PLO 2

Will the Cairo meeting breathe new life into the PLO, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

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With the Cairo Declaration they issued on 14 February, the Palestinians can congratulate themselves on a historic achievement. Hammered out over months of tough negotiations between the various factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it formalises their unanimous agreement to observe a ceasefire until the end of 2005 and to set up a committee to reinvigorate the PLO.

Commenting on the declaration, a Syrian spokesman said Damascus would support any decision taken by the Palestinians. The question is, however, whether his statement can be taken at face value at a time Syria finds itself in the eye of a storm. Indeed, the most intense confrontation in the region is the one now polarising Lebanese society into two camps, one vehemently opposed to Syria's military and intelligence presence in the country and the other just as vehemently supporting the Syrian view point. The confrontation between the two camps has given rise to massive demonstrations, the largest ever witnessed in Beirut, and it is hard to see how Damascus can just go on with business as usual against such a backdrop.

Over a month has elapsed since Al-Hariri was assassinated, and we are still not close to uncovering the truth. Accusations of a cover up have been levelled against Syrian and Lebanese authorities by members of the special UN investigation team frustrated at their inability to come up with any concrete evidence of who was behind this reprehensible act. Their frustration is understandable. After all, Al-Hariri was not killed in an isolated place but in the very heart of Beirut, in full view of dozens of passers by who witnessed the horrific blast, said to have been caused by over 300 kilogrammes of explosives. Although a thorough investigation of the crime scene could have provided valuable clues, important evidence was inexplicably removed from the site of the blast by the authorities before anyone had a chance to examine it.

This has left the door wide open to speculation, with some attributing the blast to a suicide bomber, others to a booby-trapped car, still others to a bomb placed in a manhole directly under the route of Al-Hariri's motorcade. The suicide bomber theory is not very credible because it is hard to see how anyone would be willing to sacrifice himself not for an ideological cause but to punish a businessman for having made his fortune in Saudi Arabia. Al-Hariri was thus probably killed by one of the two other methods, both of which are too intricate for a lone assassin to operate and would have required assistance from and cooperation with a state apparatus. If so, which state would benefit from such an act?

According to the Western media, that state is Syria. Of course, from the technical point of view Syria could have carried off such an operation. But what interest did it have in doing so? Why would it risk being caught out at a time Washington is branding it a "rogue state" acting outside the rules of international law and accusing it of undermining the resumption of the peace process?

Certain Arab quarters have countered the accusation that Syria is behind Al-Hariri's assassination by accusing Israel and/or the US and the CIA. But Al-Hariri was not known to be an enemy of either Syria or the US, although shortly before his death he had begun to call for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Another theory put forward by a number of analysts is that Al-Hariri's assassination was carried out by forces opposed to change in the Arab world. According to this theory, optimistic talk of the "winds of change" blowing through the region is making certain Arab parties jittery, and some of them may have believed that a major disturbance at a particularly vulnerable spot of the map of contradictions in the region would delay any attempt to change the status quo.

Pressure for an international investigation to get at the truth is mounting, and it is to be hoped that Al-Hariri's assassination will not remain one of those historical mysteries which, like those surrounding the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, will never be solved. The opposition, speaking through Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, openly accused Syria and the Lebanese government of involvement in the assassination, as did many of the placards carried by demonstrators. Everyone knows that nearly one million people marched in the two huge demonstrations in Beirut last week, one for and the other against the Syrian pullout from Lebanon. Memories of the Lebanese civil war, which raged for more than 15 years, are still fresh in people's minds and no one on either side wants to relive the experience. This is a powerful disincentive that will hopefully prevent the situation from escalating into civil war.

What is certain in any case is that a process of generalised reform at the regional level cannot be launched unless and until the mystery of who killed Al-Hariri is cleared up. Genuine reform and genuine peace can only come about in an atmosphere of trust and confidence, not in a situation marked by doubt and suspicion as the case now is with Al-Hariri affair.

Moreover, the peace process on the Palestinian-Israeli front cannot go forward while relations between Palestinians and Syrians deteriorate and become an obstacle on the road to peace, not on the bilateral track only, but also at the regional level.

The most explosive conflicts today are those between the Arabs themselves, not those between Israel and one, or more than one, Arab party. Allowing inter-Arab differences to escalate diverts attention from the main adversary and enables Israel to act freely throughout the region, without constraint or deterrent.

Hence the importance of the Cairo Declaration which sets guidelines for Palestinian policy in a new stage marked by many changes at the international, regional and local levels, a stage in which all the Palestinian factions are required to close ranks under the banner of the PLO, even those which, like Hamas, never belonged to the PLO.