Israel's bombing of Gaza last week not only killed 15 Palestinians. It buried the most serious Palestinian move toward a ceasefire in seven months, say Palestinians. Graham Usher reports from Jerusalem Click to view caption Last Friday, several thousand Palestinians marched through the wreck of Gaza City's Al-Daraj neighbourhood, site of a one-ton Israeli bomb that killed 15 Palestinians, nine of them children. The marchers were paying homage to the next Salah Shehada, the Hamas military leader killed in the bombing and wanted by Israel for masterminding armed attacks against soldiers and settlers in Gaza and suicide bombings inside Israel. Hamas' latest military commander was not named at the rally, though Hamas sources said he was Mohamed Deif, Shehada's second in command and survivor of at least one Israeli assassination attempt. Hamas' senior political leader in Gaza, Aziz Rantisi, spelled out his mission: "We hope God blesses you and gives you the power to avenge us every day and everywhere -- in Haifa, in Tel Aviv and Hadera." Not a single Israeli takes this threat as lightly, and not only because Hamas suicide bombers have a proven record of attacks in the named Israeli cities. Israelis have already tasted the first lashes of vengeance for the Gaza carnage, and so, of course, have the Palestinians. On Thursday, a Jewish settler was killed in his car in a Palestinian ambush near the West Bank Palestinian city of Qalqiliya. On Friday, four more settlers were slain -- including a couple and their child -- in similar attacks near Hebron. These were the "first and simple answers" to the Gaza bombing, said the various Palestinian militias who claimed them. Following the funeral of one, Jewish settlers ran wild in Hebron, shooting dead a 14-year old Palestinian girl and wounding nine others. This was the first bloodletting. More -- and worse -- will almost certainly follow. Many Palestinians believe this is what Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants: the continuation of a vengeful war "without rules" to maintain a domestic Israeli "consensus of fear" behind his policies of military re-conquest in the West Bank. As evidence they point out that at the very moment the bomb was slamming into Gaza, leaders from the Tanzim -- the "field organisation" of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and the most powerful Palestinian faction in the occupied territories -- were meeting in the West Bank to finalise a statement calling for a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire. The Tanzim's leader is Marwan Barghouti, currently languishing in an Israeli prison on charges of "terrorism". He approved the ceasefire call, says Fatah. The statement had been the fruit of two months of discussions between Tanzim leaders, the other Palestinian factions (including Hamas) and diplomats from the European Union, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Published on 24 July in Israel's largest circulation Yediot Aharonot newspaper, it said "Tanzim and Fatah will cease all attacks on innocent men, women and children who are non-combatants" i.e. all Israelis save for soldiers and armed settlers in the occupied territories. Moreover, it called on "all Palestinian organisations and movements to cease these attacks immediately, without hesitation or preconditions". This refers to Hamas. On 22 July -- hours before the attack on Gaza -- its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, had said Hamas would stop killing Israeli civilians if Israel were to withdraw from recently re-occupied Palestinian cities, free recently detained Palestinian prisoners and end the assassinations of its leaders. Some Fatah sources said this was to prepare his followers for an endorsement of the Tanzim statement. Others say there were divisions within Hamas over an "unconditional" ceasefire: Shehada, for example, was opposed to the call. Yassin had been in favour. But whatever Hamas' ultimate response, the ceasefire is now buried in the rubble of Al-Darraj. "Sharon has wasted a golden opportunity," says Hatem Abdul Khader, a Fatah leader involved in the ceasefire negotiations with both Hamas and foreign diplomats. "With such an agreement we could have saved the lives not just of Palestinians but also Israelis." The Israeli government rejects the charge. "Of course we knew about it [the ceasefire declaration]," said Sharon's spokesman, Rannan Gissin, on 25 July. "So what? It would have been one more declaration. Never have their declarations held, and it wouldn't have held this time. Not for one moment did the warnings of attacks diminish." European diplomats involved in the ceasefire discussions are less dismissive. Unlike Yasser Arafat's calls for an end to military actions in January and March -- extracted on pain of political and diplomatic excommunication -- this ceasefire originated in the Tanzim itself. And it was born of grassroots Fatah leaders' growing realisation that the strategy of an "armed Intifada" -- and particularly the suicide bombings -- had failed. One reason for reappraisal is the enormous cost to Palestinians of Israel's collective reprisals for the suicide bombings. These currently include Israel's reoccupation of seven of the eight main Palestinian West Bank cities, a lethal siege on Gaza and an economy which has reduced one in two Palestinians to penury. But another relates to the internal power struggle that has simmered within Fatah throughout the Intifada between the "young guard" represented by the Tanzim and militias like the Al-Aqsa Brigades and the older, exiled leadership that returned to the occupied territories with Arafat in 1994. Fatah's younger cadre want a ceasefire now not only to spare their people and themselves more Israeli punishment, say Palestinian sources. They also want a period of quiet to translate the popular support they enjoy into political power, firstly by holding new elections for leadership positions within Fatah and ultimately for the PA elections, scheduled for early next year. The aim is less to challenge Arafat, says one, than to "remove the people around him". If so, Israeli government officials say, the ceasefire call is tactical, enabling the Tanzim to recover from the losses they have suffered from Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank. It does not signal any strategic shift away from armed struggle to more political forms of protest. Other Israeli commentators are not so sure. Israel's assassination of Shehada "wiped out the chance, however small, to calm the region", wrote Israel's leading military analyst, Alex Fishman, in Yediot Aharonot on 24 July. "Was it a coincidence, or are we wedded to the conception that every Palestinian move is a conspiracy or a lie?" Related stories: Unceasing fire Bombs and pogroms No rules, no borders 25 - 31 July 2002 Fostering grief and revenge 25 - 31 July 2002
