Arafat in Amman: No Need to Stop the Fighting

JERUSALEM [MENL–10/3/00] — Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat arrived in Amman in a better mood than usual.

Arafat kissed both cheeks of Jordan’s King Abdullah and then pulled the monarch toward him and kissed his forehead. Later, the two men sat down and Arafat reviewed a list of demands he wanted Abdullah to relay to Israel and the United States.

In less than a week, Arafat has risen from being under the thumb of Israel and the United States to an Arab hero — leading the fight for Palestinian rights in a battle that rages in Israel, the Palestinian territories and even in Jordan. As Arafat met the young Jordanian king on Monday, tens of thousands of Palestinians, chanting “Death to the Jews,” demonstrated in refugee camps in and around Amman. Demonstrations were also reported in Damascus and Sanaa.

Palestinian sources said Arafat is pleased with the current fighting. The violence, called the worst in Israel since the 1948 war of independence, has been so intense in the Jewish state that the north has been cut off from the rest of the country and both domestic and international flights have been disrupted.

Arafat, the sources said, feels he has regained the ground he lost to Israel during the peace offensive by Prime Minister Ehud Barak since July’s Camp David summit. They point to Western attention on the killing of Palestinian youngsters by Israeli troops rather than the attacks by Palestinian gunmen on Israeli positions.

The Israeli sources discount Palestinian arguments that last week’s visit by Likud chairman Ariel Sharon to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount sparked the violence. They said PA and Fatah forces were stockpiling ammunition and weapons 10 days before the violence erupted on Friday.

Israeli Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said he received a pledge by PA security chief Col. Jibril Rajoub that violence would not erupt unless Sharon actually entered the mosques on the Temple Mount. Sharon did not enter any mosque.

Regardless, the question is what does Arafat do for a closing act? It’s an argument that is raging within Israeli government circles and pits aides of Barak against heads of the security services.

Some Barak aides insist that Arafat wants to end the fighting and return to the negotiating table in a stronger position. The problem is he simply can’t control the violence. They said Arafat pledges nightly to U.S. officials that he will end the fighting. But every morning, the clashes resume.

The latest pledge was made on Tuesday when Israeli and PA officials said Arafat agreed to an immediate ceasefire in the territories. Israeli security sources don’t expect this pledge to be implemented.

“What Chairman Arafat has managed to do is badly hurt the peace process and the willingness of Israelis to make concessions for peace,” Interior Minister Haim Ramon said.

Israeli security sources disagree. They said Arafat wants Israeli blood to relay a warning of what will take place if the Palestinians don’t get what they want in any settlement. He has been encouraged by the growing power of his Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, bolstered by soaring oil prices.

Arafat, the sources said, wants to provoke Barak into a massive retaliatory response that will remind the West of Kosovo in 1999. This way, the sources said, the West will intervene quickly and massively.

PA officials do not deny this. They said they and their Arab and Islamic allies will demand international intervention when the United Nations Security Council convenes later on Tuesday in New York.

“What is happening is not merely clashes,” said PLO Executive Committee secretary Mahmoud Abbas, regarded as Arafat’s leading aide. “But it is an Israeli military attack on the entire Palestinian people.”

With that, Arafat hopes that the West will provide the Palestinians with a blanket approval for independence from Israel. Already, Arafat aides have demanded significant revisions of agreements signed between Israel and the PA, including the deployment of United Nations forces on the Temple Mount, an end to Israeli security checks at Gaza border posts and the removal of Israeli heavy military equipment.

Arafat’s goal, the sources said, is Western recognition of a state without paying a political price. His target date, the sources said, is Nov. 15, the anniversary of the 1988 declaration of statehood.

“This government, this state, this police have no right to rule the areas,” PLO Executive Committee Faisal Husseini said. “The only result is that Israel must withdraw from this area. They don’t have the right to continue after what they did here.”

Israeli officials have been disturbed by the Clinton administration. They said the United States has been remarkably quiet over the PA offensive against Israeli forces and that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has refused to call on Arafat to stop the violence.

Ms. Albright has scheduled a meeting with both Arafat and Barak in Paris on Wednesday. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak issued an invitation to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for a Thursday summit in the Sinai resort of Sharm E-Sheik.

For his part, President Bill Clinton has not publicly pressured Arafat. Instead, he expressed dismay over the killing of Palestinians, particularly a 12-year-old and his father caught in cross-fire in Gaza.

“I was literally watching it as if it were someone I knew,” Clinton said. “And it was a heartbreaking thing to see a child like that caught in the crossfire.”

Israeli security sources said Arafat still wants an agreement. But he wants this to be limited to what they term “a ceasefire plus,” in other words, an interim agreement that guarantees a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem but doesn’t terminate Palestinian demands.

But both Israeli and PA officials agree that the violence will not subside immediately. They said Arafat has succeeded in inflaming the Middle East in a way that was never achieved by his Islamic opposition.

The officials said Israel will first have to convince its Arab citizens to end their violent protests. Then, Arafat will have to wait for demonstrations around the Middle East to die down.

PA officials stressed that they have no plans to discourage the Arab anger against Israel. “These activities will continue,” PA Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo said.

The writer is the bureau chief of MENL, the Middle East News Line