Arafat's Remote Control

...Several main roadblocks in the West Bank have also been dismantled, construction on disputed parts of the "security fence" going up there has been delayed, and some 20,000 Palestinians have been permitted to work inside Israel...

...With U.S...

...Meanwhile, each side is trying to act in a manner that will ensure the other is blamed by the White House for the breakdown when it occurs...

...On August 12, two suicide bombers struck in Israel...

...Somewhat paradoxically, the intraPalestinian stature of Arafat is recalled even in the debates about Abbas among Israelis from the Center and the Right...

...An example is the so-called Jibril deal of May 1985, involving the exchange of 1,150 Palestinian prisoners (some of them famous murderers) for three Israeli soldiers...

...Nevertheless, the Israeli Government, going beyond the Bush road map, has released some 600 Palestinian prisoners...

...But even if a hudna agreement has been signed, violating it whenever believers feel they are ready to resume the fighting is a religious imperative...

...Israeli field commanders disagree...

...In the past, violation of this norm has had decidedly unhappy consequences...

...The commentator pointed out that on July 1 GSS Chief Avi Dichter said the Palestinian Authority had to start disarming all its militias in no more than "two to three weeks," and therefore is very worried about matters as they now stand...

...Dahlan refrains from ordering detainments or arms confiscations...

...The trouble, he continued, is that they were not motivated by a passion for knowledge but by a desire to impress the instructor, President Bush—which means all of them assume the cease-fire is going to fail...

...It noted that sources close to Sharon said he would emphasize the unabated strengthening of the Palestinian terrorist organizations...

...Shot for months from mobile launchers in the Gaza Strip mainly toward the town of Shderot, near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's farm, it has so far not caused serious damage...

...And because he is Arafat, he is not going to give such instructions in the foreseeable future...

...To a great extent, the Israeli assumption of failure is based on the popular Palestinian nickname for the cease-fire, hudna...

...To most Israelis they are terrorist criminals, the large majority of whom are serving sentences meted out by the courts, including life imprisonment for murder convictions...

...More surprisingly, on August 1 the Bush Administration let it be known that it had been persuaded by Abbas not to continue pressing the Palestinian Authority to immediately dismantle and disarm terrorist groups...

...Abbas, however, unhesitatingly says he asks for Arafat's advice and reports to him regularly...

...Interestingly, in this evaluation the majority of the IDF generals are placed in the middle of the scale: more pessimistic than their political superiors, but more optimistic than the GSS...

...A classic example of a hudna is the Treaty of Hudaibiya, signed by the Prophet Muhammad with the people of Mecca in 628, only to be reneged on a couple of years later when the situation tilted in Muhammad's favor...

...Sharon is stronger than Bush...

...But despite a handful of troubling incidents (including Hezbollah's shellings in northern Israel), there have been relatively few suicide bombings since the cease-fire began and the number of foiled terrorist attacks has dropped by 80 per cent...

...They are also aware of his many disagreements with Abbas and his anger at being forced to appoint him Prime Minister...

...The argument that won the day for Abbas, apparently, was that his security forces are too weak at present to prevail...

...Sharon and Mofaz, Ha 'aretz' commentator concluded, are on the positive side of the scale...

...Events did not quite play out as the pundits here had predicted...

...Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, it reported, told the committee the IDF have been catching several potential suicide-bombers weekly...

...We cannot follow him around, collecting his tears in a bucket...

...Abu Ala), Speaker of the Palestinian Legislature...

...On what remains of the Left after the January 2003 balloting, it is argued that Arafat is the legitimate elected leader of the Palestinians and no one has the right to foist a different leader upon them...

...It sometimes happens, says the Koran, that Islam fails temporarily in the battlefield...

...Arafat's Remote Control By Amos Carmel Rehovot On July 29, exactly one month after the start of the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel Public Radio's noontime News Diary opened by quoting a "senior member of the defense community" who optimistically predicted that the suspension of hostilities would last beyond an agreed three months...

...Abu Mazen can deliver the goods without afitna [intra-Muslim war...

...Moreover, if information about deploying it in the West Bank is accurate, the central part of Israel, including Jerusalem, would be in jeopardy...

...Every Arab ruler is thought to be a modern incarnation of the caliph, the earthly representative of the Prophet Muhammad, and it is impossible for two individuals to share this position...

...As analysts of the first intifada, begun at the end of 1987, frequently stress, many terrorists who came back home in '85 played an important role in renewing the anti-Israeli violence...

...In such circumstances the Imam may order believers to negotiate a 10year cease-fire (or hudna), to permit regrouping and rearming...

...Nor has it been forgotten here that the latest hudna started only after a declaration by two fundamentalist organizations—Hamas and the Islamic Jihad—which said "the suspension of military activities against the Zionist enemy [not the state of Israel] originates mainly from the desire to unite the Palestinian lines in this dangerous phase...

...For them the central fact is that the terrorist organizations have not stopped the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip through underground tunnels from Egypt...

...Another item dealt with a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee...

...Indeed, Israelis remember all too well that in August 1994 and January 1995 Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat pronounced the Oslo Agreement analogous to the Treaty of Hudaibiya...

...said he feared...

...Security coordination between both camps has been established too...

...Instead, he relies on persuasion to curb suspected terrorist activists, with whom, he says, he has a "long acquaintance...

...Generous American allocations, plus the reopening of the casino in Jericho and the flow of tourists to that ancient city, would strengthen the ability of the Palestinian Government to deal with its internal opponents...

...No concessions Israel might make would change the reality that his potential is clearly limited...

...But extending its range beyond the present six miles implies plans to hit bigger Israeli targets like the city of Ashkelon, north of Gaza...

