By Graham Usher While Israeli commentators insist that "progress" is being made in talks with Palestinians, Palestinian negotiators not only deny any progress but appear confused as to whether "direct talks" are in fact taking place at all. The contradictions date back to 22 July, three days after Israel's Defence Minister Yitzak Mordechai and PLO chief negotiator Mahmoud Abbas kicked off the first official negotiations between the two sides in 16 months. Asked that morning whether he had called a halt to the talks, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat replied, "Approximately". That evening, however, Abbas reportedly told Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan that the Palestinians were prepared to resume negotiations, a message that was immediately relayed to Israel. Abbas was furious about the leak. "No meetings are planned with Israel," Abbas told Israel's Yediot Aharanot newspaper on 23 July. "Our official stance remains a halt to negotiations due to Israel's refusal to accept the US initiative." This may be the official stance, but it appears not to be one that enjoys much unanimity among the Palestinian leadership. At the weekly meeting of the Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet and the PLO executive committee on 24 July, around half of the members demanded that Arafat suspend all talks with Israel. The other half sided with Abbas, arguing that the negotiations should be pursued. Arafat, typically, supported both positions. On the one hand, he agreed that the Palestinians could hardly accept less from Israel than the 13 per cent redeployment proposed by the Americans. On the other, he authorised Abbas to meet "secretly" with Mordechai on 25 July. At that meeting -- according to Israeli press reports -- it was agreed to reactivate the negotiating committees under the "personal supervision" of the two men. These were to have explored two new ideas proposed by Mordechai at his meeting with Abbas. The first is that three per cent of the 13 per cent would be defined as a "nature reserve" in which both Israeli and Palestinian construction would be prohibited. But whereas Israel had initially proposed that the three per cent be divided up into a "mosaic" of locations in the West Bank, Mordechai was now proposing that the three per cent be "contiguous territory" somewhere east of Bethlehem. The other idea was the "hint" that Israel would forgo its demand that the PLO's Palestinian National Council (PNC) be convened to "complete the process of revising the Palestinian Charter". In its stead, Mordechai implied that a convening of the PLO's lower Palestinian Central Council would be sufficient. According to Israel's Channel 1 TV, Abbas found Mordechai's new ideas "very interesting". The Central Council is a standing body empowered to make policy decisions when the PNC is not in session. Binyamin Netanyahu, however, found them utterly unacceptable. In a statement from his office on Monday, he announced that Mordechai had not presented "a map" of the second redeployment to the Palestinians. Nor was he prepared to give up the demand that only the PNC can "annul the Palestinian Charter". In response, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said there were no plans to resume the negotiating committees. Nor, say Palestinian sources, are there likely to be. On Monday, Arafat took off for a three-day trip to Austria, France and Morocco, a sure sign that the talks will stay snarled until he returns. These on-off negotiations and apparent divisions between the Palestinian negotiators have left most Palestinian commentators scratching their heads. This is because it is Netanyahu -- rather than Arafat -- who has an interest in maintaining the illusion that the talks are progressing, at least until the Knesset goes into recess for its 10-week summer break on 29 July. Netanyahu survived three no-confidence votes in the Knesset on Monday, but a breakdown in negotiations could dislodge centrist parties of his coalition like the Third Way, which has long made its support for the government conditional on progress in the Oslo process. Why then does Arafat not suspend the negotiations on the grounds that Israel is manifestly not interested in implementing the US initiative? The main reason appears to be Arafat's desire to appease the Americans and, to a lesser extent, the Europeans. Arafat is simultaneously calling the negotiations a failure and allowing Abbas to hold "secret meetings" with Israeli ministers because he "does not want to give Netanyahu any pretext for not addressing the issue of the second redeployment," according to Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shakaki. It is, he says, a high-risk gambit. "If Netanyahu is really not interested in reaching a deal on the redeployment, then Arafat's strategy makes sense," he says. "In the eyes of the US and the Europeans, it will be the Palestinian side that is prepared to make compromises, while Netanyahu would be exposed to the whole world as the party that is blocking the process. If, however, Netanyahu reverses his previous positions and proposes a deal, the Palestinians are in trouble." The reason is clear. In agreeing -- under US pressure -- to "direct talks" with Israel, the Palestinians have already signalled that a 13 per cent redeployment is not the minimum they are willing to concede. Rather, they "are signalling that there is one, two or three per cent to negotiate over," says Shakaki. Should Netanyahu offer a redeployment along the lines of Mordechai's 10 plus three per cent formula, the pressure will be on the Palestinians to accept, since the Americans have made it clear that it is now up to the two sides to "close the gaps". This would put Arafat in a double-bind. If he refuses the offer, Netanyahu will accuse the Palestinian leader of holding up the redeployment. If he accepts, he will have handed Netanyahu a major political victory, says Shakaki. Netanyahu "would be able to refute those [Israeli] critics who say he is not interested in advancing the peace process and argue to his supporters that his hard-line tactics clinched the best possible deal for Israel on the second redeployment." Such a manoeuvre is unlikely to w in Netanyahu many new friends among the US administration, the Europeans or the Arabs. But then, it is not these constituencies that will determine the outcome of the next Israeli elections.
