If Arafat falls, who takes reins?

JERUSALEM -- Israel's government hasn't officially decided to topple Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, but it apparently no longer fears it would be worse off without him.

The government says it hopes that by attacking his symbols of power, it will force Arafat to dismantle Islamic organizations that have carried out a series of deadly bombings inside Israel. But politicians and analysts here now openly speculate about who might succeed Arafat. One minister said that even a government run by Islamic militants would be preferable to Arafat's continued leadership.

At least if the militant Islamic movement Hamas were in control of the Palestinian Authority, the world would understand what Israel is up against, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Television.

Shalom belongs to what is now a minority within Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government that openly favors driving Arafat from power. Although the Cabinet decided Tuesday morning to declare Arafat's regime a supporter of terrorism, it stopped short of labeling him an enemy. The Labor Party threatened to quit the coalition government if such a step is taken.

But Arafat can no longer rely on the concern -- most frequently voiced by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres during the past 14 months of fighting -- that chaos and extremism would erupt in Palestinian-controlled territories if the 72-year-old Palestinian leader lost his grip on power.

"I don't think that the government cares," said Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University. "It's already all-out war. We already have anarchy and chaos" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Arafat has proven to be unwilling, or unable, to thwart large-scale terror attacks inside Israel, Steinberg said. "So Hamas and Islamic Jihad are already controlling our daily lives," he said.

For weeks now, Israeli media have reported on who the intelligence services believe is most likely to succeed Arafat, should he fall from power, die or be forced into exile by Israel. Despite the surging popularity of Islamic militants with the Palestinian public, intelligence sources calculate that the mainstream, secular Fatah movement that Arafat founded decades ago would most likely maintain its grip on power, possibly through some sort of collective leadership of senior political and security figures.

Arafat has never named a successor or established a mechanism for replacing him. Among Palestinians, he remains the unquestioned leader of both the Palestinian people and the political-security establishment he has constructed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Legislative Council passed a law of succession in 1995 that would elevate the speaker of the parliament, Ahmed Korei, better known as Abu Ala, to the presidency for 40 days in the event of Arafat's death, until elections for a new president could be held. But Israeli security sources point out that Arafat never ratified the law.

The Palestinian leader's presumed heir apparent is Mahmoud Abbas, 66, known as Abu Mazen, one of the last founders of Fatah still alive. Abbas lives in Gaza and is one of the few men close to Arafat who is thought to have the political stature to bring the myriad security forces under his authority.

Korei, 63, the Palestinian architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel, is considered to be a potential rival to Abbas, as is Farouk Kaddoumi, the hard-line foreign minister of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

For any of the three Fatah leaders to rise the position of president, Israeli security officials say, will require the backing of the heads of the security services, Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Amin Hindi. The three security strongmen control thousands of armed men in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and are considered by Israel to be both fed up with Arafat's leadership and more willing to reach a negotiated settlement with Israel.

In fact, some Israeli politicians and analysts believe that one or more of the security chiefs may try to bypass Arafat's likely political successors and seize power without them.

"The only people with a viable enough structure to rule will be the security forces," said Eran Lerman, a recently retired senior Israeli military intelligence officer who now directs the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

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