With the ceasefire in ruins the Palestinian Authority finds itself isolated, divided and increasingly irrelevant, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem One week after their militias abandoned the blood-soaked "hudna" Palestinians in the occupied territories are once more hostage to an Israeli offensive aimed at "pressurising" their leadership into war with its national and Islamist opposition. Israel is aware this is a line no Palestinian leader -- neither Mahmoud Abbas nor Yasser Arafat -- can cross. Indeed, the demand is made precisely because it cannot be met, thus granting the army a licence to impose a new post-roadmap order on Israel's terms. That order runs along three lines. The first is the now open policy that "all members" of the Palestinian armed resistance, whether underground military cadres or public political leaders, are "potential targets for liquidation" in the phrase of Israeli army chief-of-staff, Moshe Yaalon. He means what he says. Since 21 August -- when Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab and his two bodyguards -- Israeli helicopter gun-ships have killed four Hamas men in missile attacks on the Gaza Strip. A fifth -- Ezzeddin Al-Qassam activist Khaled Massoud -- escaped with his life on Tuesday when rockets missed his car near the Jabalyia refugee camp. Sixty-five year old Hassan Hamlawi was less lucky. He was killed riding a donkey beside the car. Twenty-six Palestinians were wounded, including four children. Hit or miss, Israeli army spokesmen say the assassinations will continue until and unless the PA acts against the militias. Second, the army has restored its freedom of movement throughout the occupied territories, including, perhaps, Gaza, the last domain of even nominal PA rule. Since the Jerusalem bus bombing on 19 August that left 21 Israeli civilians dead Israel has slapped more or less continuous curfews on the cities of Nablus and Hebron and reinvaded Jenin. It has brought extra military forces into and around Gaza, portending re- occupation should one of the gusts of Palestinian mortars and projectiles actually inflict damage on a Jewish settlement or Israeli town. PA police have taken up positions along the Strip's border to prevent their firing but to little avail. On 24 August a homemade Palestinian mortar landed five miles north of Gaza and four short of Ashkelon. Less publicly Israel has used the smokescreen of its new "war on terrorism" to deepen its colonial grip on the occupied territories. On 22 August Israeli bulldozers commenced work in Abu Dis on extending the Jerusalem section of the security barrier. Few know now the depth of its territorial reach. But Palestinians know from bitter experience that at the very least it will formalise the already de facto severance of East Jerusalem's 14 Arab villages from their West Bank hinterland. Faced with these military and territorial onslaughts the PA appears isolated internationally, weak in the eyes of its people and divided at the top. On 25 August Yasser Arafat appointed the former West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub, as a top adviser to the PLO's National Security Council in what is becoming a Byzantine struggle for control over the PA's security forces. According to Rajoub it is the NSC to which all PA security forces will be answerable and under which they will be "reorganised" and not, as mandated by the roadmap, the PA's Interior Ministry. Nor should there be any confusion over who is in overall control. "Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] is a most important element on the NSC but he receives his instructions from President Arafat. The US has no right to decide which side will be in charge of the security services in Palestine", said Rajoub. The appointment has the support of Arafat and Rajoub's Fatah movement and is clearly a critique of the security policy advocated by Abbas and PA Security Minister Mohamed Dahlan. This essentially argued that a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire was the only means the PA had to "re-engage" the US in a political process and so end Israel's assassination, re- occupation and settlement policies. With minimal US pressure on Israel on any of these fronts "and the one-sided ceasefire in ruins" the name of the game is now reciprocity, says Rajoub. "If Israel continues with its assassination policy Hamas and Islamic Jihad will continue to react. But if Israel ends it aggression and attacks, stops building the racist fence and expanding settlements and starts removing the checkpoints, believe me, Israel will enjoy security everywhere. The ball is in Israel's court." Rajoub knows the ball will be slammed back in the PA's face. Israel has made it clear it will not recognise, let alone reciprocate, any Palestinian ceasefire unless the PA goes after the militias root-and-branch. He also knows it is backed in this stance by the US. And in the absence of American intervention and the relegation of the Quartet to cheerleaders when the going is smooth and bystanders when tough it is difficult to see how the post-ceasefire order can be other than its pre-ceasefire preamble: a war of attrition based on unequal military confrontation and a politics of the last atrocity. Faced with this vista Palestinian fighters shrug that they have nothing to lose. The danger is that the longer they fight the less their people will have to win.
