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A Degree of Intifada
Ehud Ya'ari

By declaring a cease-fire, Yasser Arafat indicated that he may be willing to accept the gradual termination of the intifada. Neither he nor any other Palestinian Authority spokesman would openly call it off after all, there is strong opposition to the cease-fire, with a lot of vested interests at stake. But Arafat's close inner circle privately admits that it would be impossible to sustain a "demilitarized" uprising.

Now that America has pressured the sides into patching up an accommodation to facilitate its work in setting up an anti-terror coalition, the Palestinians' political objective is directed at ensuring the widest possible margins for continued action within the parameters of a cease-fire. Or in other words, ensuring that a certain degree of intifada could be incorporated within the framework of a formal cease-fire.

Within days of the September 26 meeting with Shimon Peres at Gaza's airport, however, Arafat was forced to realize that instead of an intifada within a cease-fire framework, he faced the challenge of keeping a cease-fire within an intifada. It's an impossible equation.

That notwithstanding, the latest attempt to achieve a cease-fire has a greater chance of taking hold than any of the five previous agreements announced during the year-long confrontation. The potential of this effort to achieve relative calm stems not only from the changed international circumstances following the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, but also from a growing sense among Palestinians that the intifada has lost its way and is failing to produce any tangible gains.

Arafat has been looking for quite some time for a dignified exit strategy from an intifada that has won him few victories in recent months. He realizes that the alternative strategy � investing a lot more than he has done so far to fuel a substantial escalation in violence � would involve risks that are perceived by almost all of his lieutenants as far too high. Virtually all of them agree that such a policy would lead to an open confrontation between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Authority's regular security forces, making it easier for Israel to fight back, while robbing Arafat of his favored argument that it is not the PA per se which is engaged in battle with Israel, but "irregular" forces such as Fatah's Tanzim, along with its partners in Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the rejectionist factions.

Washington's declaration of a war on terror helped solve Arafat's dilemma. Instead of continuing to weigh the pros and cons of accelerating the attacks on Israel, including the use of heavier weaponry such as Katyusha rockets and changing tactics to include, for example, assaults on isolated settlements, he took an immediate decision to make sure that this time � in contrast to 1990-91 � he landed on the right side of the political fence.

Arafat well knows that applying for membership in the anti-terrorism coalition, whatever that coalition means in practice, cannot go in concert with ongoing attacks. So where does that leave him?

Operationally, Arafat's preference is to switch from a consistent and continuous mode of clashes and incidents to intermittent attacks: instead of mortar shellings, the occasional roadside bomb; instead of suicide bombings, the occasional drive-by shooting; instead of his own Tanzim carrying out the operations, leaving the task to factions not connected to his Fatah movement.

For now, he clearly has no intention of moving towards disarming illegal militias or dismantling the terrorist network re-established by Hamas over the past few months. The cease-fire, as Arafat understands it, must maintain constant tension and contain the threat of an immediate, full-scale flare-up at any moment. It is certainly not going to lead to a crackdown on terrorist operatives, and it will not end up in a split between Fatah and its anti-Oslo allies in the consortium of Palestinian military organizations known as the "Alliance of Nationalist and Islamic Forces."

What is on the agenda is a sort of precarious cease-fire regime which tolerates a fluctuating amount of "violations." Here, U.S. pressure and Israeli determination are essential, as they may be able to influence the scope of these violations. And conversely, any sign by Israel or the international community that "some" attacks may be acceptable will only contribute to a higher volume of bloodshed.

As expected, once Arafat made up his mind, he was able to a large degree to impose his authority on the ground. By the time this column went to press, it was not yet clear whether his efforts would become serious enough, but there was no doubting his ability to tone down the violence. This should put an end to the popular and superfluous year-long debate on whether the ra'is is "in control." The answer remains the same as a year ago: Arafat is in charge to the extent that he wants to exercise his power, whenever and wherever he wants to. He has been actively reasserting control because he sees a greater prospect of achieving gains in the diplomatic arena.

Still, he has to act quite slowly and try to scale down the violence gradually, to avoid open clashes with his opponents.

Arafat will now be waiting to see how the next phase of diplomacy evolves: that is, whether the United States presses on with implementation of the next steps of the Mitchell Plan, including its call for a total freeze on Israeli settlement activity, and what Ariel Sharon's response will be. He also wants to see whether the United States indeed intends to strike at the sponsors of terrorism, and how the Muslim nations will ultimately react.

Arafat will probably have to wait some time before he gets clear answers to those questions. In the meantime, Intifada II is apparently ready to transform itself into a less than complete cease-fire. Just as the first intifada slowly subsided after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the approach of the Gulf War a decade ago, so is the present intifada slowing down as the trumpets of war are heard over Afghanistan.