Just waiting
A kind of détente holds in the occupied territories just now -- buttressed by American disengagement, Israeli restraint and Palestinian denial. Graham Usher reports from Jerusalem
Whatever else Israel's decision to "remove" Yasser Arafat has done it has brought into clear outline the ground-rules for any future American involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Chained to the post-11 September orthodoxy, this is no longer predicated on land for peace or even "engagement" for a Palestinian Authority (PA) enlistment in America's "global war against terrorism". It is regime change, a condition implicit in the roadmap, but now spelled out with brutal clarity.
"The Palestinian cause is betrayed by leaders who cling to power by feeding old hatreds, and destroying the good works of others," George W Bush told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, in a clear swipe at Yasser Arafat's role in ousting former PA prime minister (and great white hope of the US administration), Mahmoud Abbas. As for the solution this depends on the "emergence" of a PA leadership "which will commit itself 100 per cent to fighting off terror", he said on 18 September and again, reportedly, at the UN.
The only difference between this remedy and those already executed in Afghanistan and Iraq is that for now America is not interested in the Palestinian regime change being engineered through preemptive strikes or "preventive wars", including any action by Israel to dispatch Arafat into exile or worse. The preferred method is still isolation from without combined with "reform" from within.
Interviewed on US television on Monday Secretary of State Colin Powell said there were three conditions the new PA premier, Ahmed Qureih, had to fulfil to win American attention. "If [his government] does not have political authority independent from the machinations of Yasser Arafat, and if all the security forces are not consolidated under the new prime minister, and if that prime minister is not committed to ending terrorism ... then we are not going to move forward on the roadmap," said Powell.
Short of this, there will be no pressure on Israel, including over such "non-security" issues as the expansion of settlements and removal of settlement outposts. "It is very difficult if not impossible for the prime minister of Israel or any other nation in the face of activity that seems to be tolerated by the government authorities on the other side ... to say he is yielding to pressure from the Americans or anyone else."
Giving substance to the American "disengagement" was the decision this week in which Israel and the US agreed to not to agree on the final location of Israel's West Bank "security" barrier, viewed by Palestinians as the most mortal threat to any viable Palestinian state in the future. The Israeli government wants it to "envelop" settlements like Ariel and Kadumim some 20 kilometres inside the West Bank. The US does not want to dice the contiguity of Palestinian land "as if it's trying to prejudge the outcome of a peace agreement," said National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
The "compromise" is that Israel will continue the main barrier while erecting separate "fences" around Ariel and Kadumim, deferring their linkage to the main barrier to a time less sensitive for American foreign policy. It is unclear how satisfied Rice was with this. It is clear Israel's expenditure on the barrier will not be deducted from American loan guarantees any time soon or perhaps until the "emergence" of a new Palestinian leadership committed to "fighting off terror".
Faced with such walls, physical and diplomatic, the Palestinian strategy is to ignore them. Luxuriating in his old/new role as victim and martyr, Arafat has wedded the fate of the next PA government to his own and that of the movement he leads. "The new government will be a Fatah government and Abu Ala [Qureih] will not object to or reject anyone the Fatah bodies choose," said outgoing Culture Minister Ziad Abu Amr on Sunday, following meetings between the prime minister and the Palestinian factions in Gaza.
But it will not be a government of national unity, still less one grounded in a post-Oslo or post-roadmap liberation strategy. In return for "international observers" to monitor Israeli and Palestinian compliance, Arafat has made it clear that he is committed to every item in the roadmap, including its provisions for arresting, disarming and disbanding the Palestinian militias. Given these commitments, the opposition's answer was as predictable as it was swift.
"The Hamas movement has not participated in any previous [PA] governments and will not take part in the forthcoming new government ... whose programme is based on the Oslo accords that squander Palestinian rights," ran a Hamas statement on Sunday, even before its representatives sat down with Qureih. The positions of Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are broadly the same.
Qureih may find more traction in his attempts to agree to another Palestinian cease-fire, if only because none of the factions have an alternative. Like the one announced at the end of June, this will be unilateral, since Israel has made it clear it will not halt its military policies without the PA waging a "real war" against the militias. And like that cease-fire few Palestinians believe it will endure. "Sure we can agree to another truce. But unless Israel stops the assassinations and incursions, it will end up the same way as the seven other cease-fires we've had during the Intifada," said an aide to Arafat.
The result of these utterly incompatible positions is a kind of détente, with Israel restrained by the American veto on Arafat and the militias by the mortal consequence of any retaliation. It is a situation of absolute impasse, says the aide. "We are not waiting now for any move against Arafat. We're not even waiting for the next assassination or suicide bombing. We're just waiting."
