Braced for the worst

There is to be no Arab summit, for the time being. But on Palestinian and Arab streets there is mounting outrage, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
Palestinians in the occupied territories are reeling from an Israeli onslaught that has sent the body-count soaring back to the first days of the Intifada and the conflict to where most Palestinians believe it properly belongs: the Arab world. "All political initiatives are now meaningless, whether Mitchell or international observers," snapped Fatah leader in Jerusalem, Hatem Abdel-Khader, on Tuesday. "The situation on the ground has deteriorated to a point of no return."
For his part, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat seems to have backtracked on his earlier call for an Arab summit. "I have not asked for an Arab summit. What I am asking for is Arab support in any form," Arafat told reporters following a meeting with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, in Cairo, on Tuesday.
President Hosni Mubarak yesterday confirmed that a summit was not on the table for the time being. Talking to reporters following a meeting with Arafat at Borg Al-Arab Mediterranean resort, Mubarak said that a summit "would only be held if there can be solid [results]." The Egyptian president added that "for now we will rely on consultations" with Arab leaders, the Palestinians, Israelis, Americans and Europeans.
"There is no agreement on what could come out of such a summit," an Arab diplomatic source told Al-Ahram Weekly. Arab leaders appear loath to take the obvious next steps open to them in the face of extreme Israeli provocation -- i.e., to suspend all political ties or reintroduce a wide-ranging economic boycott.
"The current situation is one in which statements of condemnation are totally futile... We have to brace ourselves for the worst," Secretary-General Moussa told reporters on Tuesday.
That situation was created by what appears to be a strategic decision by the Israeli government to use political assassinations as its chief arm to slay the Palestinian Intifada.
On Monday six Fatah men were killed in an explosion in a garage near the West Bank's Al-Fara refugee camp, triggered, say Palestinian Authority security officials, by three Israeli-laid booby- trapped devices. The next day two more Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip: Hamouda Madhoun, an Islamic Jihad activist, shot dead by Israeli army live ammunition at Gaza's Muntar crossing into Israel, and a PA police officer, Mohamed Al-Hani, killed on patrol in the same place by the same means.
But the real carnage occurred on Tuesday, when three missiles flew through the windows of Hamas's media office on the third floor of an apartment bloc in the heart of residential Nablus. Eight Palestinians were killed in a crush of explosive charges and fallen masonry, including five Hamas members and two children, and 24 were wounded, four so badly that their chances of recovery are "slim," according to Nablus hospital sources.
Speaking to a meeting of Likud youth activists, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was pleased with his handiwork. "The IDF [Israeli Defence Force] operation in Nablus was one of our most important successes," he said.
"It is for the military wing to decide," said Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza on Tuesday. "But they should react because the Israeli people should know our blood is not cheap and that they will pay the price."
The price was already being exacted as thousands of Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza City to denounce the "massacre," and gun and mortar fire erupted in Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem, leaving five Israeli settlers wounded and two more Palestinians dead.
Nor was their wrath solely directed at the Israelis, as clashes broke out between armed Palestinian militants and PA police in Hebron and a Fatah leader in Nablus, Hussam Khader, asked Yasser Arafat "why are we not using the 70,000 guns at the PA's disposal to defend ourselves?"
Such words are falling on receptive ears, and not just in the Palestinian territories. Arab public opinion has been outraged as Arab governments passively watched 18 Palestinians killed and Israeli police again raid Jerusalem's Al-Haram Al-Sharif compound in the space of three days.
"Arafat's pursuit of a US role is his choice," says Hamas political leader in Gaza, Ismail Abu Shanab. "It is not Hamas's choice or the choice of the Palestinian people. Our choice is resistance. And we believe the more we resist the Israeli government, the more we will force the Arabs to wake from their slumber and join our struggle."
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