Friday night's bombing in Tel Aviv nixes inter-Palestinian talks scheduled for Cairo next week, Khaled Amayreh reports from the West Bank A new decisive round of talks between the various Palestinian factions, due to take place on 5 March under the stewardship of the Egyptian government, was postponed this week. Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, including former PA security official Jebril Rajoub, who discussed the subject with Egyptian officials, attributed their postponement to "procedural and technical matters". Surely, however, it was the bombing on Friday in Tel Aviv, which killed three members of an Israeli army unit and two women, which was the main reason for the postponement. Israel's refusal, following the bombing, to allow some factional representatives from leaving the occupied territories to take part in the talks effectively made the talks pointless. According to reliable sources in Ramallah, the PA leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, angrily blasted Islamic Jihad for "not keeping their word", referring to the ceasefire commitment which was solemnly conveyed to Abbas during a meeting with the faction's leaders in Gaza two weeks ago. The same sources intimate that Abbas complained bitterly that such "irresponsible acts" were corroding his own credibility and rendering future understandings with Islamic Jihad futile. Islamic Jihad leaders, both in the occupied territories and abroad, near unanimously distanced themselves from the operation and reasserted their commitment to the ceasefire. The impression left is that those who masterminded and carried out the bombing in Tel Aviv belonged to a splinter group that is only nominally affiliated with Islamic Jihad. This impression is bolstered by the videotaped remarks made by the bomber himself who warned that the PA would eventually meet the same fate of the defunct pro-Israeli militia, the South Lebanese Army (SLA) headed by Antoin Lahd. Prime Minister Qurei, while strongly denouncing the Tel Aviv bombing as a "deliberate and irresponsible act of sabotage", did laude Islamic Jihad's reaffirmed commitment to the ceasefire. It is believed that the PA will pressure Islamic Jihad to control its men or face the consequences. The PA hopes that Jihad will draw the right conclusion, since a non- conformist position would place them on a collision course not only with the PA leadership but also with other Palestinian nationalist and Islamic forces that denounced the bombing as "a wrong move". In addition to the bombing, there are still serious disagreements between the PA and Hamas over the Cairo talks. Among other things, Hamas insists on the creation of a "unified national leadership" which would have the final say in matters pertaining to peace with Israel, especially those concerning central issues such as the fate of Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem and Israeli settlements. For its part, the PA contends there is no need for such a body since the elected Palestinian leadership, namely Mahmoud Abbas, is fit and authorised to deal with these tasks. One proposal to address the issue is the incorporation of Hamas into the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) -- known, until now, as "the sole representative of the Palestinian people". The PLO in its present form looks more of a mummified cadaver reflecting Palestinian political realities in the 1970s and early 1980s when secular nationalist forces dominated the political landscape both in Palestine and the diasporas. The PA leadership, including Fatah, recognises this reality, but argues convincingly that it is virtually impossible to organise elections encompassing all Palestinians who are dispersed around the world in order to assure a fairer and more proportional representation of various Palestinian groups in the PLO. A partial solution may be found through the upcoming elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) slated for 25 July. Hamas leaders, who refused to field a candidate for the presidential elections, say it is likely that the movement will participate in the PLC elections. According to Hassan Youssef, Hamas spokesman in the West Bank, the Islamic resistance group would seek to form alliances with "nationalist and other forces" for the purpose of creating a "united Islamic-nationalist front" whose main goal and raison d'être would be to preserve Palestinian national interests. "I am against Hamas becoming the number one political force at this juncture of our struggle. This is not the most appropriate time for us; we don't want to be in the leadership's seat right now," Youssef told Al-Ahram Weekly. Notwithstanding, it is clear that Israel's policy of procrastination and refusal to release or even ease its grip on the Palestinian masses are building up tensions and causing frustration among ordinary Palestinians. The ceasefire agreement at Sharm El- Sheikh on 8 February has not been translated into facts on the ground as Israel refuses to withdraw its forces from Palestinian population centres in the West Bank. At the same time, more than 10,000 Palestinian captives and detainees languish in Israeli jails and detention camps; something that touches a sensitive nerve in virtually every Palestinian family. Last week, Haj Ismail Jabr, Palestinian Security Chief for the West Bank, accused Israel of treating the entire PA apparatus as "a quisling entity". He made the remarks shortly after a meeting with Israeli security officials in Tulkarem during which Israeli army officers demanded that PA police forces should complement rather than replace Israeli occupation forces in the area. "They want us to erect our roadblocks next to theirs and help them [Israel] torment, persecute and imprison our people," said Jabr. Jabr complains that the Israeli army is adamantly refusing to withdraw from the villages and smaller towns surrounding the major eight cities in the West Bank (Tulkarem, Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho.) "This, he said, would reduce these towns to 'real detention camps' and portray the PA as mere collaborators with Israel. What Jabr didn't say was that such an arrangement would also make the resumption of violence inevitable. Coupled with this policy of bullying is Israel's de facto insistence that the Palestinians implement "pre-roadmap requirements", including dismantling the infrastructure of Palestinian resistance groups. This is a manifestly impossible demand since Israel, not the PA, controls the entirety of the West Bank. Indeed, the area of Tulkarem from which the perpetrator of Friday's bombing in Tel Aviv came, is under tight Israeli military control. The question remains of how it is possible for the PA to prevent attacks against Israel when its security men are unable to even enter these areas constantly patrolled by Israeli tanks and undercover soldiers. Israel is well aware of these realities. It follows as the only logical conclusion that the Israeli government is trying to manipulate the bombing blunder in order to gain time and incite the international community to exert more pressure on the Palestinians. Indeed, Israeli strategy, notwithstanding occasionally euphoric talk about the "fresh opportunity for peace", is more truly expressed in the scheduled construction of 6,500 additional settler units throughout the West Bank. This week, Israeli sources revealed that the Israeli government has built as many as 4,400 settler units in the West Bank in 2004 alone. This is what the sponsors of the political process should pay attention to and fast, since such a phenomenal expansion of Jewish-only settlements will certainly foreclose all reasonable chances for peace in the Middle East.
