Palestinians Rally Around Arafat
At a barber shop where men come for a trim during a break in the Israeli curfew, President Bush's demand for a Palestinian leader other than Yasser Arafat strikes a chord -- of anger and stubborn resistance.

``The people only want Arafat -- Arafat or nobody,'' unemployed laborer Mohammed Yousef Hiraimi, 33, says to nods of agreement among the half-dozen men at the shop.

Even Arafat's critics -- and there are many -- say they would rather keep him in power than buckle to Bush's demand that he be replaced with a leadership ``not compromised by terror.''

If any such alternative leadership exists, it has yet to make its existence publicly known.

Arafat's political weakness is apparent: Palestinians gave him an approval rating of only 35 percent in May, and his control of militants or even his own lieutenants is questionable. Last week, it took Arafat two days of wrangling to fire an unwilling security chief.

Yet despite accusations that his Palestinian Authority is ineffectual and corrupt, Arafat at 73 is still revered by many as a guerrilla hero who for almost four decades kept the Palestinian cause on the world's agenda.

``His opponents stand alongside him because they feel that defending him is defending the national dignity,'' said Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah.

A poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, a Palestinian research group, showed only 47.5 percent of Palestinians said they expected Arafat to be re-elected. Arafat was identified by 25 percent as the personality they trusted most, while 24.5 percent said they don't trust anyone. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

But that was before Bush's speech. Palestinians expect the next polls to show a strengthened Arafat.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rallying-Around-Arafat.html