...There is no need for bloodshed in the streets of Gaza in order to dismember the terror infrastructures," one of the generals said...

...At least, remarked one of the mini Ha'aretz, the country's leading newspaper, it seems two opposite views have taken hold in Israel's top echelons concerning Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas (a.k.a...

...they see the glass half full, partly because they are exposed to American pressures and unable to ignore President Bush's strong sympathy for Abu Mazen...

...ON THE EVE OF President Bush's successive meetings with Abbas and Sharon, the Israeli media were full of speculations—in some cases actually hopes—about a major shift in Washington's Middle East stance...

...The high-trajectory (and thus fencebypassing) Qassam is currently rather primitive...

...Not without good reason...

...If Abbas cannot call a halt to such activity, they argue, one cannot expect too much from him...

...Not exactly a good omen for a cease-fire called a hudna that still has close to two months to run...

...The Israelis are eager to prolong the tranquillity in their streets as long as possible...

...troops bogged down in Iraq and an election looming, the reasoning went, the Administration urgently needed a swift diplomatic achievement in the region...

...anti-Israeli slogans, for instance, have been wiped from Gaza's walls...

...Small wonder, then, that Abbas' demanding the prisoners be set loose, combined with his refusal to disarm the terrorists, has Israelis across the politicai spectrum wondering whether he andhis associates can be real partners in a seriouspeace effort...

...According to some Israeli Orientalists, the phenomenon is deeply rooted in the Arab political culture...

...Prime Minister Sharon, who has been negotiating with Abbas in the face of bitter criticism from his own Likud Party, and who is certainly interested in strengthening Abbas and weakening Arafat, told Bush in Washington: "We shall help Abu Mazen, but he has to strive to help himself, to begin the struggle against terrorist organizations and their infrastructures...

...those who refuse to accept the Islamic faith...

...The militant Palestinians need time to improve their military and political power...

...So it is apparent that without direct instructions from Arafat there will be no effective Palestinian Authority operations against the terrorist organizations...

...Though practically every Israeli understands that releasing prisoners will be an integral part of any peace process, a significant number stick to the old norm of no freedom for the Palestinians "with blood on their hands...

...At the same time, they cannot discern any desire or ability on the part of Abbas to disconnect himself from his old boss...

...The economy is the key factor, he maintained...

...The Palestinian public regards those being held by Israel as prisoners of war and demands their immediate liberation...

...Less ideological Leftist politicians, who became friendly with Abbas during the Oslo negotiations, similarly hesitate to embrace him to the exclusion of Arafat...

...Statements of that kind do not encourage Israelis to look upon the hudna as a viable foundation for a peace process...

...Palestinian incitement has clearly been reduced as well...

...As long as Arafat is still alive and functioning, therefore, there is no way that Abbas, for all of his invitations to the Oval Office or the Israeli Prime Minister's office, can acquire paramount political weight...

...But Israel's General Security Service (GSS), whose main function is preventing terrorism, was placed on the negative side of the scale...

...And a senior intelligence officer explained that while Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, had not fired any Qassam rockets into Israel during the last month, it was busy experimenting with ways to improve the weapon's range and precision...

...Prior to the end of June, when the cease-fire was declared, an upgrading of Qassam rockets would have resulted in Israeli Air Force assault helicopters taking out the threat...

...The following day several Israeli commentators suggested that there appeared to be some sort of division of opinion in the intelligence community...

...Hudna subsequently became the Arabic term for all sorts of nonbelligerency arrangements (a trace, armistice or the like) without losing its religious aspect...

...Further suspicion has been generated by Abbas' pressing forthe release—in the framework of the cease-fire—of all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel...

...Sharon was not confronted with the "harsh demands" that reporters aboard his plane to the U.S...

...Even during his trip to Washington he was under the strict control of two Arafat loyalists: Nabil Shaath, who represents Arafat in Abbas' Cabinet, and Ahmed Qurei (a.k.a...

...Both sides have an immediate interest in putting off what they consider inevitable, Fishman explained...

...Thus there is an inherent fallacy in the American insistence that it is critical for Israel to take difficult steps that will burnish Abbas' image among the Palestinians...

...Amos Carmel, a previous NL contributor, is a columnist and the Op-Ed page editor of the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot...

...Yet another News Diary item reflected the changed circumstances...

...Viewing the cease-fire as a university seminar, Yediot Achronot military affairs analyst Alex Fishman wrote at the end of July that it can be said all the students passed the first trimester examination successfully—especially given the low initial expectations...

...Various commentators not known as enthusiastic Sharon supporters predicted a softening toward Palestinian "favorite son" Abu Mazen that would result in Sharon receiving a bit of a cold shoulder...

...in order to halt the enemy...

...Israeli intelligence now regularly provides information about terrorists to Palestinian Interior Minister Muhammad Dahlan, whose security forces are responsible for keeping the public order in Gaza and Bethlehem...

...This has turned what was intended as a gesture that would raise his standing among his own people—namely letting 10 per cent go home—into a trigger device of sorts...

...the moderate ones hope to consolidate the stature of Abu Mazen and his followers...

...Immediately afterward the Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, was quoted as telling a meeting of new recruits that he "is counting the days to the eruption of the next wave of violence...

...the collapse of the cease-fire is merely a question of time...

...These circles are pleased that Arafat is a virtual prisoner in his crumbling compound in Ramallah, and that Washington is boycotting him...

...This one came from Washington, where Prime Minister Sharon was about to meet with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office...

...The word is from the Koran, where it appears in the context of the Prophet Muhammad's holy wars against the infidels (i.e...

...Nonetheless, Arafat's reaction in Ramallah was a bitter complaint: "I told you nothing is going to come out of all this...

...Abu Mazen) and the prospects for progress toward peace via President Bush's road map...