THE Israelis are quite capable of murdering Palestinians without having other Palestinians do their dirty work for them. Whatever perverse end the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) thought that they were achieving by assassinating the late Yasser Arafat’s cousin, Moussa Arafat, the effect of the murder is to give a small but significant victory to the Zionists.
Moussa Arafat, a former security chief and latterly an adviser on security to the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, stood accused of corruption. The charges against him should have been heard in a court of law. No militants had the right to appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner. The brutal murder sends entirely the wrong message to the outside world and to the Palestinians themselves who, though long used to disappointment, may now have been hoping that peace and prosperity were finally on the horizon.
At the very moment that the Palestinians need to presented a united front to the Israelis, at the very moment that they should be demonstrating that they are acquiring all the trappings of a civil society, ruled by law and not violence, a group of thugs butcher a senior political figure and kidnap his son. It was a depraved and wicked crime, motivated more by bitter memories of the former security chief’s tough regime than by allegations that Moussa was one of the more corrupt figures around the late Palestinian leader.
Mahmoud Abbas was quite right in insisting that no stone would be left unturned to track down Moussa’s murderers and free his kidnapped son. The truth is that the authorities probably already have a good idea of who ordered and carried out the attack. What they must now collect is the evidence to arrest and convict these people. In this task they should have the support of all decent Palestinians. An assault which involved some 20 vehicles and dozens of gunmen is a crime hard to conceal, unlike a deadly attack by a single, well-concealed hit man. There are likely many people who should come forward with useful information for the authorities.
Tracking down Moussa’s killers, however, is only part of the story. Those extremists who are still wedded to violence have to be made to accept the message that turning the streets of Gaza and West Bank into a Palestinian-made blood bath only wins victories for the Israelis and for everyone else who wants to present the Palestinian state as a lawless haven for extremist violence. This applies as much to Hamas and Abu Jihad as it does to the PRC. The majority of Palestinians will understandably be dubious about the chances of peace. They also want the Abbas administration to give clearer proof that it is clamping down on corruption and, within the current largely Israeli-imposed restraints, laying the foundations for an efficient modern state. They do not, however, want their country riven by civil strife at the very moment when real change could be at hand. The only people who do in fact actually want this are Israeli extremists. Whose side, all must ask, is the PRC really on?
