Hamas is willing, but what will the Quartet say? By Danny Rubinstein All strains of the Palestinian leadership are also eagerly awaiting the results of the referendum among Likud party members. Clearly the plan for a withdrawal from Gaza is of interest to the Palestinian Authority, but there have already been previous Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and the West Bank. From 1994-98 the IDF withdrew from most of the Gaza Strip and from Arab population centers in the West Bank and transferred them to the PA’s control. The important thing this time is not the planned withdrawal, but the way it is to be carried out – unilaterally, along with the first dismantling of its kind since the state’s establishment of Jewish communities inside the borders of Israel. Clearly, if Ariel Sharon is defeated in the Likud referendum, the whole question of a withdrawal will not be relevant and the situation in the Gaza Strip will remain as is. But it can still be assumed that sooner or later the Israeli separation from Gaza will indeed take place, and then there will be no escaping a reorganization of the Palestinian rule there. In recent weeks, the Palestinian public has been coming to the realization that Ariel Sharon’s unilateral separation plan is essentially a plan that imposes a boycott on the PA. From the start, it was clear that Sharon does not see a withdrawal from Gaza as a gesture to the Palestinians. The government of Israel will withdraw from Gaza for the sake of its security and for the future of Israel, certainly not for the Palestinians. Therefore, Israel is also not asking the PA for anything in return for the withdrawal. The prime minister refuses to discuss the matter with its representatives and even the coordination between the various apparatuses, to arrange an orderly transfer of settlements and military installations, is in doubt.
The more praise and support the disengagement plan received from the United States and Europe, the more the Palestinian public formulated an image of a new political reality. It is a reality that forces the Palestinian factions to demonstrate national unity – unity under Arafat’s leadership. Last week, for example, the leaders of several Palestinian parties placed calls from Damascus to Yasser Arafat in Ramallah and expressed their hope that soon they would able to resume their activities under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Among them were the heads of Fatah Defectors (the Abu Moussa fthat led a Syrian-sponsored rebellion against Arafat after the Lebanon War), Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front-General Command and members of the organization that the Syrians set up to provoke Fatah. True they are representatives of small organizations whose importance is minor today, and it is very possible that they called after hearing that Arafat had a long phone conversation with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara, following Ariel Sharon’s threat to eliminate Yasser Arafat. But that does not detract from the situation in which Arafat is now being transformed into the favorite of the leadership of the Palestinian opposition. For years, these opposition people used a variety of denigrating terms to refer to Arafat because of what they perceived as his betrayal of them. After the Oslo Agreement, Ahmed Jibril even said that Arafat deserved the death sentence. Now they are behaving differently, and it is not only because of the renewed Israeli threats on Arafat’s life. Such threats have been around in abundance over the last three years and have also been accompanied by the bombing and destruction of the Muqata compound in Ramallah. And there is now the political excommunication of Arafat’s regime that is reflected in the widespread international support for Ariel Sharon’s unilateral moves. In other words, for the first time since the start of the peace process, there is fairly broad international recognition that Arafat is not part of the process. That he is not a partner in it. And when there is no Palestinian partner in the peace process, a new political reality emerges that restores unity to the Palestinian leadership and the public at large in the West Bank, Gaza and abroad. The Palestinian involvement in the peace process began at a 1988 meeting of the PLO’s national council in Algeria, which adopted UN Security Council Resolution 242 and decided in effect to recognize the State of Israel. The decision created a deep rift among the Palestinian leadership and public. The rift deepened when Arafat and his supporters agreed to Palestinian participation in the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and peaked with the Oslo Accords. Arafat was then faced with an opposition that included more than 10 organizations, with the largest, most important and deciding one being Hamas. Throughout the last few years, Hamas spokesmen have argued that the PA under Arafat’s rule is not a legitimate government because Arafat set it up in an agreement with the Zionist enemy and under the auspices of the American administration, which is hostile to Arabs and to Islam. Now the internal situation among the Palestinians is moving from one of disputes and factions to one of unity. Against this backdrop, it is possible to find great symbolism in the statement of Dr. Maher al-Huli, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, who said last week: „We see the Israeli threats on Yasser Arafat’s life as direct threats against the Hamas movement.” Al-Huli was speaking at a large Hamas event at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza and his remarks followed a series of expressions of support for Arafat from Palestinian opposition spokesmen. As far as Arafat is concerned, all the expressions of support and the unity in the ranks around him are possibly nothing more than a bear hug from his rivals. His fear that this will reduce him to the status of a terrorist ostracized by the world, which is what he was years ago, overrides his desire for Palestinian unity. In recent days, he has sent his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) to a series of meetings with Arab heads of state in an attempt to revive the political process with the PA’s involvement. Qureia was in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman. The Egyptians are willing to assist the Palestinians in planning the reorganization of his regime in Gaza following the Israeli withdrawal; but they are making this contingent on the approval of the Quartet. Meetings with representatives of the Quartet (Europe, the United Nations, the United States and Russia) are set to take place this week and next week in London and New York, and the Palestinians hope they will be able to revalidate the road map plan. President Mubarak told Qureia he would send General Omar Suleiman to Ramallah after Egypt reviews the results of the Quartet gatherings. Arafat and Suleiman now face an almost impossible mission: in order to reorganize control of Gaza, a partnership between the PA and Hamas is required, but the Quartet will vehemently oppose a Palestinian regime that includes Hamas, especially after the warning the Americans issued to Arafat several days ago not to cooperate with a terrorist organization of Islamic extremists. Arafat is now being subjected to internal pressure from the Palestinian public, which wants national unity and a partnership with Hamas and the other opposition organizations. This pressure was created by the new political reality. But this kind of unity will increasingly push him and the PA into isolation and ostracism. He will try, as is his way, to maneuver and survive. Until now, he has been able to do so. That does not necessarily mean he will succeed in doing so this time around.
