Save for a few skirmishes, the Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire is more or less being observed. For how long, nobody knows. And for how long does the truce need to be maintained before meaningful peace talks can begin is a question again up in the air. What stands clear, however, is that as so often in the past, Yasser Arafat is again walking on a precipice, actually several. From the United States and Europe he is being squeezed to hold the cease-fire together. On the other side, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have all issued statements rejecting his cease-fire decree. As for the average Palestinian, the question is whether a cease-fire is or should be the reward for all the blood spilt in eight months of conflict with Israel.
In the middle of this rock and a hard place is Ariel Sharon’s hunch — and perhaps desire — that Arafat no longer has the authority or the means to impose an immediate, unconditional truce required of him. In that case, any Palestinian offensive will bring Israeli rockets crashing down yet again on Palestinian cities.
Signs are that Sharon will pursue localized offensives to ensure that the Palestinians cannot keep the cease-fire. His massive air strikes against the PA’s military infrastructure, slash and destroy incursions into PA-controlled territory and assassinations, especially of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, can all be exercised as before. Sharon’s peerless military blockade has already carved the West Bank into eight separate enclaves and Gaza into four, decanted 20,000 Palestinians from their jobs in Israel and barred all imports into the Palestinian areas save food but including fuel.
The closure is just one of several means available to scupper all talks of a cease-fire. But because it is a bloodless procedure, it gets scant international attention and condemnation. Sharon thus has the Palestinians exactly where he wants them: leveling unparalleled oppression while being praised by the world for his restraint.
Sharon is obviously trying to stage a series of continually disrupting processes that neither restore peace nor lead to total war. The end result, however, is sharper polarization. The Israeli prime minister has accepted the Mitchell report in principle, that is, only the recommendations that suit him. His plans for the annexation of more land in the West Bank, more settlements, the declaration of Jerusalem as the eternal undivided capital of Israel, and opposition to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees are driving the Palestinians into despair. He is constantly sending the Arabs a message that Zionist dreams of Greater Israel are very much alive today. Why, under these conditions, the Palestinians would not consider themselves still under military occupation and Israel a colonial power? If the scenario that Sharon has put in place prevails both the conflict and any possible settlement will disintegrate and further political endeavors will be stripped of the structure painstakingly put in place by various governments. He will get his way unless his bluff his called.
Against this backdrop, Arafat seems to have one of two options: One is to enforce the cease-fire on Israel’s terms, that is the re-arrest of 100 or so Hamas and Jihad prisoners and the imprisonment of any Palestinian active in operations that involved the killing of Israelis. The slim hope behind such a step would be that the US and Europe would then exert the kind of pressure they are exerting on Arafat on Sharon to freeze settlements and lift the siege. The other alternative is to take measures that will maintain the armed resistance.
Arafat will have trouble accepting either. But while Sharon is being feted for his restraint, the heat, exclusively, will continue to be put on the Palestinian leader. Faced with a diplomatic and military pincer movement, it is likely to remain so.
