Abu Mazen solicits Syrian help in restraining militant Palestinian and Lebanese groups, writes Sami Moubayed from Damascus Last week, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) sent an emissary to Beirut, to request that Hizbullah cease its support of the Palestinian resistance in order to enable him to implement the ceasefire reached at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit. Increased cooperation between Hamas and a non- compromising Hizbullah meant that Sharm El-Sheikh was doomed to failure. Not only would an alliance between them damage his credibility in the West, seen as being too weak to crack down on so- called "terrorists", but it would also raise speculation among some neo-cons in the United States that he was in secret agreement with them, as they had accused Yasser Arafat of being. After all, a few Arafatist slogans during his presidential campaign nearly cost him his election when his words about resistance raised a thunderstorm in the US and Israel. This is where Syria's role comes into play to help Mahmoud Abbas. The Syrians hurried to build bridges with the Palestinians after the death of Arafat, seeing that Abu Mazen was being bolstered in power by the US and wanting to invest in his relationship with Washington. Syria received both Farouk Al-Qaddumi and Abbas with red carpets in 2004, and tried to play a behind-the-scenes role in getting Islamic Jihad and Hamas not to boycott the elections of 9 January, 2005, seeing that they were a must on Washington's agenda. Damascus set aside its differences with Abbas, whom it did not like because to the Syrians he remained the man whose signature graced the much-dreaded Oslo Accord. His repeated calls for ending the Intifada have been frowned upon by the Baathists in Syria and during his tenure as prime minister in 2003, he had been labelled as "America's man" by Damascus. In 2003, the Syrians temporarily set aside their difference with Arafat and found a common enemy in the US-backed Abbas, coordinating their efforts with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to bring down his cabinet. Today, however, Mahmoud Abbas has become Syria's channel to the US. Abbas falls in line with other back-door channels that Damascus is using to the White House, such as King Abdullah II, whom Al-Assad visited twice in the past year, President Hosni Mubarak, whom he has met repeatedly since the crisis with Washington began in 2003, and Sheikh Hamad of Qatar, who has also visited Damascus frequently since the American war on Iraq, carrying messages between Damascus and Washington. In February 2005, Syria's Minister of Defence Hassan Turkmani went to Qatar as part of Syria's new diplomacy among America's allies in the Arab world. Although not invited to the Sharm El-Sheikh summit, Syria supported its resolutions, unlike its stance during the Sharm El- Sheikh summit of 2003, aimed at discussing the roadmap when Abbas was prime minister, where Syria slammed on its demands through Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa. It is also likely that Syria used its influence with Hamas and the Palestinian resistance to get them to abide by the ceasefire of Sharm El-Sheikh, something that ends the much Syrian-embraced Intifada. Syria's role today is to get Hamas to abide by the resolutions of Sharm El- Sheikh. This is done through direct lobbying with the leadership of Hamas, and through back-channels like Hizbullah, whose influence in Hamas is paramount. Hizbullah gets advise and guidelines from Damascus. They do not receive orders or money from Syria, making the Syrian move a little more difficult. The results of Abu Mazen's overture towards Hizbullah and Syria's mediation were a statement made by Hizbullah Secretary-General Naiim Qassim on 12 February, 2005 to Reuters saying: "We say over and over again that we are not concerned with the details of what the Palestinians do, whether they resist or not or whether they call for a truce or not." He added, "when we speak of support it is moral support that does not interfere in Palestinian daily life." He denied that Hizbullah had tried to wreck the ceasefire of Sharm El-Sheikh saying, "it must be clear to all that it is the Palestinian people who are fighting and resisting and it is they who created this uprising and can clearly manage their own affairs." Earlier, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah had delivered a speech in Beirut denying that Hizbullah had any plans to assassinate Abu Mazen and said, "we have no intention of intervening in Palestinian choices and tactics. Although we support the resistance, we also believe the Palestinian leadership is capable of making strategic choices of their own." On 12-13 February, leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad met Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza and affirmed they would abide by his ceasefire with Israel. Khaled Meshal, leader of Hamas's political bureau, said after meeting Nasrallah in Beirut in January 2005: "Despite the severity of the American-Israeli assault against our movements, our cooperation with Hizbullah is gaining strength and making progress." Moussa Arafat, commander of general security in Gaza, said on 10 February that if Hamas does not abide by the ceasefire, he will use his forces against the guerrilla fighters. Yet Abbas cannot do that because he knows that Hamas is popular in the occupied territories and because he doesn't have the legitimacy of Arafat to order the resistance to lay down their arms. When Arafat wanted a truce in 1999, to show his good will to the then newly elected prime minister Ehud Barak, not one gunshot was fired against the Israelis for almost one year. Abbas cannot, until today, command that same kind of authority. The most he can do is ask Syria to interfere on his behalf with Hizbullah, to get Hamas to back down, and sack some officers in the Palestinian Authority (PA) who were unable to keep order in Gaza in the post-Sharm order. Now that he is well placed as president of the PA, Abbas finds himself in the same crisis that Arafat ended his career with in November 2004. While Arafat had an 88 per cent mandate from the Palestinians, and could issue controversial orders with no questions asked about his legitimacy, due to his historical magnitude, Abbas won office with only 62 per cent. On a popularity yardstick, he compares miserably when measured to Arafat. According to the Palestinian Elections Commission, turnout was only 45 per cent while in 1996, it was over 75 per cent for Arafat. Making things more difficult for Abbas, on the same day of the Sharm El- Sheikh summit, the Israeli High Court approved further construction of the Separation Wall in East Jerusalem. This might well prompt Hamas to ignore its promises to Syria and Abbas and respond with force, to Ariel Sharon. A ceasefire breach by Hamas would prompt Islamic Jihad to do the same, and send Ariel Sharon's military machine raiding into the Palestinian territories as it did so often in 2001-2004. It might well inflame the situation in South Lebanon and prompt Hizbullah to carry out its own attacks, despite Syrian reservation, on the Lebanese-Israeli border. To avoid all that, Abbas must walk the tight rope in the months to come, between Hamas, Hizbullah, Israel and Syria.
