As Israel is busy tackling the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is seeking the proper timing to renew talks with Hamas.
Arafat knows that he has to defuse Hamas’ terror operations against Israel if his own negotiations with the Jewish state, halted after a series of Hamas terror bombings in late February and early March, are to have any future.
But as Arafat looks for the opportunity for a meeting between his representatives and Hamas officials, his security services were rounding up hundreds of Hamas activists in the wake of the terror bombings.
Mohammad Dahlan, head of the Palestinian security service in the Gaza Strip, told the French newspaper Le Monde last week that the peace process with Israel would be able to proceed only after Hamas’ military infrastructure is broken.
Even as the arrests continued, Arafat last week authorized a delegation of Palestinian leaders to travel to the Jordanian capital of Amman for talks with Hamas leaders.
It was to have been the first dialogue with Hamas after the Palestinian Authority began its detentions of Hamas activists — scores of whom have been released after Palestinian officials said the detainees had nothing to do with the terror attacks.
Israel, for its part, agreed to the meeting, not wanting to be blamed for jeopardizing the Palestinian Authority’s dialogue with Hamas.
But at the last minute, Arafat decided to put the renewed initiative on hold.
On the advice of his associates, he decided that the crackdown on Hamas should be continued before renewing the dialogue.
Prior to the wave of terror bombings, the Palestinian Authority had conducted a series of informal talks with the political leaders of Hamas.
After what was perhaps the two sides’ most controversial meeting, Salim Zanoun, chairman of the Palestine National Council, and Khaled Mash’al, a Hamas official, signed a joined communique in December in Cairo in which Hamas committed itself not to boycott the first Palestinian elections, which were held in January, and not to “embarrass the authority.”
The communique, which was published Dec. 22 in the eastern Jerusalem daily Al- Quds, read, in part, “In light of the talks between the two parties, regarding the elections to the legislative council and the commitments of the national Palestinian Authority, the Hamas movement sticks to its positions on these two issues, without forcing anyone to boycott the elections, and without aspiring to embarrass the authority.”
Just what was meant by “embarrass” has been subject to varying interpretations, one of which could mean that the Palestinian Authority had given its tacit approval to Hamas terror strikes, so long as they were not launched from areas under Palestinian control.
Palestinian Authority official Saeb Erekat said in an interview that the communique reflected an agreement that Hamas would cease all its terror operations.
“We understood the commitment as totally binding, banning all terrorist attacks,” including those launched from areas not under Palestinian control, Erekat said.
The agreement was rendered void, Erekat added, after the January killing of Yehiya Ayash, the Hamas fugitive known as “The Engineer” because of his expertise with explosives.
Believed to be the mastermind behind a series of suicide bombings in Israel, Ayash was killed in the Gaza Strip by a booby-trapped cellular phone in an operation widely attributed to Israel.
In the wake of the recent suicide bombings, