The decision by the Hamas leadership to suspend its campaign of attacks against Israeli targets is a highly significant and welcome move. It has thrown the onus to restart real negotiations back to the hard-line government of Ariel Sharon when he and his fellow hawks were very probably hoping that they had provoked Hamas to such a degree that a suspension of its attacks would be unthinkable.
But now that the unthinkable has happened, the ball is very much back in their court. The question now is: Will they deal honestly and fairly with this new opportunity to end the awful cycle of violence, or will they cast around for some way to short-circuit the Hamas initiative, and restart the campaign to discredit and sideline President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority?
Despite the Sharon government’s orchestrated dismissal of Arafat as "irrelevant", the Palestinian Authority in recent days has been acting against extremists in both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This action is being taken at a terrible cost. Yesterday, fighting between militant supporters and Palestinian police in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza left five Palestinians dead and at least 55 wounded.
Whatever the Israeli government may choose to make of Yasser Arafat’s actions, the international community ought to appreciate that he is acting courageously to curb militants, in the face of massive anger and despair among his own people. Outside pundits present Arafat’s position as "impossible". It really is. What Arafat was asked to do was to convince his people that while their lives did not matter, that of Israelis did. However, despite the general pessimism, Arafat has shown why he is still widely seen as the legitimate leader of his people and the best chance there is of achieving a just settlement to the conflict. Zionist hawks will probably be taking comfort from the fact that Islamic Jihad has responded to Hamas’ announcement of a truce with the declaration that it will not let up in its own campaign against Israeli targets.
Sharon and his henchmen will be calculating that they only need another shocking suicide bombing to again undermine the Palestinian Authority and negate the impact of the Hamas cease-fire. It should never be forgotten that Zionists have not in the past shied away from murdering their own people — as in the cinema bombings in Iraq — to further their political strategy. Therefore, Israeli defense forces have only to step aside and allow an Islamic Jihad fighter to carry out another attack to give the Sharon regime the excuse it needs to further increase its oppression of the Palestinians. It was Israel that created the despair which caused young men to offer their lives to the militants. It then used the militant attacks to conceal its own terrorism.
If Yasser Arafat can persuade Islamic Jihad also to join with Hamas in suspending bombings, the key excuse for oppressive Israeli attacks will be swept away and his authority will be hugely enhanced. But that, of course, is not what the Sharon government wants. Beware, therefore, of further treacherous manipulation of Palestinian anger to bolster the Israelis’ pretence that they, and they alone, are the victims in this conflict.
