The latest Middle East violence — the killing last week of nine Palestinians by Israeli forces, followed by the shooting death of four Israeli settlers by Palestinian gunmen — draws a conclusion to a year which began optimistically. The Palestinian Authority started 2002 by announcing a cease-fire in the hope that such restraint would encourage an American rescue from an Israeli government bent on its destruction. A year later, the PA barely exists as a governing authority. It lies in collapse under the force of two Israeli military invasions in 2002: Defensive Shield in March and Determined Path in June.
Israel enters 2003 in total military reconquest of the West Bank and large swathes of Gaza, courtesy of a new occupation regime of checkpoints, bypass roads, walls and surrounding settlements. But there is hope that a US-backed road map will eventually beat a path back to political negotiations even though few are taking the road map seriously since it is believed nothing is going to happen until after the Israeli elections and after the US launches its war against Iraq or if some reason is given showing there will not be a war.
One man who believes in the road map’s efficacy is Prime Minister Tony Blair who, over the weekend, called on the international community to help implement the plan for peace, saying the road map was a “practical way of setting out the steps to the creation of a Palestinian state, alongside Israel, by 2005.”
Blair is attempting to do his fair share in bringing back the parties to negotiations by inviting them to a conference in London in January to “identify ways in which the international community can help the Palestinians prepare for statehood.”
In January, Palestinian elections too were to have been held, in which Yasser Arafat was running for another term as president, but they were put off indefinitely after Palestinian officials judged that holding elections was impossible as long as Israeli troops were occupying most of the West Bank and restricting movement in the Gaza Strip.
One election that will go ahead, on Jan. 28, pits Ariel Sharon against Amram Mitzna. Sharon is apparently adopting get-tougher tactics with the Palestinians to curry favor with Israeli right-wingers ahead of the polls even though he is a prohibitive favorite. Sharon has been in power for close to two years and his policies have not worked as he follows the old Zionist vision of total Jewish possession of Palestine, launching ruthless attacks on Palestinian resistance to his philosophy. Mitzna of the Labor Party says he can change all that. His program is immediate evacuation from Gaza and unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians in which he is prepared to close down West Bank settlements. The problem is that Sharon’s Likud party, a part of the Labor Party and the Bush administration all oppose such a settlement. Most Palestinians support Mitzna, but Labor is expected to lose.
There is strong support for the hard-line Sharon government and its response to suicide bombings — expansion of Jewish settlements, assassination of Palestinian officials and activists, destruction of houses and crops, military incursions into territories, curfews and killings. Heading into 2003, such backing is not wavering.
