7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Arafat's dilemma
The resumption of Israel's policy of assassination, destruction and bloodshed flies in the face of intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at reviving the peace process.Khaled Amayreh reports from Hebron
On Monday, the Israeli army assassinated five members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Eyewitnesses said Israeli helicopter gunships were hovering overhead when a powerful blast suddenly tore the roof off of the car in which five DFLP members were travelling, instantly killing four of them and critically injuring the fifth, who died shortly afterwards in hospital.
The Israeli army tacitly admitted responsibility, claiming that one of the victims had been involved in an attack on an Israeli army outpost in Gaza a few months ago.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) described the killing as "a provocative crime." PA Chairman Yasser Arafat said the assassinations were incontrovertible proof that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not want peace and that he only wanted to escalate his aggression against the Palestinian people.
For its part, the DFLP vowed to avenge the killing, saying in a statement circulated in the Gaza Strip that "the blood of our fighters shall not be spilt in vain and will be avenged very soon."
There is every reason to believe that the DFLP will fulfil its vow, if only to deter Israel from assassinating any more of its members.
A more important reason might be the need for self-assertion within the highly politicised Palestinian community where the stature of any political organisation is gauged by the boldness of its resistance to Israel.
Predictably, this poses a real dilemma for Arafat who has been unable to get Sharon at least to suspend assassination of resistance activists and, consequently, cannot completely prevent Palestinians from retaliating.
PA official Yasser Abed Rabbo alluded to this dilemma this week when he accused Sharon of seeking to ignite a new cycle of violence and bloodshed because "this is the perfect environment in which he can operate and thrive."
Meanwhile, this is not the only challenge facing Arafat. While the PA president is trying his utmost to appease the Americans by condemning "terrorist groups," as he referred to the military wings of Hamas, Fatah, the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Islamic Jihad in his recent op-ed in the New York Times, the besieged leader is increasingly finding out that he cannot appease the Americans and keep Palestinian unity intact at the same time.
This week the PFLP, the second most important faction within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) after Fatah, Arafat's own faction, decided to boycott all meetings of the PLO executive committee until its secretary-general, Ahmed Sa'adat, is released from PA custody.
Abdel-Rahim Mallouh, the second highest-ranking man in the PFLP, described the continued detention of Sa'adat as "a scandalous breach of the rules of democracy" and "a real threat to national unity."
Speaking during a press conference in Ramallah on 2 February, Mallouh said the continued detention of a Palestinian political leader was unacceptable.
Hamas, lashed out at Arafat this week for his article in the New York Times.
"We realise that brother Abu Ammar [Arafat] said what he said under pressure, but let us not forget for a moment that we are only defending ourselves and our children. Israeli occupation is the real terror; resisting it is a moral right as well as an individual, national and religious duty," said Hamas's spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahhar.
Also on Monday, a few hours before the murder of the DFLP members, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired five air-to-ground missiles at a workshop that produced wrought iron items and a small wood factory at the Jabalya refugee camp, destroying the two facilities.
The PA and local sources vehemently denied Israeli allegations that mortar cannon were being manufactured at the workshop. The shelling of the civilian neighbourhood at Jabalya, which miraculously caused no fatal casualties, was preceded by a barrage of heavy machine-gun fire on residential neighborhoods in and around Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip.
The generally random strafing injured five civilians, including a man who was hit by a bullet in the head. He died later in hospital.
On the same day, Israeli bulldozers, escorted by scores of heavily-armed soldiers and policemen, descended on the Isawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem to do what Israeli bulldozers have been doing to the Palestinians for the past 35 years: destroying homes. This time two homes, belonging to the Al-Sheikh and Shalaldeh families, were demolished, bringing to 17 the number of East Jerusalem Arab homes destroyed by Israel since the beginning of the year. Israeli sources spoke of a plan to demolish up to a thousand Arab homes in East Jerusalem.
This week, the Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem reported that the Israeli army demolished more than a thousand Palestinian homes during the past 16 months, rendering more than 5,000 men, women and children homeless.
B'tselem urged the Israeli government to pay compensation to the innocent victims for the illegal and unjustified destruction of their homes.
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