Why Palestinian self-government is unraveling under President Abbas
Mohammed strolls down the corridor, stopping to gaze at glassed-in panels marking milestones in the life of Yasser Arafat and modern Palestinian history: the first intifada, the Oslo Accords, a Nobel Peace Prize, the second intifada.
The Chilean Palestinian, who asks that his full name not be used, lingers at the final panel on the 2004 death and funeral of Mr. Arafat, the longtime chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and first president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Mohammed says every time he visits his family in the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya, he comes to the Yasser Arafat Museum and Mausoleum, a pilgrimage to what he considers symbols of Palestinian identity and yearned-for statehood, to “feel connected to my nation and my roots.”
“All of this is our story,” he says, motioning to the display cases. On this weekday afternoon he seems puzzled to be the only visitor.
A few yards away, the Mukataa presidential compound, which buzzed with life under President Arafat, is nearly just as empty.
It’s no coincidence. Mr. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, whose elected mandate ended 14 years ago, has shut off the Mukataa and PA, the institutional embodiments of Palestinian autonomy, to everyone but himself and his inner circle.
And while the succession process triggered by the passing of Mr. Arafat was an orderly affair that followed a nascent constitution
