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The embers smoulder
by Khalid
Amayreh
The latest crisis between PA
Chairman Yasser Arafat and his Premier Mahmoud Abbas had just been
resolved when Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman arrived in
Ramallah on Tuesday. Which is not to say that Suleiman's mission is now
redundant. On the contrary Suleiman found many smouldering embers which,
left unattended, could easily burst into flames capable of consuming the
fragile truce between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel.
Before Suleiman's arrival
Hamas had warned that it would resume the armed struggle if Israel
continued its attempts to subjugate the Palestinian people rather than
negotiating with them in good faith.
While it is not certain if the
warning is serious it is amply clear that Hamas -- and especially its more
radical leaders -- feel increasingly deceived, not to say threatened, by
Israel's stalling and equivocation on such key issues as the release of
Palestinian POWs and withdrawal from Palestinian population centres.
"We will not allow ourselves
to be deceived again. We learned many lessons from the bitter experience
of the Oslo years. We shall not fall in the same trap twice," said Hamas
leader Abdul-Aziz Al- Rantisi.
Rantisi, who on 10 June
narrowly escaped an Israeli assassination attempt, was referring to
Israel's refusal to address, much less meet, Palestinian grievances. These
include Israel's refusal to release Palestinian prisoners, the daily
arrest by Israeli forces of Palestinian activists, draconian restrictions
on Palestinian movement and Tel Aviv's insistence on completing the
separation wall being built inside the West Bank which is effectively
reducing many Palestinian population centres to detention camps and
inaccessible ghettos.
Israel has said repeatedly
said it will not free the vast bulk of Palestinian prisoners because they
have "Jewish blood on their hands", claiming many of them are affiliated
with organisations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Needless to say, Israel's
provocative stance has infuriated the Palestinian public forcing Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and even Fatah to warn that "our patience has limits".
Realising the sensitive nature
of the prisoners' plight and its potential ramifications on the peace
process -- and on the survival of the Abbas' government -- the PA has
appealed to Washington to pressure Israel into reconsidering its position.
Abbas reportedly conveyed the
same message to Omar Suleiman, warning that Israel's failure to release
Palestinian prisoners could spell the end of the truce and, consequently,
of the peace process.
"It is the Israelis, not us,
who are violating the truce. This situation cannot continue. We are
carrying out our part of the deal, they must carry out theirs," said Abbas
prior to his meeting with Suleiman.
The bad news is that Israel is
showing no signs of changing its mind, not on the prisoners, not on the
wall, and not on its overall treatment of the Palestinians.
This week the Israeli army
once more sealed off Ramallah, ostensibly to demonstrate to the "free"
Palestinians that their situation is not that much better than that faced
by those incarcerated in Israeli jails.
The pretext for the curfew was
the disappearance of an Israeli taxi driver several days ago. Israel
accused "Palestinian elements" of kidnapping the 52-year-old with the
intention of using him as a bargaining chip over the release of
Palestinian POWs.
The main Palestinian
resistance groups have all denied involvement in the affair while
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have appealed for the immediate
release of the Israeli man. In a further display of good will Abbas
telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, offering to help the
Israeli army locate the missing driver.
The curfew was also aimed at
locating a "dangerous Irish terrorist" and "bomb- maker" the Israel media
claims is hiding somewhere in the West Bank.
The "dangerous terrorist and
bomb- maker" turned out to be a reporter and peace activist and the
fabricated story, several observers have suggested, was a PR spin timed to
coincide with Sharon's visit to London.
Meanwhile, an Israeli court in
Tel Aviv condemned moderate Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti to another six
months of solitary confinement.
Barghouti, scheduled to
testify on Monday, 14 July, refused to do so, arguing that his trial had
been staged from A-to-Z and that the outcome was predetermined. There was
no point in his testifying, he argued, because there was no possibility he
would receive a fair trial.
The imprisoned Palestinian
leader, who supports a peace settlement based on a two-state solution and
the land-for-peace formula, supported his argument by quoting Israel's
fundamentalist Attorney- General Elyakim Rubenstein, who had referred to
Barghouti two weeks earlier as an "architect of mass-murdering terrorism"
and "a terrorist".
Barghouti reiterated his
longheld position that Israeli courts have no jurisdiction over the
Palestinian people: "You are an occupying power and we are resisting your
illegal occupation. This doesn't make us criminals," he reportedly told
the Israeli judge.
Barghouti, who played a key
role in getting the Palestinian resistance groups to agree to the truce
with Israel, has also protested his "squalid" detention conditions.
He has complained that he is
detained in a tiny, solitary cell, infested with cockroaches, has been
denied medication and prevented from seeing his wife and children.
To which an Israeli prison
warden retorted: "This is nothing. You are receiving royal treatment."
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Al-Ahram Weekly & Khalid Amayreh
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