A month after the death of Arafat, political realities began to get more and more clear, reports Khaled Amayreh For many in the Middle East and beyond the death of Yasser Arafat, and the re-election of President George W Bush a week earlier, gave rise to new hopes for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For most Palestinians, however, this new burst of optimism had few if any justifications. Palestinian officials recognise that Arafat's death has deprived Israel of a propaganda card which the Ariel Sharon government repeatedly played as a pretext to narrow Palestinian horizons -- not least by the building of the separation wall -- and pursue territorial expansion in the West Bank. These same officials, as well as most of the Palestinian public, have few doubts that Israel will seek and find another pretext to avoid engaging in any process that might bring an end in sight to 37 years of military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. According to Abdullah Abdullah, director- general of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, Israel is indulging in "public relation diplomacy" and has no real intention to enter into a serious political process with the Palestinians. "Their interest in public relations is a thousand times greater than their interest in reaching an equitable peace with the Palestinians... Israel is neither ready nor willing to make peace with the Palestinians." "We have to remember," says Abdullah, "that Israeli society is still driven by racist extremists who seek to negate the very existence of the Palestinian people." And with such people, he argues, the Palestinian leadership can negotiate not an end to occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state "but the modalities of a Palestinian national suicide". Abdullah believes Palestinian society is more than ever "ready and willing to reach a historical peace with Israel". "I can tell you that virtually all Palestinians, including Hamas, are now willing to reach peace with Israel in accordance with UN resolutions 242 and 338 and the formula of land for peace," he says. "The vital question remains whether Israel is willing to pay the price for peace and withdraw from our homeland and leave us alone." From the Israeli view point, any renewed optimism vis-�-vis the peace process hinges on the appearance of a "moderate" Palestinian leadership, a position endlessly repeated by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Sharon was recently quoted as saying that Israel would insist that "changes" in the new Palestinian leadership be less about "style" than "substance". Sharon would like the new Palestinian leadership to compromise over East Jerusalem and the right of return, things which, according to Yacoub Shahin, from the Palestinian Ministry of Information, are not about to happen. "These statements by Sharon and other Israeli leaders prove, if any proof is needed, that Israel was against Arafat not because he was an obstacle to peace but rather because he refused to give up on his people's rights... They now hope that the new Palestinian leader will be a real collaborator, a real quisling, that it will cede people's rights, possibly in return for a Nobel Prize and wholesome praise from the Jewish media..." Even those Palestinians who do harbour a modicum of hope that the post-Arafat era might witness a revival in peace efforts qualify their optimism. The key, they argue, is whether or not the new-old American administration has matured sufficiently to realise that solving the Palestinian plight is the key to security and stability in the Middle East. This is the view of the former PA minister of Information, Nabil Amr, who, in an interview with Al- Ahram Weekly last month, pointed out that any new hope for reviving the peace process would depend on the extent to which the new Bush administration was willing and able to "see things in this part of the world as they are". "For the past four years the Bush administration has seen things in Palestine through Israeli eyes. Their policy was Israel's policy. If they can start to see things more objectively then there will be room for hope and optimism, but if they don't then the disaster will continue." Palestinian law-maker Hanan Ashrawi agrees. In order to translate Bush's publicly stated commitment to peace in the Middle East into facts on the ground the American administration, she says, will have to develop a more proactive approach and invest rather than spend the political capital it says it has amassed. "But I'm not sure if Bush has changed or is only trying to appease [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair. This is what we will see in the weeks and months ahead." Whatever the political intricacies Palestinians' low expectations are underwritten by Israel's continued daily repression. Palestinian and Israeli sources report daily Israeli incursions into Palestinian population centres throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip despite a conspicuous reduction in Palestinian resistance activities. Indeed, since Yasser Arafat's death on 11 November, not a day has passed without the Israeli army carrying out some operation, including assassinations, demolishing homes and uprooting Palestinian olive or citrus orchards. Recent Israeli actions include the extrajudicial execution of a wounded and unarmed Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Kamil, near Jenin on 3 December. The Israeli army initially sought to cover up the murder but when the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem exposed the event, the army belatedly admitted that "mistakes were made in that incident." A Palestinian official told the Weekly last week that for every case that comes to the public's notice, a hundred others go undetected. "The soldiers and officers will not be disciplined or punished for committing murderous acts but rather for not covering them up properly," said the official.
