Sharon's Target Is Not Arafat, But Palestinian Sol

Sharon's Target Is Not Arafat, But Palestinian Solidarity

Guardian (UK) October 10, 2003

Sharon's target is not Arafat, but Palestinian solidarity

Until Hamas is drawn into a political role there can be no peace

Martin Woollacott

Not long after Bush's big speech last summer, in which he called for two states,
Israeli and
Palestinian, living side by side in peace, important negotiations began. There
were the talks
between the US, the EU, Russia, and the UN which produced the "road map" for
progress towards a
final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. But there were also more
clandestine and
equally critical encounters between the two main political and military forces
in Palestinian life,
Fatah and Hamas.

The compelling reason for these two movements to come together was that
otherwise any
progress towards what outsiders, and the Israelis, would call peace would
produce a civil war
among Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat had never had
the means (nor,
the Israelis would say, the intention) of suppressing, as opposed to
occasionally harassing, Hamas
and Islamic Jihad.

Even less capable of such action was the new Palestinian government under
Mahmoud Abbas,
which later emerged in the first phase of the application of the road map. This
was partly because
Arafat denied him full control of the security forces and partly because he, in
any case, thought it
would be madness, as well as fratricide, to take on Hamas.

The logic for the Palestinians was clear enough well before Mahmoud Abbas took
over, however
sceptical they were about Ariel Sharon's real plans. To show willingness to meet
the conditions
laid down for a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians there had first to
be a settlement
among Palestinians. Violence against the Israelis could only be effectively
curbed if there were
such a settlement, under which Hamas could look forward to a role in government
and a share in
power in a Palestinian state.

It is not the least of Ariel Sharon's sins in recent months that he has done his
utmost to destroy
the possibility that such an internal settlement could be reached, jeopardising
all that it might
have meant in terms of a halt to, and in time a renunciation of, suicide
bombing. And it is not the
least of the American administration's failure to "ride herd" on the two sides,
to use Bush's phrase,
that the Americans have not only let Sharon get away with it but have gone along
with his
representation of the breakdown as the fault of terrorists and of Arafat. That
has been in truth the
essence of the deviousness of Sharon and his cohorts.

For all that, Israelis have demonised Arafat. The fulminations about him conceal
the fact that
Sharon's real target has not been the old man in the Ramallah compound but the
capacities and
the strengths, including the capacity to resolve its own differences
politically, of Palestinian
society. As a matter of policy, his government has insisted at every turn that
the Palestinian
Authority must disarm and dismantle Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the
combination of truce
and ceasefire which Mahmoud Abbas achieved was acceptable only as the prelude to
a full assault
on them once the authority had the strength to do so. And as a matter of
day-to-day tactics, the
Israeli government persisted with its assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
leaders in such a
way as to provoke fresh suicide attacks. To put it more bluntly, at a time when
Hamas might have
been embarking on a transition from terrorism to politics, Israel acted in such
a way as to close off
that possibility. Whether this was wholly calculated cannot be determined.
Certainly, it has had the
same effect as if it had been.

The Palestinian negotiations began in Qatar over a year ago, and continued on
and off in other
places until they were caught up, and changed, by the efforts to clear the way
for the road map to
come into operation. At which point the Egyptian government tried to play the
role of mediator.
Initially, they were about a national unity government but that was not an
immediate option in the
context of the road map, given the likely Israeli reaction, so they shifted to
discussion of a truce.

Jihad Al Khazen, the distinguished Al Hayat journalist, who has been a
consistent opponent of
suicide bombing, played a part in bringing the two sides together for their
early meetings in Qatar
and elsewhere. He later watched in dismay as the truce frayed with each Israeli
strike against
Hamas and Islamic Jihad and with the retaliatory attacks which followed, in part
because Hamas
lost control of its own hierarchy.

The new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, has Arafat's backing in a way
which his
predecessor did not, and he is armed with a decree proclaiming a state of
emergency. Yet, just
like Abbas and for the same reasons, he is pursuing a restoration of the truce,
but under worse
circumstances. Hamas is in a deeply suspicious mood after attacks on its
political leaders, another
red line which Israel recently crossed. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who escaped one
such attack,
accused President Bush of "declaring war on Islam".

According to Jihad Al Khazen, the attitude of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders is
"better to fight
than to be killed at home with our children". Even so, some of their statements
this week can be
interpreted as meaning that if the Israelis called off their attacks and ceased
demanding a
crackdown by yet another new Palestinian government, the truce can be put back
together again.

Whether that might be achieved depends in large part on the Israelis. Why, some
may ask, should
they not want it? One answer is that the road map says nothing about Palestinian
deals and a
great deal about dismantling terrorist structures. Yet the road map is not
immune to amendment,
as the Israelis, who proposed scores of changes to it and reserved their
position on many points,
well know.

Another answer is that the Israelis have no faith in a transformation of Hamas.
Here the Israelis
have an argument, and Hamas may well have used the truce, as they say, to
recuperate and re-
arm. Yet trying to draw Hamas into a political role is surely a better gamble
than attempting its
destruction by military means, either directly or by proxy, since such methods
are so often
counterproductive. Yet a third answer is that the Sharon administration is
instinctively opposed to
an internal Palestinian political bargain because it would strengthen the
Palestinians and,
especially, make them more resistant to any settlement that fell short of the
1967 borders. Hamas
might conceivably decide to accept a 67 state and let its motto of "from the
ocean to the river"
stay in the land of rhetoric. But it would not stand for much less than 67,
which is what Sharon
has in mind.

At bottom, Sharon's strategy seems to be to break the Palestinians so completely
that they can be
cowed into accepting any political entity that he or a successor decrees. It is
a strategy to which a
Bush administration looking to keep its rightwing Christian votes (and to gain
Jewish ones) offers
only token resistance. It is not one which will bring peace.