Inching towards a cease-fire
If prospects for a Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire are better now than at any time since Israel re-conquered the West Bank it is because a truce serves Ariel Sharon as well as the Palestinians, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
Two months after he was anointed prime minister in waiting, and following at least one threat to resign Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alaa) last week had in place a "full" Palestinian government. Like Mahmoud Abbas before him Qurei vowed to establish the rule of law in the Palestinian Authority areas and committed the government to the roadmap and a "comprehensive" Palestinian cease-fire as "the first step" to renewed negotiations with Israel. But unlike Abbas, Qurei has some prospects for success, not least because the new 24-minister cabinet is not his government; it is Yasser Arafat's.
Through his usual policies of attrition the Palestinian leader ensured the new regime was purged of all ministers once associated with the dangerously "independent" policies of Abbas. He has also created a power structure to parallel and (should the need arise) suborn the cabinet, courtesy of a revamped National Security Council, staffed with the heads of the PA's eight security forces and with himself as chair and "supreme commander".
Most Palestinian analysts see the NSC as the real locus of power in the new Palestinian regime, strengthening Arafat's hold on the security forces and policy, including the policing of any cease- fire. Under the roadmap the security forces are supposed to be "consolidated" under an "empowered" prime minister.
"The roadmap is not a bible. I will report to Arafat," answered Qurei.
The old/new order mounts a direct challenge to Israel and US post-11 September prescriptions for regime change within the PA. But it also allows for the possibility of greater coherence in Palestinian policy.
This now hinges on Qurei's success in forging a cease-fire first with the Palestinian factions and then with the Israeli government. Under it the Palestinians would end attacks on civilians and ultimately on soldiers and settlers in return for Israel's commitment to lift the siege on the occupied territories, end its policies of assassinations, incursion and arrests and freeze construction of settlements and the West Bank barrier.
This reciprocal truce has always been Arafat's preference. Coupled with a staged Israeli withdrawal from the re-occupied West Bank cities, most analysts believe the Palestinian leader will throw his weight behind it. He has already ordered the NSC to assume control in any ceded Palestinian areas and is expected to use his usual repertoire of threat, cooption and money to bring the dissident Fatah militias to heel. His main challenge will be in Gaza, where Hamas can be neither bought nor crushed.
On Monday Hamas political leader, Moussa Abu Marzouq, said the Islamists were ready for a truce if underwritten by the "international community" and a "public" Israeli commitment to abide by it. In practice -- say Hamas sources -- this means Egyptian and American "guarantees" that Israel will refrain from policies of assassination, incursion and arrests. On Monday Egypt's Intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, visited Israel and the occupied territories to test these suddenly calmer waters.
Following meetings with Arafat, Qurei, Israeli security officials and the US ambassador on Monday, Sulieman expressed cautious optimism that a cease- fire was possible. Israel had reportedly told him that it would end the assassinations. The US was backing the initiative. And the PA and factions said they would meet with him in Cairo, probably after Eid Al-Fitr.
Sharon has always derided a Palestinian cease- fire as a ruse to enable the Palestinian militias to rearm and regroup their forces. Following the bloodied collapse of Abbas's cease-fire in August, he went further: he insisted on the PA waging "a real war" against "the terrorist infrastructure" as a condition for any return to negotiations based on the roadmap.
This condition -- together with the "removal" of Arafat -- has now been shelved, with the Israeli prime minister saying he will meet his Palestinian counterpart "in the coming days". Other Israeli officials have said they will give Qurei "a period of grace" so that he can consolidate his position in the new government and agree a cease-fire. They are still demanding disarmament of the Palestinian militias, but this now sounds like form. Hamas has always predicated any participation in a cease-fire on its fighters keeping their arms. And Qurei has stressed "dialogue" -- rather than confrontation -- as the sole means of dealing with the PA's Islamist opposition.
The reason for Sharon's U-turn is domestic. Unable to crush the Palestinian resistance by force the Israeli leader has been rattled by several challenges to his authority, eroding what had hitherto been an Israeli consensus behind his militarist solutions.
The first came from army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon. Not so long ago he was announcing the imminent eclipse of Arafat. Now he admits that Israel's military policies in the occupied territories not only undermined Abbas and strengthened Arafat, they risked the collapse of the PA, auguring not only Israel's unbridled martial rule of 3.5 million Palestinians but also responsibility for their welfare.
The message was reinforced by interviews with four former Shin Bet heads in Yediot Aharonot newspaper on 14 November. Their combined Cassandra-like cry was that unless Israel withdrew from the occupied territories and agreed to a political settlement based on a Palestinian state Israel's character as "Jewish and democratic" would be imperiled. The alternative in the short-term was apartheid and, in the long, a binational state, a prospect they see as the end of the Zionism.
These warnings were coupled with two "virtual" Israel-Palestinian peace agreements that exposed the vacuum at the heart of Sharon's political strategy: the Geneva Accords authored, among others, by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo; and the People's Voice, a grassroots initiative championed by former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon and former PLO representative for Jerusalem Sari Nusseibeh.
While differing in detail, both agreements envision a two-state solution based on Israel's withdrawal from most of the occupied territories in return for a Palestinian renunciation of the refugees' right of return and shared sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem. The plans have drawn protests from Palestinian refugee organisations and condemnation from most Palestinian factions. But they have rallied remnants of the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps around the banner of a negotiated solution to the conflict rather than an imposed one. That dangerous alliance was enough to send Sharon scuttling back to the safer "provisional" and "interim" solutions encoded in the roadmap.
