As civil war threatens the Palestinians, an equally potent challenge confronts Israel: Can the peace accord survive?
Last Friday’s violence in Gaza between Hamas activists and the Palestinian police is being regarded here as a historic turning point.
It was not clear, however, which way history would turn.
As the death toll mounted among the young radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – at least 14 were killed and at least 2000 were injured in the four-hour splurge of shooting outside a Gaza City mosque – Israelis talked of a looming “Lebanonization” of the Gaza Strip and even of the entire Palestinian community in the West Bank.
No Israeli, regardless of political views, regards that prospect with equanimity.
Civil strife among the Palestinians would increase the risk of more terrorist attacks directed both against Israeli settlers living in the terrorist and against Israelis living in Israel proper.
Virtually no one in Israeli politics, moreover, seriously advocates the idea of sending Israeli troops back into Gaza to “restore order” between the warring Palestinian sides.
In one respect, the Rabin government ought to have derived a certain grim satisfaction from the bloody event in Gaza.
After all, for many weeks now – as the number of anti-Israeli attacks by fundamentalist terrorists has mounted – Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his senior political and military aides have been strenuously urging Palestine Liberation organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to crack down on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
But each time the Palestinian police rounded up fundamentalist activists after an attack on Israelis, Arafat would order their release within a matter of days.
But the suddenness and severity of last Friday’s violent confrontation disturbed even those Israeli officials who have been pressing Arafat to get tough with his fundamentalist opposition.
The fear is that the mass violence on Friday could prove counterproductive. Instead of strengthening Arafat’s position, it could ultimately strengthen the determination of his political foes and their standing among the Palestinian public.
Because of this fear, the Israeli government staked out a passive and cautious role. Rabin, on a visit to the United States, sent back strict instructions to Jerusalem not to get involved in what he called the “internal matters” of the Palestinians.
Some Israeli analysts say that if the Gaza violence continues, it will drastically delay the planned implementation of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. The next phase of the self-rule accord calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and the holding of Palestinian elections.
Any delays in implementing the self-rule accord will only increase the erosion in popular support for Arafat, who already faces grave economic difficulties that many Palestinians perceive as his failure to deliver the fruits of self- rule.
According to European observers, living standards in Gaza, far from benefiting from the peace process with Israel, have actually dropped since the original Declaration of Principles was signed in Washington in September 1993.
Unemployment in Gaza is more than 60 percent. And having received less than $80 million of the hundreds of millions in aid promised, the Palestinian Authority can barely meet its monthly wages, let alone undertake building projects or health, education and welfare initiatives.
The unrest in Gaza is also scaring off private investment, both from the Arab world and from the West, further disheartening those who were once optimistic about the future of Palestinian self-rule.
The bloody riots in the streets of Gaza were a sign of “weakness for Arafat’s rule, and their continuation could weaken it even further,” observed commentator Danny Rubinstein in Ha’aretz.
“Arafat will have to prove he is not an `Israeli agent who lives in Tel Aviv,’ as demonstrators’ slogans said,” he continued. “His freedom of maneuver in negotiations with Israel could be reduced.”
Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Bar-Ilan university, said last Friday’s developments have provoked more questions than answers regarding Arafat’s future dealings with Israel.
“Are we going to see continuing negotiations,” he asked, or “a sudden end and a major crisis between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority?”
While Israeli officials are avoiding any direct involvement in Gaza – a move that would only make Arafat seem like an Israeli stooge – they are attempting to get the much-needed financial aid to the Palestinians.
Rabin took up this issue when he met with President Clinton on Monday in Washington. And Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is scheduled to attend a session of foreign donor countries in Brussels on Monday to make the same case.
Meanwhile, the outlook for immediate reconciliation among the Palestinians appears grim.
As Israeli Arabs tried to mediate an agreement this week, Hamas activists issued a proclamation that Arafat has proven by his actions that he is the head only of the Fatah faction of the PLO and not of the Palestinian people as a whole.
Tens of thousands of Gazans demonstrated early this week in support of Arafat. Many were armed members of the Fatah hawks, the military wing of Arafat’s PLO faction, sending an apparent warning to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
At the same time, Hamas planned a massive rally scheduled to take place in Gaza later this week – a move that is likely to further fuel the flames.
Rubinstein of Ha’aretz is pessimistic. He predicts the “circle of blood” will widen as Hamas activists seek to avenge the death of their comrades and as Arafat and the Palestinian police respond with force.
Whatever the outcome of the current crisis, the stakes are high.
If Arafat does not end this violence once and for all, “and prove who is in charge, it seems to me we should forget about Gaza and the rest of the process for a very long time,” said Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
An article in Yediot Achronot suggested that if Arafat fails to suppress what appears to have been the beginning of an “armed intifada” against his rule, it could “bring the peace process to a complete halt.”
Paradoxically, though, some observers here believe that last week’s outburst of violence could have a positive effect in the long run.
The scenes in Gaza last Friday, flashed live around the world, may stir international statesmen to deliver the long-promised financial aid that was originally conceived as the Palestinian Authority’s lifeblood.
The Palestinian self-rule accord was predicated on a major effort by the world community to help lift the Palestinians – and particularly poverty-stricken Gaza – out of their depressed condition.
Last week’s Gaza crisis may, according to some, serve as the catalyst needed to make that happen.
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.
