The Israeli re-conquests

Under US pressure Ariel Sharon may have been forced to retreat from his strategic designs for now. But they are on hold -- not abandoned. Graham Usher writes from Jerusalem
Five days and around 25 Palestinian deaths into Israel's most concerted military offensive ever against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the Americans finally drew a line in the sand. "The Israel Defence Forces should be withdrawn immediately from all Palestinian-controlled areas and no further such incursions should be made," announced State Department spokesperson Philip Reeker in Washington on Monday.
Ariel Sharon initially defied the imperial decree but then started to budge, courtesy of the multi-lingual prowess of his Foreign Minister. "'Immediately' in English doesn't mean 'at once'", Shimon Peres drilled Israeli reporters in Washington on Tuesday. "It means 'as soon as possible'".
It actually means 48 to 62 hours which, according to reports in the Israeli press yesterday, is when the Israeli army will leave most -- but not all -- of the Palestinian territories it has re-conquered in the last week.
But it won't leave quietly and without more Palestinian blood. On Tuesday, three Palestinians were killed and five wounded in Tulkarm in what the army said was "an armed clash" but Palestinians insisted was an operation by one of the several Israeli death squads that trailed their army deep into Palestinian areas. And yesterday the army overran Beit Rima, a village under complete PA control near Ramallah. Latest reports describe a near massacre, with eight Palestinians killed, dozens arrested and several Palestinian homes demolished.
Sharon will sell these conquests as the true aim of "Operation Dull Blade". As recently as Monday his spokesmen were listing the goals as "pressuring" Yasser Arafat to extradite to Israel the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine assassins of cabinet minister Rahavam Zeevi, dismantle the "terrorist infrastructure" of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah tanzim and generally end "violence, terror and incitement".
He will sell but there will be few buyers, not at least among Israelis.
Not on the right, 80,000 of whose legions gathered in West Jerusalem on Monday night to demand that Sharon "throw out Bin Laden's twin, Yasser Arafat" and will view Sharon's retreat under American duress as a betrayal of faith, nation and promise. It may even prompt the departure of Zeevi's National Union bloc out of the coalition and into a new right wing, religious opposition, headed perhaps by Sharon's successor in waiting, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Nor in Peres' Labour Party, many of whose parliamentarians awoke on Saturday to the very real prospect that Sharon might be pulling off a deceit of 1982 Lebanon vintage. "What the hell does invading Jenin have to do with tracking down Zeevi's killers?" asked Knesset Member Haim Ramon. By Monday, Labour had set down conditions for its continuation in the National Unity government: no permanent re-occupation of PA areas, no toppling of the PA and no ousting of Arafat.
But if the Israeli leader is watching his coalition hang by fewer and fewer threads, Arafat is in danger of having no coalition at all.
Palestinian guerrillas met the Israeli invasions not only with guns, stones and mortars but also in thinly disguised rage at a leadership and regime that had brought them to such a pass. On Monday, the political tribune of the uprising, the National and Islamic Forces (led by Arafat's Fatah movement), denounced the PA's "political arrests" of 30 or so real, imagined and lapsed members of the PFLP and outlawing of its military wing.
Calls were also made that a cross- factional government of National Emergency to replace the present autocracy whose rule in the Palestinian areas is a "state of total chaos," in the opinion of one Palestinian analyst.
There was also the critique of arms. Following the almost certainly Israeli inspired assassination of one of its leaders in Nablus on Monday Hamas announced it would resume military operations inside Israel. And on Monday a Palestinian unloaded his pistol in a commercial area of West Jerusalem. Four Israelis were injured, the man was shot dead by a soldier and both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Against this turmoil Arafat may be able to broker cease-fires area by area but only if Israel withdraws first from the newly captured territories. But none will hold unless there is a real withdrawal of the occupation from Palestinian lives and lands and real hope of political salvation on the horizon.
Put in his place by the Americans, abandoned by his core constituencies and out of gut ideology and geopolitical strategy, Sharon of course will grant Arafat none of these reprieves. He will simply retreat, await the next Palestinian retaliation and then proceed with the re-conquests to come.
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