Israelis and Palestinians Settle Further Into Their Stalemate
Israel's outgoing army chief of staff said that only the expulsion or replacement of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat might prompt an Israeli withdrawal in the coming months from the seven West Bank cities it has placed under 24-hour curfew.

Asked if that meant that the Israeli Defense Force, or I.D.F., would remain in the Palestinian cities for months, General Mofaz replied, "at least." He said the army would "allow food, water, fuel in" to areas except those "where there is terror." Some 700,000 Palestinians live in the areas newly under Israeli military control.

Palestinians, aid groups and some foreign diplomats have angrily protested the Israeli policy, but Israelis are rallying around it, regardless of its high costs and demands on reserve forces. Despite a sagging Israeli economy, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is seeing his approval rating soar. Two weeks have passed without a suicide attack in Israel.

Palestinians say that by deferring peace negotiations and asserting military control over what by treaty is Palestinian-administered territory, Israel will provoke more violence in the long term.

Today in Gaza City, thousands of Palestinians, many of them calling for revenge, marched in a funeral procession for two men, one of them a leader of the militant Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. The two died in a car explosion on Thursday night that Palestinians called an Israeli assassination. The Israeli Army had no comment on the deaths.

Israel is erecting fences and digging ditches around the Palestinian cities, and it is building a fence along part of the boundary with the West Bank. But Israeli officials have not made clear whether those defensive measures, expected to take months to put in place, will ultimately permit a troop withdrawal.

Mr. Sharon's government is internally conflicted on this matter, apparently undecided itself of the precise end point — geographic or strategic — of the fence-building project. "The terms I use are more stumbling or bumbling or fumbling through, improvising from one day to the next," Mr. Heller of the Jaffee Center said.…

Mr. Arafat also appears to be groping for a path forward. After two days of wrangling, Mr. Arafat on Thursday formally dismissed his West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub, as part of what Mr. Aburdeineh described as a continuing effort to reshape his security forces. "Nobody stopped trying to find new faces for the new security branches, and it's not over," he said. "The problem is not just the Israelis are preventing us from going on, the Americans are not helping us."

Mr. Rajoub has close ties to top Israeli and American security officials, and is regarded, at least by Israelis, as a pragmatic potential successor to Mr. Arafat.

Outside the West Bank city of Hebron, near Mr. Rajoub's home village of Dura, Palestinians said today that they were baffled by the changes, and some said they were also not much interested. "All these changes are useless," said Abed Jabari, 35, a construction worker. "It will not change our situation on the ground. All we are looking for are honest people who will think of our interest before thinking of their interest."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/05/international/middleeast/05CND-MIDEAST.html