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Battle Fatigue
Ehud Ya'ari

The leadership is now afflicted with muscular atrophy and can no longer work the hands that would stop the fingers on the triggers

The Al-Aqsa Intifada has lost its oomph. It is still running under the leftover steam of its initial momentum. Any conviction the Palestinian rank and file ever harbored that this is a way to produce quick results has all but dissipated. There is no real enthusiasm, only an undertone of pessimistic grumbling, a clinging to the sense of eternal victimhood, and an almost heartbreaking cry for outside help to bring the uprising to a complete halt.

Marwan Barghouti, the head of one of the Fatah Tanzim factions and the most belligerent interviewee on the Arab satellite channels, admits that it is �impossible to win by means of TV� and that the balance of forces in the field does not favor the Palestinians. Hafiz Barghouti, a distant cousin and the editor of Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority daily, now publicly mocks the �armed militias� set up over the past year, whose members have nothing to do, he says, but wave their weapons around at protest rallies. And when the Israeli army goes into Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, he points out angrily, it is members of the regular Palestinian police forces that are killed at their improvised posts.

Indeed, if Yasser Arafat had hoped that his �young lions,� as he calls them, would put up a good fight, battling from street to street in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Tul Karm and Hebron, he hoped wrong. There was no evident readiness to fight it out anywhere, only to snipe at the Israeli troops from afar. If house-to-house fighting had developed, Beirut style, the international reaction to the IDF�s pressure tactics would have been completely different and much more vociferous. The Palestinian gunmen�s reluctance to do battle is not just testimony to their natural recognition of their military inferiority. It is also a sign of a dampening of their fighting spirit.

Palestinian disillusion is such that in recent weeks, some members of Arafat�s inner circle have taken the initiative to try to rally American and European pressure on the chairman to get him to order his men once and for all to stop firing, and to allow a cease-fire to take hold. Senior figures like PLO No. 2 Abu Mazen have literally implored their foreign interlocutors to serve Arafat vigorous threats that he will be denied legitimacy if he doesn�t use his authority to impose discipline. A few, like Prof. Sari Nusseibeh, who was recently appointed by Arafat to fill some of the functions of the late Faisal al-Husseini in Jerusalem, allow themselves to speak openly of the necessity to withdraw from the confrontation before it deteriorates further. Most keep silent in public, or pay lip service to the �need to continue the intifada,� while behind closed doors they say exactly the opposite. Nabil Sha�ath, the PA minister of planning and international cooperation, is a good example of that group.

PA security service heads have lately been taking pains to distance themselves from involvement in attacks. West Bank Preventive Security chief Jibril Rajoub frequently condemns cease-fire violators. His Gaza counterpart, Muhammad Dahlan, who was suspected not long ago of initiating terror attacks, tries to ingratiate himself with Israeli officers and journalists. General Intelligence chief Tawfiq Tirawi sent out urgent messages to Israeli security officials aimed at ridding himself of the suspicion that his men had aided the assassins of tourism minister Rechavam Zeevy. All three have stopped issuing warlike statements. The threats and incitement have become the prerogative of personalities who were until recently in the shadows, such as Hebron Fatah veteran Abbas Zaki, military intelligence chief Col. Musa Arafat (a cousin of the chairman), and other second and third echelon members of the leadership.

Nevertheless, unless Arafat throws his full weight behind the cease-fire, the intifada, even in this limping form, can still produce bloody violence. One of his close associates tells us that the ra�is has already reached the conclusion that continuing the confrontation, from his standpoint, presents more risks than opportunities but that, as he puts it, the leadership is now afflicted with advanced muscular atrophy and can no longer work the hands that would stop the fingers on the triggers. This is not a question of control, as many claim, but first of all a symptom of weakness and listlessness that springs from fatigue and frustration. For Arafat and his colleagues are not at all sure that the diplomatic channel will yield any quick results. Nor are they enthused by the idea of resuming negotiations, with or without Sharon.

So the forces who have an obvious interest in continuing the intifada � the Tanzim and Hamas gangs and members of Arafat�s Force 17 presidential guard, who know they won�t be welcome anymore in Israel � have not received a clear instruction from above.

For the leadership, the intifada is already reaching its end. But that�s not the case on the street. Arafat alone can bridge the two. Only he is busy declaring �Let�s fight on, fight on, fight on!� immediately after promising a certain European minister that he will stick to the cease-fire.