21 - 27 March 2002
Issue No.578
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 March 2002 Issue No.578 |
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Splinting the reeds
For three months Yasser Arafat successfully faced down the challenges of war. Can he now face down the challenges of a cease-fire, asks Graham Usher from Jerusalem
On Tuesday the Palestinian leadership said it was "fully ready" for a "strict implementation of the recommendations in the Tenet plan and Mitchell Report."
For well over a century this statue of the Virgin Mary has stood in Bethlehem, before the French hospital, observing the endless procession of pilgrims to worship at the town's holiest sites. But last week it became one more casualty of Israel's undeclared war, hit by indiscriminate Israeli fire, the nose and hand blown off, the body of the statue left pockmarked (photo: Reuters)
On Wednesday a Palestinian suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad killed himself and seven others, including four Israeli soldiers, on a bus outside Umm Fahim en route between Tel Aviv and Nazareth. Thirty were wounded, eight seriously, many of them Palestinian citizens of Israel from the Galilee.
Rarely has an attack -- in its timing and casualties -- been quite so challenging to Yasser Arafat, as he once more tries to channel the rage of his people into what many of them are convinced are the broken reeds of Tenet, Mitchell and US diplomacy. The question is whether he can meet the challenge. There is less doubt over his wanting to.
Declared "irrelevant" by Ariel Sharon, interned and bombarded in Ramallah and spurned by the Bush administration, the Palestinian leader has defied all in the last month, largely due to the fortitude he and his people have shown against the most ferocious Israeli military offensive against their lives, cities and refugee camps in 34 years of occupation.
He has been rewarded by a renewed US engagement in the conflict. This has been manifested not only by US special envoy Antony Zinni's present and "serious" labours to put a cease-fire in place, but also by the unwonted pressure the US has exerted on Sharon to drop his "seven days of quiet" condition for resuming negotiations, lift the Ramallah siege on Arafat and get the Israeli army out of recently re-conquered Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza.
Signs of that pressure were evident in a press conference with Sharon and Vice-President Dick Cheney in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
"With the implementation of [the] Tenet [plan], Mr Arafat will be allowed to leave the Palestinian Authority areas," said a visibly uncomfortable Sharon. And "presumably he will be able to go to [the Arab summit in] Beirut [on 27 March]."
True, he did not "rule out" barring his re-entry "if there are grave terror attacks in his absence," but most, including most Israelis, read this as pique rather than threat since all are aware that Washington has long guaranteed Arafat's attendance at Beirut and "presumably" his safe return.
Neither did Cheney help him out. On the contrary he said he would be ready to meet the Palestinian leader, "perhaps as early as next week."
But there is no American aid without a price and Cheney laid out the bill. Arafat must "speak to his own people personally about ending violence and terrorism, issue clear instructions to his security services to enforce the cease-fire and follow-up closely these efforts to ensure implementation of the [Tenet] work-plan."
He warned: "I cannot emphasise enough how important it will be this week for Chairman Arafat to take the steps to get the cease-fire started." It will be at Zinni's "determination" whether Arafat has taken those steps and whether he meets Cheney.
The present rounds of Palestinian-Israeli meetings are over the content of that "determination" and the sequence of the cease-fire.
For the Palestinians, Israel, as it is bound to do under Tenet, must start to immediately withdraw its forces to their positions prior to the Intifada, end attacks on PA security installations and lift the internal sieges on Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps.
Once this occurs, the PA "will take measures and steps to guarantee there will be a real cease-fire and against all those who are going to violate the cease-fire," said Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo. This includes action against the "manufacturing of weapons" and "weapons stores," he added.
The Israeli position is for the PA to make retroactive arrests of Palestinian fugitives and disarm all non-PA militias prior to any withdrawal. It is a stance massively bolstered by the attack in Umm Fahim, a Palestinian village that lies less than five kilometres from Jenin, whence the bomber came, says Jihad.
It remains to be seen how Zinni will determine the sequence.
Beyond this, the Palestinians want Zinni to be true to his word that this time the cease-fire will be accompanied by a "political track and political vision," says Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
The track is a swift and timetabled movement from the security provisions laid down in Tenet to confidence- building measures recommended in the Mitchell report, above all, Israel's commitment to freeze all settlement construction.
And the vision is less the nebulous US-drafted Security Council resolution which last week conjured up the hope of a separate Israel and Palestine "living side by side within secure and recognised borders." It is the Saudi peace initiative that, the Palestinians hope, will give it substance: a complete Arab peace with Israel in return for Israel's complete withdrawal to its pre-1967 lines.
With these political means and ends in hand, say Palestinian analysts, Arafat may use his new found nationalist prestige to marshal Fatah, and probably Hamas, behind a cease-fire. Without them, "no cease-fire will hold," says PA West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub.
This is why Arafat wants the meeting with Cheney, prior to the Arab summit. It is not only to restore his leadership in the eyes of a US administration that drew perilously close to dismissing it. It is to gauge the extent of American commitment to an initiative Cheney has said he "welcomes" and which he told the Israelis was "serious."
But to get there, and "this week," he must agree and impose a cease-fire with factions and militias who have progressively less loyalty to his leadership and none whatsoever to the wiles and diplomacies of Pax Americana.
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