Politics of evasion

Israel's actions in the occupied territories confirm that Ariel Sharon believes the era of Yasser Arafat is over. The Palestinian leader has two ways to prove him wrong -- and neither is appealing. Graham Usher reports from Jerusalem
On Tuesday five Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in the occupied territories. Two of the Palestinians -- including the "wanted" Fatah activist Akarma Astiti -- were slain when their car exploded in a Jenin refugee camp.
The Israeli army said it was a "work accident" since the two had assembled a bomb. Palestinians said it was an Israeli assassination following the well-tried formula where a booby-trapped car is hired (usually from inside Israel) and then detonated by Israeli helicopters flying overhead. Both events were evident in the latest killing, said local Palestinians.
The soldier and three Palestinian guerrillas were killed in what Israel said was a gunfight resulting from an ambush on an army patrol south of Nablus. Palestinian witnesses again begged to differ. They said the ambush resulted in all four being injured. But when the soldier died from his wounds the other patrol members killed the three Palestinians in cold blood.
"It was a pure execution," said Mohamed Awadeh, a doctor with the Palestinian Red Crescent. He also insisted the army had prevented his team from tending the wounded Palestinians. The guerrillas were from Hamas, Fatah and the Palestine People's (formerly Communist) Party, another sign of just how merged the Palestinian resistance has become.
Meanwhile, the army "withdrew" from the residential areas of Ramallah it had "re-occupied" after the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi on 17 October. It will return to them if the "cease-fire" brokered between the army and local Palestinian police officers is not observed, warned Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met again with Yasser Arafat (this time in Brussels) amid reports that he and Ariel Sharon were working on a new political "plan" based on the hoary old formula of a Palestinian "state" in "Gaza first." The only apparent snag is that Peres believes the price of "statehood" is the dismantling of the settlements in Gaza. Sharon's position is not a single settlement anywhere, anytime will be "uprooted."
The London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat says Arafat will declare the establishment of a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this week.
PLO negotiator Ahmed Qrei denied all knowledge of a declaration of Palestinian statehood by his leader but averred "it is time for the US, Britain and the European Union to join those countries that have [already] recognised a Palestinian state. This is the way the [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] should be radically solved," he told the Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday.
Anyone would be hard pressed to find any causal or even logical connection between these various events. The army's policies of a blanket siege, local "withdrawals" and assassinations are confirmation only of Sharon's verdict (made after the Zeevi assassination) that "Arafat is finished as far as I am concerned."
The post-Arafat policy is already being acted upon. It consists of repossessing large swathes of "strategic" territory in the West Bank and Gaza, lopping off the heads of the Palestinian political and military resistance and demonstrating to all that there is now no place in the occupied territories the army cannot enter, including Ramallah and Bethlehem. "Sharon has succeeded in turning Area A into Area B," concluded one Palestinian analyst.
It also consists of replacing the PA as a "national" authority with "local cease-fires" brokered between this army commander and that Palestinian police force in exchange for "governance" in this or that "self rule" area. This essentially is what has happened for the "withdrawals" from Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Qalqiliya and Ramallah and will happen in Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin. It is also Sharon's template for Israel's future rule throughout the occupied territories.
Peres's "Gaza First" proposal is a diversionary tactic, designed to ward off the "unprecedented challenges and tests" facing Israel. Among these challenges -- say Palestinian sources -- is a plan authored by British Prime Minister Tony Blair based on the formulation that the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the establishment of a "viable Palestinian state" alongside a "secure" and recognised Israel.
"Gaza First" is the cat Peres hopes will scare this pigeon away.
As for Arafat again dusting down the idea of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, that too is an exercise in the politics of evasion, prompted by the realisation that there are two roads now stretching before the Palestinian leader, neither of which is inviting.
Ever since the 11 September attacks on America Arafat's main diplomatic aim has been to protect his existence by inserting into the conflict "other players" like the US, UN, EU and Russia. He has been relatively successful in this, as shown by the active involvement of all four in mediating the Bethlehem and Beit Jala withdrawals.
What Arafat doesn't like is the price for this intervention. And that is for him to outlaw and arrest "terrorists," resume security cooperation with Israel and ensure cease-fires are kept wherever and whenever they are made. "Words are not enough to prove that one is against terrorism, it requires actions," warned US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, on Monday. He meant it. And so do the Europeans.
Arafat is receiving a similar message from the "Oslo" wing of the Palestinian leadership, chief among whom are PA security heads Jibril Rajoub and Mohamed Dahlan and PLO negotiator Mahmoud Abbass. They argue that if the world really did change on 11 September -- and if he really does want the Palestinians to be part of George Bush's "international alliance against terrorism" -- he must bring discipline to the Palestinian resistance and a strategy to the Intifada. Above all, he must chart some kind of road back to negotiations and their final destination, which is an undefined but "viable Palestinian state."
It is easy to understand the fear of this wing. They know Sharon is deadly serious in bringing about the PA's destruction and their leadership roles within it. They also know there are many in the national and Islamic wing who view the demise of the PA as a necessary (perhaps even beneficial) price for turning the Intifada into a full-scale guerrilla war against Israeli occupation.
They also know the balance of power between these two wings of the national movement is much more even than it used to be. So does Arafat, which is why for most of the Intifada he has walked between them, now declaring cease-fires, now tolerating their breach, now being the PA president, now being the leader of the PLO national liberation movement.
But the time is coming for him to choose, and no threat of a Palestinian statehood declaration will defer it. And this requires a quality that Arafat historically has most lacked -- leadership. For leadership does not consist in telling people what they want to hear, said the late and increasingly lamented Faisal Al-Husseini. "It consists in telling the people what they don't want to hear."
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor