The peace process aimed at ending the intifada seems to have foundered in the past week as both Israelis and Palestinians made moves that indicated hardened positions.
These developments have exposed a paradox in Israeli policy in the Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
While authorities say they want to build up local Arab leadership that would replace the Palestine Liberation Organization, they have taken actions that seem almost calculated to have the opposite effect.
A case in point last week was the extension of administrative detention from six to 12 months.
That means that Palestinians put under administrative arrest can be jailed for a year without trial or charges brought against them.
The detainees are in large measure the same persons who might constitute a non-PLO leadership in the territories.
The offices of the East Jerusalem Arabic daily Al-Fajr were searched Wednesday and the employees interrogated by security forces.
This was seen as a deliberate attempt to harass an institution identified as a PLO supporter.
When a gasoline bomb thrown by unidentified assailants severely burned two Israeli tax collectors driving to work in Ramallah on Monday, the commanding general in the territory, Yitzhak Mordechai, imposed harsh measures against the local population.
Mordechai was sending a clear message to the local population: Regardless of political developments, they would suffer collective punishment.
If past experience is any indication, the Palestinian response will be an escalation of violence.
Indeed, the local leadership of the uprising circulated Leaflet 44 on Tuesday forbidding Palestinians from holding talks with Israelis who do not “support the Palestinian demand for self-determination” — meaning statehood.
That directive, if obeyed, would put an end to the recent semi-secret, informal talks between influential Palestinians and ranking Israelis, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
In the past, the intifada leadership subjected such talks to approval by the “authorized bodies,” meaning the PLO.
The latest directive could mean that the radical elements in the local Palestinian leadership have won.
In that case, the dialogue with Israelis will end and with them the chances of Israel creating an alternative to the PLO.
The next confrontation with the Palestinians is expected Friday. It is the deadline for Arab laborers in the Gaza Strip to get the new magnetized identification cards that will allow them to travel to their jobs in Israel.
The Israeli authorities say every worker must present his card or he will be turned back.
The intifada leadership has ordered the entire Gaza population to stay home. They are not to report to work anywhere for a full week to protest the new restrictions.
These developments on the front lines of the intifada must be viewed against a broader background.
PLO leader Yasir Arafat’s mainstream fighting force Al Fatah ended its fifth convention in Tunis last week with a resolve to escalate the armed struggle against Israel and the rejection of Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
On the Israeli side, Shamir’s Likud party imposed restrictions on the proposed elections that would have severely limited the chances of elections ever taking place.
The Cabinet seems to have gotten around those constraints, however, and the election option still appears viable.
It remains to be seen whether Arafat can circumvent the directives of his hard-liners.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
