It must be hoped that the Palestinian cease-fire will hold and that the time can be used to launch a new way forward based on the proposals in the Mitchell Report. After all, the report has been accepted by both the Palestinians and the Israelis, at least officially in the case of the latter. To that end, the fact that both sides decided that the fighting on Monday in Rafah was not a breach of the cease-fire is encouraging. So too is the announcement by the two most active of the Palestinian groups engaged in the struggle against occupation, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, that they have too joined in the cease-fire.
There are further small crumbs of comfort in the frenzied coming and goings of a host of international diplomats — American, Russian, European and from the UN — all desperate to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis return to the negotiating table. But it is impossible to believe that this truce is going to hold. First, there is Ariel Sharon’s insane conviction that, if he hits hard enough, he can intimidate the Palestinians into submission — a conviction that ignores all evidence to the contrary. For the moment, he is under major pressure by Washington not to retaliate for Friday’s suicide bomb in Tel Aviv in which 20 Israeli youths were killed. Presumably it has finally struck home with the Bush administration that repression produces only more violence. However, Sharon is not going to change his ways just because of the Americans.
Just as there is every reason to believe reports that the Israeli Air Force has already been given their targets and that they are only waiting for the word from Sharon to attack, so too there is every reason to believe that he will give that word. An even more compelling cause for pessimism is Washington’s recklessness in trying to eliminate a key demand in the Mitchell Report.
The report calls for not only an end to new Israeli settlements but an end to “natural growth” in existing ones. Anything less than complete implementation of these two demands is unacceptable to the Palestinians. If the Israelis refuse to enact them, it will be impossible for the Palestinians authorities to continue with the cease-fire, let alone keep a restraining hand on the more militant among them, already frustrated and bitter at Israel’s siege of Palestinian towns and villages. The Mitchell Report itself acknowledges that impossibility.
Yet Gen. Colin Powell now says that the settlements issue has to be left to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide in future negotiations. By undermining this key demand, he has torpedoed the report below water. Sharon must be over the moon. No wonder he does not want to antagonize Washington with immediate and bloody reprisals against the Palestinians: he knows that the Americans are alongside him. They are not going to put any pressure on him to concede on the settlements issue prior to negotiations starting; and that could way in the future: by which time, yet more “facts” will have been created on the ground with more and ever-expanding settlements. The cease-fire cannot survive that long.
It is difficult enough as it is for Yasser Arafat to maintain it. He has tried desperately to keep the door open to dialogue. The Friday bombing provided him with a grim opportunity to prise it back open, by announcing a cease-fire. But he has to show that he has won a concession — and the settlements issue is now the touchstone by which Palestinians will judge Israel’s desire for peace. A moratorium means dialogue; no change means more violence. With Sharon adamant that there will be no freeze, the only logical conclusion has to be that the cease-fire will end, probably with another suicide bombing.
And that is when Sharon will seize the opportunity and order his longed-for reprisals, justifying his actions to Washington on the grounds that violence is the only language the Palestinians understand. If that happens, and it is the most likely outcome, Gen. Powell’s short-sighted and politically inept undermining of the Mitchell Report will be wholly to blame.
