13 - 19 December 2001
Issue No.564
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 December 2001 Issue No.564 |
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(photo: AFP)Besieged and alone
Arafat has rarely been as isolated as he finds himself 12 days after the suicide attacks inside Israel, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
"Who cares about the Americans?" snapped Yasser Arafat in an interview with Israeli TV on 7 December. "The Americans are on your side and gave you everything. Who gave you the planes? Who gave you the tanks?"
It wasn't the smartest outburst: everyone is aware the Palestinian leader has always cared very much "about the Americans." But it was par for the course. In the interview Arafat also implied Israeli intelligence was in some way behind the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rahavam Zeevi on 17 October and that he had to be prompted into "offering my hand in peace to the Israeli people" by his hovering minder, Yasser Abed Rabbo.
The "Israeli people" watched with contempt and disgust: the majority now convinced the Palestinian leader is merely evil. But Arafat's woeful attempt to redeem himself in their eyes is a measure of how precarious his position has become as each of the pillars on which he once stood is being kicked away.
In the aftermath of the suicide attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa on 1 and 2 December Ariel Sharon acted with relative "restraint", preferring to allow the weight of international pressure to quarantine Arafat until and unless he did Israel's bidding in the "war against terrorism." Having marshalled a consensus that the Palestinian Authority is solely to blame, he has resumed policies aimed at finishing it off, pillar by pillar.
Last weekend, and again yesterday, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza in retaliation for mortar fire on nearby Jewish settlements. Four Palestinian militiamen were killed and 20 bystanders wounded.
On Tuesday Israel's US-made Apache helicopters pounded Gaza, targeting PA police and intelligence headquarters. Over 40 Palestinians were injured.
On Sunday Israeli tanks swept into Anabta village near Tulkarm, arresting 50 of its residents and killing five police officers -- "in cold blood," said Anabta's mayor Hamdallah Hamdallah; "in self- defence", said the army. Less than six weeks ago a similar incursion into the West Bank village of Beit Rima (with the same death toll) incurred international outrage. The Anabta raid passed with barely a demurral.
On Monday Apache rockets killed two Palestinian children, aged three and 13, in Hebron in a failed attempt to assassinate Islamic Jihad activist Mohammed Sidr. Nine other Palestinians were wounded. The father of one of the slain children lost a leg.
The army expressed sorrow for the "accidental" death of the two children. Abed Rabbo accused Sharon of being a "child killer". And the Americans "deeply regretted all civilian deaths, both Palestinian and Israeli", lamented State Department spokesman, Gregg Sullivan.
But, he added, "only immediate, serious and sustained efforts by Chairman Arafat and the PA against those who would block the possibility of a better life for the Palestinian people can make possible an end to Palestinian suffering."
By all practical measures the American stance on who is responsible for ending the violence is the same as Sharon's. There is also increasing harmony on how a cease-fire should be put in place. "You are going to have to get it location by location, piece by piece, and try to build [on] this," said US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday. "Like coral."
This is, of course, Sharon's road-map, intended to replace the PA as a "national" authority with local deals policed by local chieftains over local turf, while the Palestinians want a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from all areas reoccupied since 28 September 2000.
The dispute was apparently one of the reasons Zinni on Sunday threatened to pack his bags "within 48 hours". He did not leave, which suggests the Palestinians have conceded to the demand, together with the insistence that he pressure Israel to end the assassinations and military attacks on PA installations. Sharon's response was to kill children in Hebron and rocket a Force- 17 office in Gaza.
Not so long ago Arafat would have countered by turning to other, older allies. But since the Jerusalem and Haifa attacks here, too, the doors are closed.
On Sunday a meeting of Arab League Foreign Ministers was postponed, ostensibly to give Zinni's mission a chance, but actually because intra-Arab divisions over what to do about Sharon is about the last thing any Arab can stomach these days, above all the Palestinians.
On Monday a meeting was held in Doha of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference. It was notable only for its impotent rage against Israel and the non-attendance of Arafat, at whose urging it had been called. He had received no American assurances that Sharon would allow him to return to the West Bank and Gaza, confided the current OIC head.
And on Monday the EU finally hitched its wagon to the American and Israeli train. At a meeting in Brussels the EU demanded that Arafat dismantle the "terrorist networks" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, "arrest and prosecute all suspects" and declare "in Arabic" an end to the armed Intifada. It also called on Israel to lift sieges on Palestinian areas, freeze settlement construction, withdraw the army from reoccupied Palestinian towns and stop extra-judicial executions. No one, though, doubts that Arafat will be pressured to act before Sharon.
The upshot of this pincer movement against Arafat is that Sharon has never had such international covenant to proceed with his slow, attritional strategy to destroy the PA and all things Oslo "piece by piece." And Arafat has rarely been so alone. Marooned in Ramallah, assailed on all sides, he is unable to satisfy any of the demands made on him: his preferred route, in the absence of any other, will probably be to satisfy none. (see pp.4&5)
Arafat has rarely been as isolated as he finds himself 12 days after the suicide attacks inside Israel, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
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