Hold the line

Again, Israeli provocations spur Palestinian militants to attack. All factions, for the sake of the broader cause, should eschew a return to the cycle of violence, writes Ibrahim Nafie

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As understandably riveted as we are these days on the progress of our first ever direct multi-candidate presidential elections, we should not allow this to diminish our attention to major regional developments. I refer here specifically to events surrounding Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza.

The Egyptian leadership has played and continues to play a pivotal role in helping the Palestinians through the challenges of the current phase. It has sponsored numerous rounds of talks between the various Palestinian factions enabling them to reach an agreement over the principle of a truce, making possible the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. And it is currently working with Palestinian authorities to generate a climate conducive to the resumption of negotiations for implementing the roadmap.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has done all in its power to persuade the Palestinian factions to continue their commitment to the truce. It has also gone to great lengths to convince them to subscribe to that principle of "one authority, one army", which is so crucial to their ability to attain their ultimate national objective of liberating the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967 and establishing an independent sovereign Palestinian state. Taken together the truce and the principle of unified authority and arms form a long- term strategy aimed at forestalling the all too familiar Israeli ploy of provoking a Palestinian armed attack and using this as pretext to put the political process on hold.

The PA and the Palestinian factions succeeded admirably in averting the potential dangers posed by the evacuation of the Israeli settlers from Gaza and the dismantling of their settlements. Much to their credit they did not even rise to the provocation of the murder of four Palestinian civilians by an Israeli settler in the West Bank. Now, however, it seems that Palestinian cohesion is again falling apart. Tangible evidence of this could be seen in the military demonstrations staged by the various factions last week, during which they paraded large quantities of many different kinds of weapons. Through these riotous displays, assiduously covered by Arab and foreign television networks, the factions signalled their intent to renege on their commitment to previous understandings regarding unity of authority and arms.

Meanwhile, as anticipated, the Israeli government resumed its policy of deliberate provocation. Its assassination of five Palestinian youths in Tulkarem last week could not even be remotely described as an act of retaliation, for the factions were still abiding by the truce. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas harshly condemned this crime, which he described as absolutely unjustifiable. He simultaneously appealed to the factions not to respond to this and other acts of Israeli provocation, especially now that the international community appears solidly behind resuming the roadmap process as soon as possible, and is also eager to commence the reconstruction of Gaza.

Sadly, some ears were deaf to his appeal. On Sunday, only hours before the Palestinian government was due to go into session in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem, a bomb exploded in a bus station in Beersheba in southern Israel, injuring 40, two critically. Sharon seized this opportunity to lash out at Palestinian officials. If the PA did not take real steps to stop terrorism, he said, there could be no progress in relations between the two sides.

Obviously, the Beersheba bombing was in retaliation for the Israeli assassinations in Tulkarem. However, there is a crucial principle at stake to which the Palestinian resistance must adhere, even if others do not. If, indeed, retaliation is called for, there is no justification whatsoever for targeting civilians.

At both a moral and a strategic level, the Palestinians must do all in their power to ensure that their acts of resistance are kept within the bounds of their overall aims, principles and strategies. Above all, at present, they must avoid being sucked up once again into the cycle of tit-for-tat violence, which only obstructs the political measures that are so desperately needed at present to usher in the resumption of the negotiations for the implementation of the roadmap.

In fact, perhaps the greatest and most immediate challenge that the Palestinian factions and the PA have to contend with is to work out together a comprehensive national action plan that will enable them to transcend the dangers of spontaneous retaliation and bind them to a concrete agenda in which there is a clearly calibrated relationship between aims of the resistance and the means to accomplish these aims.