A little candle of hope has suddenly, but quietly, begun to burn in the Middle East.

There have been three positive developments during the last few days:

The United Nations Development Program has issued its first Arab Human Development Report, an analysis of economic, social, civil, political and cultural development in the region. It was written by a group of Arab intellectuals for the UNDP and the Arab League's development fund, and it is quite astonishingly frank.

The campaign to oust Yasser Arafat and reform the Palestinian Authority has gained strength.

A debate has begun among non-radical Arabs over whether suicide bombings are a moral and effective response to Israel. Such an expression of conscience and debate over terrorist tactics has not been heard for some years.

Let's look first at the UNDP's report. No pleasure can be taken from the facts it documents, because it paints a stark, depressing picture. But as proof that there are some in the Middle East who are prepared to look at themselves without first working to situate their appreciation, as you might say, it is worth its weight in gold. The report's main point is that the quality of life of the rapidly-expanding population of the world's Arab nations is falling farther and farther behind that of the rest of the world. It puts the blame squarely on lack of freedom - lack of political freedom, lack of intellectual freedom and lack of freedom for women to participate in their societies.

Gross Domestic Product in all Arab countries combined stood at $531.2 billion in 1999 - less than that of one small European country, Spain, which stood at $595.5 billion in that year. The productivity of Arab industrial labour, only 32% of the American level in 1960, had sunk to 19% of the American level by 1990. A short time before the UNDP report was released, Freedom House's 2002 Report to the United Nations on the Most Repressive Regimes of the World was also issued.

"The countries judged to be the worst violators of basic political rights and civil liberties are: Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan. They are joined by the territories of Chechnya and Tibet… Many of the states in this report… share common characteristics. They violate basic human rights, suppress independent trade unions, censor or control the press and restrict property rights. Some of these states also deny the basic rights of women.

"This report from Freedom House to the United Nations paints a picture of severe repression and unspeakable crimes against human dignity. But the grim reality depicted in this report stands in sharp contrast to the gradual expansion of human liberty that has been progressing for the last 25 years. Today, there are more free countries than at any time in history…"

Interesting, isn't it, the number of nations on the Most Repressive list that are in the world's Arab region? In fact, not a single Arab nation is considered by Freedom House to be in its Free category. Four are rated as Partly Free - Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania and Morocco. The rest are Not Free and, of them, five are on the Most Repressive list. Palestine was not, of course, measured as part of the report. Had it been possible to do so, it seems likely its figures would simply have lent a little more depth to the pit into which Arab nations are sinking. It is clear that very little effort has been put into making the Authority a body which functions as a proper government for the Palestinian people. Their lives, already a nightmare because of the region's violence, are made even uglier by the bureaucratic and legal chaos that results. Patience with Mr. Arafat and his helpers is wearing thin. There are now loud calls for reform of the Authority - calls not only from the West, but from the Arab World, from the Palestinian population and from within the Authority itself. Part of the problem seems to be Mr. Arafat's insistence on doing it all himself.

As a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hatem 'Abd Al-Qader, said last month: "No single apparatus should execute political negotiations, security tasks, and provision of services simultaneously." That, of course, is what Mr. Arafat has been doing.

Some take a cynical view of why he should want to preserve so disastrously inefficient a way of doing business - Hussan Khader, another Legislative Council Member, has hinted that it may have something to do with preserving conditions in which corruption can flourish. In the Arabic-language weekly, Kul Al-Arab, he denounced the Authority as riddled with corruption, and named Muhammad Rashid, Mr. Arafat's Economic Adviser, as one of its most corrupt members.

Mr Arafat himself has been accused on many occasions of misusing or misappropriating PA funds. One recent accusation, which he denies, was published in June by the Kuwaiti Al Watan daily newspaper. It claimed he had appropriated to his own use $5.1 million in aid meant for those whose homes were destroyed recently by Israeli bulldozers. This money, the newspaper claimed, was deposited in a personal account of Mr Arafat's in a bank in Cairo, with the help of a few close aides, including his Economic Adviser, Mr Rashid.

The newspaper alleged that little of the money and food aid sent to the Palestinian Authority had actually reached those for whom it was intended, and that in fact, Mr. Arafat had simply doled the money out to his close aides in the PA and to top officials in the Fatah movement. The food that was donated, the newspaper charged, had been sold in Palestinian and Israeli markets without being distributed to the needy who, television viewers may remember, took to the streets briefly in a rare show of anger.

Internationally, there is now wide agreement that Mr. Arafat's antics have made him irrelevant to the urgent need to find a solution to the Palestinian problems. Surprisingly, one of the last to hold out against this notion was Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister. Until early this month, he favoured deporting Mr. Arafat. Now, he has agreed with the assessment of his Army Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen Moshe Ya'alon, that it is a mistake to interact in any way with Chairman Arafat, who, instead, should be allowed to "dehydrate".

There have been many damaging moments for Mr. Arafat recently. One of the most damaging, in terms of the support he enjoys in liberal circles, may have been an account of an interview with Ehud Barak, Israel's last Prime Minister, that was published recently in the New York Review of Books. Mr. Barak took part, with Mr. Arafat, in the last Israeli-Palestinian peace summit, held at Camp David in July, 2000, during the Clinton presidency.

Cutting against the grain of the account given by Mr. Arafat's aides, and of the stridently-voiced opinions of his supporters, Mr. Barak portrayed Mr. Arafat's behaviour at Camp David as "a performance", geared to extracting as many concessions from the Israelis as possible without any serious intent to reach a peace settlement. "He did not negotiate in good faith, indeed, he did not negotiate at all," said Mr. Barak. "He just kept saying 'no' to every offer, never making any counterproposal of his own." Ex-President Clinton is quoted in the same article as having confirmed that characterisation, saying, devastatingly: "The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict, the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room and deliberately turned to terrorism. That's the real story - all the rest is gossip."

Just as calls are being heard for reform of the PA, so now are calls being heard for the reform of extremist anti-Israeli tactics. A communiqu? has been published in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Quds, signed by 500 people, including Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, who was the official spokesperson for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Process some years ago. The communiqu? called for a stop to "military operations harming civilians in Israel" on the grounds that their only result had been to increase hatred between the Israelis and Palestinians, and to further erode the possibility of the two ever being able to live together in peace.

And a Palestinian businessman, Omar Karsou, has recently formed a new for-peace movement called Democracy in Palestine.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph, he wrote: "It is precisely because so many Palestinians live in squalor - owing to the Israeli-enforced economic stagnation, coupled with local leadership corruption - that many Palestinian political opportunists blame the "external enemy" for our troubles and divert attention from our own failures and corruption. We are permitted to seek only the outside enemy, never the one within.

"Middle Easterners love to dwell on the past - it is part of our 'victimhood game': it seems always to be somebody else's fault. But to forge ahead, we need to go beyond the past. If we are to hope for a better future for the next generation, we need accountability and new strategies. We have to place power in the hands of the true representatives of the majority, while giving the minority an equal platform.

"But Palestinians cannot achieve their aspirations until they reclaim the moral high ground. Only then will Israeli extremists be marginalised and our own moderate and peace-loving silent majority be empowered to speak out. In order for us Palestinians to attain our dreams of freedom and statehood, we have to put our house in order first. Only then will we be strong enough to counter our adversary's designs."

Facing the truth, as the Palestinians are beginning to, and as the writers of the Arab Human Development Report have done, is crucial to progress in the region. Let's hope this little candle continues to burn. gshortoibl.bm