In a variation on old policies, Ariel Sharon is allowing a little diplomacy amid attrition in the West Bank and Gaza, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem Click to view caption Late Monday night Israeli and the Palestinian Authority negotiators held their first meeting since a one-ton Israeli bomb killed Hamas military leader Salah Shehada and 14 other Palestinians, most of them children, in a residential area in Gaza City. Israeli Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben- Eliezer, described the talks as "constructive". Top Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said they were "serious" and that future meetings were planned on condition that Israel refrained from "provocative actions" like assassinating Palestinian militants and invading PA controlled territory. On Tuesday Israeli helicopters and soldiers killed two fighters from Fatah's Al-Aqsa Brigades in a cave near Jenin, one of them, 35-year old Ali Ajouri, "wanted" for planning a suicide attack near a Tel Aviv bus station on 17 July, leaving seven dead, including two bombers and three migrant workers. On Wednesday Israeli tanks, helicopters and bulldozers entered Beit Lahyia in northern Gaza in yet another hunt for Palestinian fugitives. One PA policeman was killed, two Palestinians were injured (one critically), a home was demolished and three were arrested. The army withdrew after about seven hours. Will these actions scuttle the future talks? Probably not. At Monday's meeting, Ben- Eliezer unveiled his "Gaza First" plan in which Israel alleviates certain security and economic restrictions in Gaza in return for the PA's resumption of policing duties, particularly against Hamas. PA officials have intimated acceptance of Gaza First as long as it is accompanied by similar alleviations in Jericho and an army withdrawal from one of the seven West Bank towns it currently occupies, with the likeliest candidate being Bethlehem. Both Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres have said such partial withdrawals are possible if "local cease-fires" can be struck. Another factor pushing for PA acceptance is a desire to have something in hand when a Palestinian delegation, headed by Erekat, meets Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington on Thursday. The agenda for this parley is "Palestinian civil reform efforts, a renewal of security cooperation [with Israel] and political progress," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker on Wednesday. But the prize is that the meeting represents the first chink in the wall the US administration built around Yasser Arafat following George Bush's 22 June designation of him as a leader "compromised by terror". Why is Ariel Sharon allowing these moves? After a weekend in which 13 Israelis and foreigners were killed in three Palestinian attacks, is this not "negotiating under fire", and with a leadership he holds responsible for fuelling the flames? The short answer is yes. And the change appears born of a subtle shift in Sharon's policy away from crushing Palestinian resistance once and for all to one of containment and consolidating the conquests his army has won in the West Bank. The policy has three pillars. One is an awareness, shared by the army -- that Palestinian society cannot take very much more of the collective punishments Israel has inflicted without falling into permanent collapse. Surveys sponsored by the US Agency for International Development this week showed just how desperate life has become in the occupied territories, with increased rates of malnutrition and anaemia among Palestinian children and women and an economy in which over half of all Palestinians have to borrow money to purchase basic foods. Every Palestinian and international NGO knows the fundamental cause of this suffering is Israel's closure policies, particularly the "internal" blockades which isolate Palestinian towns and villages from one another. This is why the Palestinians demand Israel's immediate withdrawal from PA areas and the opening of the border crossings with Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Sharon's preferred remedy is massive influxes of humanitarian aid so that the closure regime, and the tanks in Palestinian cities, stays in place. The second pillar are "cease-fires" with local Palestinian leaderships along the lines of the Gaza First template, in the hope that the PA, as a central national authority, will eventually wither like a fruit denied sustenance. And, finally, Sharon needs time to carve out a new geography in the West Bank where the army can enter, re- occupy and leave Palestinian areas at will. For each pillar Sharon has US support. It backs the re-occupation in the name of Israel's right to self-defence and wants a massive international relief programme to stave off the threat of a "humanitarian disaster" in the occupied territories. Above all it wants containment of the Israel-Palestinian conflict rather than any dramatic moves aimed at resolving it, whether military or political. The reason is clear. Keeping the conflict "contained" is now the best Washington can hope for in a regional policy in which Israel-Palestine is the minor theatre and Iraq the main show.
