Most Palestinians want their own state, but only America can get it for them

What did most to reinforce Arafat's popularity at the expense of Abu Mazen's was how little he had to show for pursuing peace

Ahmad Fahkri was hosing down the windows of his furniture shop in Ramallah a few days ago while he thought about who he backed in the struggle between Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen, the Prime Minister who resigned in frustration four months after his appointment by the Palestinian Authority President. Then, using Mr Arafat's familiar name Mr Fahkri declared: "I want Abu Ammar and peace with Israel."

In one respect the 33-year-old Mr Fahkri was an exception in even implying there was a dilemma. On the day that Abu Mazen resigned, it was hard to find anyone on the streets of that intensely political West Bank city who didn't unhesitatingly express their support for Mr Arafat. But Mr Fahkri's remark - and the apparent incompatibility of the two objectives it states - goes to the heart of the crisis that has engulfed the Palestinian leadership.

That frustration of Abu Mazen ran wide as well as deep. There is no doubt in the depiction of the crisis as a struggle between an idea of a broadly modern rules-based government, albeit the government of a shadow of a state, and the corrupting and autocratic tribalism of the old man whose maddening triumph has been to survive as leader and champion of the Palestinian national movement for the last 35 years. But this is far from being the whole story.

Much less comfortingly for Western politicians, is the anger of the departing Palestinian prime minister, which was too forcefully expressed in speeches to the Legislative Council last week to be a mere matter of rhetoric. But it went further than that - directed as it was at different times not only at Mr Arafat and his cronies, the armed Palestinian factions and the Arab media, but also just as sharply at Israel and, perhaps even more so, at the United States.

This doesn't mean that his political problems with Mr Arafat - which were compounded by a political animosity so deep that the men had apparently not talked for the 10 days before the resignation - were not fundamental. Maybe it was to be expected that having been stripped of many of the controls he exercised over finances, Mr Arafat would fight to the end not to lose the other major source of his power, control of the multiple security services. Or that 10 days ago, armed men loyal to him would occupy the Palestinian Authorities administrative offices in Gaza to prevent an Abu Mazen-appointee taking up his job.

But all this has allowed the US and Israel, pretty much exclusively, to blame Mr Arafat for the crisis. No doubt a lot of what they say about him is true. Apart from anything else, third country intermediaries who visit him in Ramallah report that for all his cunning, his eccentricity under the humiliating siege to which the Israelis subject him verges on the delusional at times. Whether for effect or not, he has been known to suggest conversationally that suicide bombings are the work of the Israeli security service Shin Bet and that the claims of responsibility routinely made by Hamas are part of a similar Israeli conspiracy. But that doesn't remove the huge question looming over the methods used to marginalise him while seeking to build up Abu Mazen, methods which show every sign of having had quite the opposite effect - in both cases.

The argument over who precipitated the collapse of the most recent ceasefire is endless. The Israelis - who point out that technically they weren't part of it - insist they were entitled to assassinate selected militants during the ceasefie because the factions were still arming, training and planning, and that the Palestinian Authority was doing nothing to dismantle them. Hamas says it was then entitled to retaliate with the two suicide bombs which claimed one victim each. And so on, until the terrible Hamas suicide bombing which killed 22 in Jerusalem on 19 August. What appears clear from his speech last Thursday, however, is that Abu Mazen believed the Israelis saw the ceasefire as a soft option and did not strive to help maintain it.

But another point, and the one that did most to reinforce Mr Arafat's popularity - and therefore political strength - at the expense of Abu Mazen's, was how little the Palestinian prime minister had to show for pursuing, in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, the path of peace: the release of a few hundred prisoners out of thousands, many of them due to be freed anyway. Meanwhile, most checkpoints, which do so much to impoverish, humiliate and disrupt the lives of Palestinians, were left intact. Settlements remained unfrozen. And work continued apace on the 370-mile security fence intended to encircle the West Bank, and threatening to cut it off from Jerusalem. Even as Israel proclaimed support for Abu Mazen, it did almost nothing to show it.

Which is where the US comes in - or should. As I understand US policy, Washington is against Israel's systematic programme of assassinating militants. It is not openly opposed to the security fence per se but it is opposed to a fence which cuts deep into the West Bank, putting swaths of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 green line behind the Israeli side of the fence. Which its present route does.

It is a moot point how much, if anything, the US is prepared to do to impress this official on the Israelis. Or to persuade the Israelis that the Americans themselves learned from their involvement in the much lesser case of Northern Ireland that it was sensible to try and take account of the support for militant factions under ceasefire. Or to remind the Israelis of how many Palestinians such as Ahmad Fakhri, proclaiming their support for Mr Arafat, also yearn for the two-state solution at the heart of the road-map. Or to truly focus on the problem at all.

It used to be said in defence of the war in Iraq that the road to Jerusalem lay through Baghdad and that the outcome would be a comprehensive Middle East settlement. Now the story is that the US is too preoccupied with Iraq to focus on Israel-Palestine - even though you might think the huge pressures the Americans face in Iraq might make them more rather than less inclined to use their huge power to seek a solution of the most intractable problem in international politics. At the beginning of the year the Europeans were told to take a back seat; the Americans had their problem in their sights. Now the Europeans are taking a back seat but the US shows no sign of being at the wheel. Nobody is quite sure here what, if anything, Ambassador John Wolf , President Bush's envoy, is really up to in Jerusalem.

It now looks as if Ahmed Qureia - Abu Ala - who has better personal relations with Mr Arafat, will replace Abu Mazen. That the US and Israelis are waiting to see if he has any more luck in wresting the powers he needs from the PLO chairman is understandable. If he doesn't have any more luck, however, and tries to do the job anyway, they will have to bear some of the blame for what would certainly be a disastrous state of affairs. Only full, determined US engagement can solve this problem. The tragedy is that there is all too little sign of it.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk