Sunday, July 28, 2002

Stalemate in Mideast After Deadly Bombing
Last weekend, Palestinian officials were secretly working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to achieve an agreement that some of those involved described as a unilateral cease-fire, others as a lessening of the conflict.

At the same time, Israeli officials were making secret preparations of their own, for a very different kind of unilateral action: killing a man they considered one of the most dangerous Palestinians, a founder of the military wing of Hamas.


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/international/middleeast/28ISRA.htmlThe two paths crossed before dawn on Tuesday, when Israel dropped a laser-guided, one-ton bomb on the Hamas leader's house in Gaza City as the Palestinian negotiators were working on a text of their announcement.

To some Palestinian and Arab leaders, the Israeli action — which killed not only Sheik Salah Shehada, the man who was the target, but 14 other people, including 9 children — represented not a missed opportunity but an opportunity deliberately foreclosed.

Israeli officials scoffed at the accusation … While they knew of the Palestinian talks, they said, they also knew from bitter experience that the talks would go nowhere.

That explanation underscored a hard truth that was left in plain sight by the bombing: Israel has lost confidence, or even interest, in any short-term Palestinian efforts to ensure Israeli security.

In the view of Western diplomats here, that virtually guarantees a stalemate in the conflict in the coming months. Palestinian militants have vowed to retaliate for the bombing before they will consider a truce. For their part, the Israelis have concluded there is no point in discussing substantive security matters until Yasir Arafat is replaced.

But it is not clear how Mr. Arafat might be replaced any time soon. Like the Bush administration, the Israelis are expressing qualms about possible Palestinian elections, fearing that Mr. Arafat might be strengthened.

It is impossible to know if the intra-Palestinian talks would have led to a durable truce. But facing tremendous military pressure from Israel, diplomatic pressure from abroad and despair at home, some Palestinians have been searching for a way back to political negotiations.

The bombing came as Israelis and Palestinians were also engaged in what both sides called their most serious bilateral talks in months. Israeli officials said that they were impressed with two new ministers appointed by Mr. Arafat who are involved in these talks: Ahmed Razak Yehiyeh, the interior minister, who has responsibility for overseeing security forces, and Salam Fayad, the finance minister.

The Palestinians want the talks to progress toward security arrangements and Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank cities it has seized in the last month. But the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon regards the talks as intended to alleviate Palestinian suffering while the Israeli operation continues.
With the support of President Bush, Mr. Sharon has made Mr. Arafat's replacement a condition for resuming substantive peace negotiations. Experts from a number of election monitoring groups are here now, advising the Palestinian Authority on setting up a credible balloting process.

But there is little prospect of elections any time soon, Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials said. The problem for the Americans and Israelis is that elections, the vehicle that might hold out hope of replacing Mr. Arafat, promise to give him new legitimacy as a democratically chosen leader precisely because he is under such American and Israeli pressure.

Indeed, Israel opposes holding elections now for the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for territories the Palestinians control.…

That appears to be Bush administration policy as well. In a speech on June 24, Mr. Bush demanded Palestinian elections, but he demanded also that only certain people be chosen: "leaders not compromised by terror."

Two Western diplomats here said this week that the Bush administration was now resisting the idea of Palestinian elections, fearing that Mr. Arafat would run for re-election as president and would win handily. In addition, one of the diplomats said, the Americans feared that the militant group Hamas would gain ground in local elections.

Given Mr. Bush's demand that Mr. Arafat be replaced, one of these diplomats said, "everything else is irrelevant."

From the descriptions of people involved in the intra-Palestinian truce talks, there were two overlapping discussions. One began at the initiative of a European diplomat and proceeded with the help of an American political activist. The diplomat, Alistair Crook, represented the European Union in talks with the Tanzim, the militia of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Hatem Abdel Khader, a Palestinian legislator and Fatah leader from Jerusalem who was involved in the discussions, said, "The Europeans wanted the Tanzim to lead the process, because the Tanzim have more influence on the street and on the Palestinian factions."

Fatah leaders in Ramallah negotiated a joint statement with local Tanzim leaders in the northern West Bank, particularly in Jenin and Nablus, people involved in the talks said. They said that Muhammad Dahlan, formerly the chief of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip, went to Gaza to present the announcement to Hamas leaders there.

People involved in the talks said that representatives of the negotiators also contacted Hamas leaders in Syria to put pressure on the local leadership to sign on to the agreement.

Mr. Abdel Khader said that Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the most violent Tanzim group, had agreed to respect the decision, and that Hamas had as well, though "not openly and publicly." He said that another Islamist group, Islamic Jihad, had not approved the agreement, and that Fatah representatives were prepared to go to Damascus to discuss the matter with Islamic Jihad leaders there.

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