Ariel Sharon was probably more surprised than most to find himself sitting next to the Palestinian leader on Tuesday declaring the Israeli army ”will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians anywhere”.
When Mahmoud Abbas was elected as the new Palestinian President a month ago, even those Israeli officials sympathetic to his pledge to end four years of bloody intifada doubted he could do it. He did not have the power or authority of Yasser Arafat and so could never rein in Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they said.
At the time, Sharon was unyielding in his demand that Abbas would be expected to pursue and disarm ”terrorists” — and that the Israeli army would do what the Palestinian leadership would not.
Yet within a fortnight of his election, Abbas had won a commitment from the main armed fac-tions to end their war on Israel if Sharon respected a ceasefire. The Palestinian leader put in place an interim truce and, while there is still some violence, it had subsided to the extent that even Israel’s hardline Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, began to argue that a ceasefire could be made to work.
Abbas was open about his strategy. He would call Sharon’s bluff by meeting the Israeli demand for ”an end to the terror”, thus neutralising the prime minister’s stated reason for unilaterally imposing his version of a Palestinian state. Then, with the violence quelled, Abbas intended to call on the United States and other foreign powers to drag Israel back to the negotiating table.
This week the Palestinian leader completed the first stage of his plan with a speed that astonished the Israeli government.
Abbas offered Hamas the enticement of political power through the Palestinian parliamentary elections in July. But everything hung on a commitment from Israel to respect a ceasefire. Sharon was left with no way out if he was not to be blamed for the collapse of the interim truce. So he did what he had said he would not do, and made what amounted to a joint declaration of a ceasefire.
But the second stage of Abbas’s plan has already run into trouble after the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, told him Washington will not press Israel to nego- tiate or make political concessions until after Sharon completes his ”disengagement plan” to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank. That was a huge political step in itself, Rice said, and no more could be expected of Sharon for now.
That, say some Palestinian officials, could unravel Abbas’s strategy. Some warn that if they miss this opportunity to forge a lasting agreement it may not return for many years.
”This is a time of opportunity,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former Cabinet minister and ally of Abbas. ”We could create a momentum that would entrench the peace by showing the Palestinian people the benefits and hold out the promise that the Israelis are serious about ending the occupation in a just way.” But Abed Rabbo said there was a widespread suspicion among ordinary Palestinians that, while the Israeli government is keen to end the violence, it wanted to stave off political talks so that Sharon could carry through his plan unilaterally to impose the borders of a Palestinian state, annexing a significant part of the West Bank to Israel.
But Sharon’s backers say his reluctance to wade into negotiations immediately is a response to political realities. He still faces obstacles in Parliament to the Gaza pullout; his Likud Party is deeply split on the withdrawal, with a majority against it; and there was strong opposition within the Cabinet to Tuesday’s announcement.
The prime minister’s allies say he cannot afford to take on the additional domestic political battles that would inevitably come if he were to begin negotiating with the Palestinians and making concessions on issues such as Israeli claims to all of Jerusalem.
But Sharon can draw comfort from the views of the Israeli public, which have shifted significantly since Arafat’s death. The latest poll shows a clear majority of Jewish citizens (77%) in favour of a ceasefire and political negotiations. A little more than half believe a negotiated settlement is still attainable. A majority also believe that Abbas is sincere in his efforts to end violence. Close to 60% of Israelis support Sharon’s plan to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.
Abbas faces his own problems. Palestinians voted for him not only in the expectation that he would end the violence and win relief from some of the daily grind of occupation, but that he would overhaul the Palestinian Authority to root out corruption and incompetence.
The Palestinian leader told a meeting of his Fatah movement at the weekend that he wants to replace many of the old guard in the Cabinet with more able ministers. But Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has resisted such dramatic change.
Taysir Nasrallah, a member of Fatah’s higher committee, said if Abbas was able to pull off political and administrative reform while keeping the Israeli military at bay he could emerge stronger than many had imagined. ”But if [he] fails on the reforms or to get to negotiations then he will be finished. Hamas will sweep the floor.” — Â