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Suspend Fire
Ehud Ya'ari
NO ILLUSIONS, PLEASE: WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING now is nothing more than an agile, tactical maneuver by an ensnared Yasser Arafat to rescue himself from the depths of his own Tora Bora in the suburbs of Ramallah. Soon after declaring an "end to all armed actions" in his Id al-Fitr speech, he couldn�t keep his tongue in check, slipping back into bellicose rhetoric in praise of "martyrs."
Arafat understood that he had to quickly get out of the trap he�d laid for himself, so he�s been telling his people they must help him deny Sharon any excuse to go for a final showdown. But his goal is to keep the terror industry he has developed on high alert and armed to the teeth for the duration of the highly fragile cease-fire. He gets reliable TV crews to document the arrest of militants and the closure of Hamas and Islamic Jihad institutions, but the locks are tiny, the chains are flimsy and the doors are sealed with a thin layer of wax.
This is how Arafat hopes to distance himself from responsibility for the next bloody attack. He is prepared to come across as weak and lacking control to justify his shilly-shallying in dealing with terror networks. But anyone with eyes in their head must recognize by now that the rais actually has a rather impressive level of control over what happens on the ground. The relative quietening down on the traditional fronts of this quasi-intifada is proof that Arafat is not a leader who turns a blind eye to terrorism, or fails to stop it. Rather, he creates the terror and is always able to push the right buttons to control its level, including the Hamas button.
So far there�s no cease-fire, let alone a serious effort to dismantle the terror machine. There�s nothing more than a "hold your fire" order, until it becomes clear whether Shimon Peres is able to mummify and thus preserve the corpse of the Oslo process; a kind of time-out during which Arafat wants to try to break into the diplomatic sanctuary and confront Sharon with the demand enshrined in this season�s holy text, the Mitchell Report, for a settlement freeze, or alternatively, put to the test the Peres proposal for agreement on a Palestinian state ahead of final-status negotiations.
Arafat is still waiting for Sharon or the Israeli army to make some horrendous mistake; for European forgiveness and American haste, or for salvation from the Labor politicians who advocate bringing down the national unity government. In other words, the bloody game is not entirely over yet.
Once again, Arafat has reached a partial agreement with Hamas, while at the same time engaging in limited confrontation with the organization. The Tanzim has been ordered to await new instructions, and the security apparatuses have been told to spare the chairman the embarrassment at this stage of any large-scale terror attacks, whether in the form of suicide bombings, mortar fire or ambushes on the roads. Everyone has been ordered to wait with weapons at the ready for a clearer picture to emerge.
"Everyone" means a thousand men, give or take, belonging to dozens of groups or cells engaged in the terrorist enterprise, in the Shin Bet�s estimation. Please remember that figure whenever you hear about the arrest of a handful of people by the Palestinian Authority.
These groups are now also deployed across the rural landscape. In many cases, they are the result of cooperative efforts between competing factions, brought together with the assistance of the PA intelligence apparatuses.
Hamas has successfully rehabilitated its military network in the West Bank that was destroyed by 1999, with a command center in Nablus that keeps contact with the leadership in Damascus. The Islamic Jihad has built up its own apparatus with headquarters in Jenin. And then there are the branches of the Tanzim in the various districts that have turned into military cells. Experts in sabotage trickle in a steady flow across the border from Jordan-- mostly students who�ve been trained in terror labs in Damascus-- and significant amounts of weapons are being smuggled in across the Sinai, including Katyusha rockets, anti-tank weapons and perhaps even shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles.
This whole setup had not been even partly disabled by press time, although it was supposed to have gone into voluntary suspension. It remains on alert, making final preparations for future attacks. And they will come the moment Arafat reckons he has done enough to make the international community believe that his hands are clean.
Arafat is ostensibly stopping the intifada without having achieved any of its objectives. He is surrendering to international pressure for a crackdown, and is requesting security coordination with Israel, without insisting on any immediate political reward. He appears to be conceding but -- and here�s the rub -- without the completion of this round of violence, it is not a true acknowledgment of defeat.
(January 14, 2002)
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