Sharon's wiles
The difference between Sharon's approach to Hizbullah and the PA is more apparent than real, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem
On Sunday Israel gave to Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah what it refused to give Abu Mazen: the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners, together with "dozens" of other Arab prisoners from Syria, Morocco, Sudan, Libya and Lebanon, including Mustafa Dirani, abducted from Lebanon in 1994 to secure the release of Israeli pilot Ron Arad, captured by Dirani's Amal movement eight years earlier.
Arad will not be part of the deal, though Nasrallah has said Hizbullah will seek further information about his fate. Instead Israel will receive the remains of three soldiers abducted by Hizbullah in October 2000 and the return of Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli "businessman" captured by Hizbullah some months later.
The decision was passed with a one-vote majority after a gruelling seven-and-a-half hour debate in the Israeli cabinet. Ministers were given a free vote, divided over whether the imperative of saving a Jewish life trumped giving Hizbullah its most important political achievement since Israel's precipitous withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threw his weight behind acceptance. "You must vote for this deal in order to save a living Israeli," he told his government. "To leave him there is to let him die."
The deal may not happen. This is because of a last- minute condition the cabinet inserted into the agreement that no Arab prisoner with "Jewish civilians' blood" on his hands would be freed, as opposed to those who killed Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon. This would seem to exclude Samir Al-Qontar, a Lebanese Druze who killed three members of an Israeli family during a raid into Nahariya in 1979.
Hizbullah says it has long-standing "understandings" with Israel as conveyed by German mediators that all Lebanese prisoners will be freed, including Al-Qontar. Unnamed German security officials have told the Israeli press this is their understanding too. Sharon says he only learned of these understandings "a few weeks ago" and is not bound by them. Nasrallah says there will be no prisoner exchange without Al-Qontar.
If so, why would Sharon scupper a deal he had apparently invested so much political capital to realise, including a very public row between the Tannenbaum and Arad families over whose life was worth more?
The creation of a diversion may be one reason. Assailed by domestic critics for a military strategy that has not quelled Palestinian resistance, a worsening economic crisis and low poll ratings, Sharon exploited the prisoner issue to recast himself as the ultimate defender of Jewish life, a posture that plays well with Israeli Jewish public opinion.
A second reason would appear to be that by deliberately causing an impasse over Al-Qontar, Sharon is able to cast any future failure as being due to Hizbullah's intransigence over Israel's generosity. This too will go down well with Israelis, though it is unlikely to cut much ice with Arab opinion, which will see the game for what it is.
The Israeli leader is likely to take the same tack with the new Palestinian government of Ahmed Qurei. Here, too, Sharon is signalling conciliation. He has authorised his army to relax the occupation in certain areas of the West Bank. He also says he is ready to resume negotiations with the new Palestinian premier even without an up-front commitment to disarm the Palestinian militias and despite the fact that Yasser Arafat remains in overall charge of the Palestinian Authority's security forces.
But it is a diversion. While the army was easing the blockades on Bethlehem, last weekend it also killed some 13 Palestinians in Gaza and Jenin, including a ten- year-old boy, and, on Tuesday, razed another 15 Palestinian homes in Rafah. It arrested Amjad Abeidi, an Islamic Jihad activist Israel says was the brain behind the suicide bombing in Haifa last month that left 21 Israelis dead, stirring more motives for revenge.
Finally, on Sunday the Israeli Defence Ministry unveiled plans to extend the West Bank barrier east of the mammoth settlement of Maale Adumim that lies between occupied East Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting off "the northern West Bank from the southern", in the editorial judgement of Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper.
Nor can much greater hope be put in any negotiations, if and when they resume. Publicly Sharon and his Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz say they are ready to grant Qurei a "period of grace", chastened by the growing domestic perception that Israel (no less than Arafat) was responsible for Abu Mazen's fall. They have also intimated they are willing to discuss another Palestinian ceasefire to help the PA "fight terror".
But it is a ruse. Sharon and Mofaz are aware that Qurei's condition for a truce is that it is mutual, with "guarantees" that Israel refrain from incursions into Palestinian areas, assassinations of Palestinian militants and demolitions of Palestinian homes. It is inconceivable that this Israeli government would grant such assurances, let alone freeze settlement construction or reverse the route of the barrier. The result is that either a Palestinian ceasefire won't be agreed between the factions or, if agreed, that it will last no longer than the previous one. Again Sharon will be able to cast the collapse as due to Palestinian rejection or violence rather than Israeli bad faith.
But there are differences between the two tracks, if only in consequence. If the prisoner exchange falls through, it is unlikely to harm Hizbullah's stature. Nasrallah still has Tannenbaum, Arad and the threat of future abductions to lure Israel back to the table. But another failed Palestinian ceasefire may spell the end of Qurei's tenure and bring the PA within one step of collapse or irrelevance or both. In that scenario the only remaining political address will be Hizbullah and those Palestinian groups who aspire to emulate it, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- not only for Israel but also for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
