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Countdown to a truce?
by Khalid
Amayreh
Egyptian mediators held
"friendly and constructive" talks with Palestinian resistance
leaders in Gaza this week in the hope of working out a cease-fire
with the Israeli occupation army.
Deputy-chief of the Egyptian
intelligence, Colonel Mustafa El- Beheiri, met with the leaders of all
Palestinian factions on Monday pressing them to accept a cease-fire with
Israel and to "appreciate the immense pressures being exerted on the
Palestinian Authority".
The leaders of Hamas, Fatah,
Islamic Jihad, PFLP and other factions agreed to study El- Beheiri's
proposals and report back to him within a week. The Egyptian delegation
seems to have made considerable progress towards convincing Hamas and
other factions to accept a hudna, or truce, with Israel.
According to Palestinian
sources, the main points of contention centred on whether the cease-fire
would cover only Israel proper, as demanded by Hamas, or include the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, as Israel insists. Hamas and other Palestinian groups
have argued that the resistance could not and should not be stopped as
long Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers continued to rampage
throughout Palestinian population centres.
"The resistance is a reaction
to the occupation. The occupation is not a reaction to the resistance, the
resistance will therefore continue as long as the occupation does," said
Hamas leader Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi who narrowly escaped an Israeli
assassination attempt last week.
Although Hamas has tacitly
indicated that it would accept an "honourable cease-fire that serves the
interests of our people", the movement would not accept a cease-fire at
any price and without reciprocal Israeli actions. Hamas, it seems, is
trying to reach the best possible cease-fire deal with Israel rather than
obstruct the roadmap as vociferously, purported by the United States.
"Israel and her guardian-ally,
the US, are trying to impose on us a cease-fire that is worse than a
surrender. We won't accept that," said Hamas leader, Ismael Haniya,
following the meeting with El- Beheiri. "They want us to stop the
resistance, but make no clear commitment to stopping Jewish terror and
Nazi-like brutality against our people," he added.
Hamas is further demanding the
release of thousands of Palestinian detainees incarcerated in Israel
detention camps, most of them without charge or trial.
The same stance was more or
less voiced by the leaders of the Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the PFLP who
insisted that any cease-fire agreement would have to meet key Palestinian
demands. These include ending the Israeli occupation of the PA-run
autonomous enclaves, putting an end to recurrent Israeli incursions into
Palestinian population centres and stopping Israel's assassination policy
targeting resistance activists as well as political leaders.
Fatah is also insisting that
any cease-fire agreement must put an end to the Israeli siege on PA
Chairman Yasser Arafat, now confined for the second consecutive year to
his badly- battered Ramallah headquarters.
Nonetheless, the vagueness and
uncertainty surrounding the "reciprocity element" in the proposed
cease-fire agreement is forcing Hamas to be overly cautious and even
apprehensive as to the real Israeli and American motives. This anxiety is
not without a reason. Sharon told the Israeli Knesset on Sunday that
Israel would continue to target Palestinian resistance fighters,
irrespective of any prospective cease-fire.
If Sharon meant what he said,
and there is no evidence suggesting otherwise, the contemplated cease-fire
would not see the light even for one day, no matter how much good-will
Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups are willing to display.
Likewise, the Bush administration actually publicly voiced a modicum of
consternation over Egyptian efforts to get Hamas and other Palestinian
resistance groups to agree to a cease-fire.
White House Spokesman Ari
Fliecher said the US would want to see Hamas "dismantled" rather than
included in the peace process. His statements were followed by a plethora
of remarks by President Bush, calling on "the free world" to fight Hamas
and sever financial aide to it.
US Senator Richard Lugar went
so far as to suggest that US troops should be dispatched to fight Hamas.
Hamas scoffed at Lugar's suggestion, calling it both "ignorant and
stupid".
"Hamas is a national
liberation movement fighting a sinister foreign occupation. It seems that
Lugar's tongue functions much more swiftly than his brain does," said
Hasan Silwadi, a Hamas representative in the Ramallah region. "Doesn't he
know that Israel, with all its military might and Nazi-like brutality, has
been unable to defeat Hamas. Our resistance will end only when the
occupation ends."
The present bargaining in Gaza
came in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest and most violent weeks in
the occupied territories, which began with the failed Israeli attempt on
10 June to assassinate Hamas leader Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi. Hamas reacted
the following day when a young Palestinian boy from Hebron blew himself up
aboard an Israeli bus in West Jerusalem, killing himself and 17 Israelis.
For the next 72 hours, Israel reacted by rocketing "targets" in Gaza's
crowded streets, killing three resistance activists and as many as 27
civilians, including 10 children and several women.
Israeli officials took matters
a step further by declaring that Hamas political leaders, including Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin, would be assassinated. Hamas reacted by warning that its
fighters and bombers would assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
if its leaders were targeted by Israel. The killings and counter-killings
and warnings and counter-warnings seemed to have fostered a semblance of a
balance of terror between the two sides, which probably explains the
relative calm in the past few days.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who has described the spate of Israeli
assassinations in Gaza as "state terror", was due to conduct a fresh round
of talks with resistance leaders in Gaza. Abbas reportedly plans to
discuss the so-called Gaza-Bethlehem First plan whereby the Israeli
military would withdraw from northern Gaza and the West Bank town of
Bethlehem in return for halting resistance attacks.
But resistance leaders are
likely to seek guarantees from Abbas that the proposed plan would lead to
a complete Israeli withdrawal from all the autonomous enclaves -- namely
65 per cent of the Gaza Strip and nearly 42 per cent of the West Bank --
as well as ending Israeli incursions and freeing Palestinian political
prisoners. Since Abbas would not be able to deliver any guarantees as
such, he would have to turn to the US for an answer.
So, the question remains, will
the US exert pressure on Sharon to implement the roadmap?
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Al-Ahram Weekly & Khalid Amayreh
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