Sharon's guerrilla war

The Palestinian leadership is convinced Israel is readying for a major military action. They could be right, reports Graham Usher from Jerusalem
"George Tenet's cease-fire plan collapsed one hour after he left," commented Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti glumly last week. And Colin Powell's coy efforts to draw a "time-line" for executing the plan did not even make the starting blocks. No sooner had the US Secretary of State left the region last Friday than Israel and the Palestinians were embroiled in a controversy over what deal, if any, he had bequeathed them.
Palestinian leaders insist they acceded to Powell's request for a seven-day period of "quiet" prior to the implementation of Tenet's truce on the understanding it would commence as soon as Powell departed for Washington. He also assured them -- says PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat -- there would be "no Israeli veto" over when the week began.
But this was clearly not Ariel Sharon's understanding. Nor apparently was it Powell's. It is up to the Israeli government to "make a judgement as to whether or not it is quiet and by what definition," confirmed Powell, standing beside Sharon at a Jerusalem press conference on 28 June. And the Palestinians were once more forced to watch their efforts to haul the Americans into the "political process" sink without trace.
"Mr Powell played a strange role," admitted Palestinian Authority Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel- Rahman on 30 June. "When he met with us he spoke one language and when he met with the Israelis he spoke another. And when he left the region he spoke a third language."
Sharon of course spoke one language and one language only. On 1 and 2 July -- in the bloodiest 48 hours in weeks -- his army killed six Palestinians. Two were Hamas members, mowed down in what Israel claimed was a gun battle but Palestinians say was an ambush, near Jenin. US-made Apache helicopter gun-ships then killed three members of Islamic Jihad, also in the Jenin region.
On Monday Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man, allegedly for planting explosives next to a Jewish settlement near Nablus. In fact the man was a taxi-driver off loading a bag of vegetables for one of his passengers.
The Palestinian response to this blitz was brisk and forceful. On Monday -- and for the first time in over a month -- car bombs again rocked a town inside Israel, leaving six Israeli civilians suffering from shock. Another Israeli was shot dead at point blank range in Baka El-Gharbiyyeh, an Israeli Arab town that straddles the West Bank border. And a Jewish settler was found dead face down in the mud in the Hebron Hills region of the West Bank.
The army responded to the settler killing with massive doses of collective punishment, blasting the cave dwellings and water wells of the Palestinian Bedouin who live in the Hebron Hills. According to the Palestinian Al-Haq human rights organisation, 500 people are now homeless.
Yasser Arafat denounced all of these actions -- but especially the assassinations -- as "flagrant violations" of the Tenet cease-fire plan and the Mitchell plan on which it is based. In Cairo on Tuesday, he accused Israel of "trying to crush the Palestinian people militarily" and repeatedly called on "the international parties" to move to curb Israel's "ugly crimes against humanity."
The US "moved" to condemn in equal measure "Israel's policy of targeted killings" and the PA for "not cooperating effectively" on security matters with the Israelis. The European Union urged everyone to show "restraint." The only noticeable thing about these interventions was the uncanny and consistent ability of both Washington and Brussels to equate "between the oppressor and the oppressed," said PLO negotiator Yasser Abed-Rabbo wearily on Monday.
Faced with such inaction, the absolute conviction of the Palestinian leadership is that it is now no longer a question of if Sharon will deliver his "crushing blow" against them but when. But the signs are it will wait until after the Israeli leader returns from his short European tour.
At a meeting of Israel's "inner" security cabinet on Tuesday -- and reportedly at the urging of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres -- Sharon refrained from ordering a new strike at PA installations. Instead he authorised his army to widen the reach of more "guerrilla" like assassinations akin to those that took out the Islamic Jihad men on Sunday.
No one should be surprised if Jihad or Hamas or indeed Fatah hit back with a few guerrilla assassinations of their own. And that may be just the pretext Sharon needs.
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