyes of the type of moderate persons of the PA. More artcles of this kind will certainly help us in understanding our neighbors, which we are destined to live with. I thought they were all MONSTERS,Terrorists and the worst, but thanks to you now I know that they are just like us all.
then with what kind of person would he like to deal with? Amazing when Israeli politicians say that "we do not have partners to negociate Peace? Does Palestinians have partners as Avigdor Leiberman, and Danni Ayalon?
now for God sake, while there is hope for one to work for peace, people like you jump and say killing or stabing? what about killing and systematic killing of iraeli murderous soldiers? or u call them hero. stop you and any one like you? Israel has no option either to accept two state solution or Palestinain will outnumber you and you will find your self minority. Get along with this
you need to improve your general knowledge and overall education !!
I'm assuming English is not your first language, because more than half of your posts make no sense. What I can only guess are attempts at sarcasm or jabs at wit, fall utterly flat. And what appear to be your more salient points, are equally inscrutable. .
ivar is occupatioal therapy an hout a day on your computer !
The "occupation" of 67 or the "occupation" of 48? Or Fayyad's occupation as an economist?
Israel should help Fayyad, not hinder him.
A ray of light, illuminating the truth, will melt the the iceberg of the occupation. Thanks, Dr. Fayyad. Thanks, Mr. Eldar.
Fayyad presented several conditions to becoming prime minister, including that Hamas would recognise Israel, which Hamas declined.
Now let's see if a Pal dares to write an article with praise for an Israeli politician
History is full of those who are glorified by their masters until they r useless, then they r discarded like germs and garbage. The Shah was one of those. He was made Empror of Iran and despite of that he was a simple agent and a tool of the US and the West. Gen. Lahd of the SLA, and now owner of a restaurent somewhere was another. This man who insults fellow freedom fighters and Palestinian nationalists who gave their souls for their usurbed country, can be labelled anything by the ennemy. That would not change anything.
I have been to see Invictus and the parallel was then obvious to me between Mandela and Marwan Barghouti. Reading this eye-opening article, it is obvious that Sayyad is another good candidate. Mandela had a vision of government based on rebuilding the nation and unifying its people. So has Fayyad. Let us hope, Palestine soon gets a leader taking them out of its state of apartheid and oppression. Greetings from the icy fjords of Norway.
Very well done article, Akiva. Informative and captivating. Shabbat Shalom.
Without a doubt you have opened many eyes. Mr.Fayyad is most certainly a man of vision. A technocrat to some. A man to be respected. Herein lies a true leader, a mentor for those that will follow. Good day, from the snowy civilized Swiss Alps.
I have never doubted Bibi's brilliance and charismatic leadership, but what a shame that such intellect and energy is so mypoically focused on the strategies and intrigues of Real Politik in keeping the party machine together at all costs. If he had the vision and the moral courage,he could evolve into one of the world;s great leaders
That some Palestinians actually slip through the net of obstacles Israel uses to deny them access to the world's prestigious universities. But gee, Steve, this article is not about Netanyahu, it's about Fayyad and his endeavors towards bringing peace and stability to the Palestinians. Maybe one of these days Akiva will write an article about Netanyahu, if he ever manages any success towards peace and stability for Israel. Then I'm sure Akiva will mention Bibi's background and his family, including his and his daughter's education.
you can read? Why then write lies. Are you scared of a western educated Palestinian who has the respect of global leaders I wonder?
... also became Prime Ministers... each in his own way leading to memorable peace efforts (peace with Egypt, Madrid conf.)
Fayyad is far more refined and conscientious than Ben-Gurion, who actually fits the description you give of Fayyad to a far greater degree than does Fayyad. Comparing him with Ben-Gurion is actually a disservice to the man, which I doubt was Mr Peres' intention when he made the comparison. But hey, maybe the lack of any other Israeli worthy of compare led Peres to choose Ben-Gurion, since Israelis hold him in such high esteem as the founder of their state.
Comparing Salam Fayyad to Ben Gurion is like comparing Michael Jackson to Luciano Pavarotti. Let's face facts. Despite his sophisticated and stately manner, Fayyad is the mouthpiece of a terrorist organization, a member of which stabbed an Israeli soldier to death just two days ago. In addition, the Al Aksa Martyr's Brigade, responsible for death of countless Israelis is a bona fide part of Fatah, Fayyad's party. So despite his degree in economics from the University of Texas, Fayyad is still the Prime Minister of a terrorist orginazation which despite their rhetoric is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Wake up Eldar!
in the truest sense of the word! his quiet endeavors are seldom noticed, and yet he's quietly accomplishing more towards the realization of a palestinian state than anyone else. hopefully his efforts will be recognized by the people whose interests he strives to improve... and hopefully he and his efforts won't be destroyed by those who are threatened by the progress he's making.
Seems a big chunk is missing in this article.
Recently, a public square in Ramallah was named to honor the 50th birthday of Dalal Mugrabi, the terrorist who murdered 37 Israelis on a bus in 1978. Akiva's hero, Fayyad, participated in the ceremony referring to Mugrabi as a "martyr." Eldar is impressed that Fayyad's daughter studies at MIT. I have never read of his admiration for his own Prime Minister (Netanyahu) who graduated MIT in my class of 1976 with both his undergraduate degree and Masters degree (MBA) completed during his four years of studies while married and after five years of army service in Israel's elite Sayeret Matkal.
I know Fayyad very well. He has NO Mercedes.....!! I don't think you really know what he is doing......God Bless HIM.
Even the hard nosed Ariel Sharon was awed by you. Lets hope Bibi does some maturing and gets with the program.
Politicians I am sure almost all of us can agree there. He is I think the best thing for bettering Palestinians lives, and being an economist first not a politican he actually works may therE be no need for Womans shelters; there should be no battered woman. Jerusalem will be an issue but he is helping better peoples lives this may hopefully build peace or build the groundwork to stop hate
how preposterous he is.. His Great Guru ,doing "what no other in the World does" let's see : "rushes in Mercedes" ,true ,he could have chosen Rolls Royce "has a daughter at MIT" ,it's a firesure sign of him being a civil servant of a "terribly suffering impoverished like none in the Word population" "Peres called him Ben Gurion" ...but Peres kissed Arafat (as did Abdulah Eldar) so where the heck is this being "like none else in the World" ,Abdulah Eldar?!!!!!!
It's a bit unkind to compare Fayyad to Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion used the Holocaust as leverage to persuade the US to recognize the state of Israel, and then encouraged the Irgun and Haganah terorists to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of their land. Now Israel is considered a malevolent state by the world, without any respect for International Law or the Geneva Conventions, and a threat to world peace - not something Ben Gurion would have ever envisaged.
While 9,000 Palestinians languish in Israeli jails, while thousands endure the daily humiliation at the checkpoints, Fayyad zips around in his Mercedes building a "state." (Really a welfare state.) While the people of Gaza live undeer siege under the eyes of Israeli drones poised to rocket them if they protest their confinement, while the Israelis shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in Ni'ilin, Mr. Fayyad enjoys a nice meal with President Peres. Is there any wonder his party enjoys a 3% rating?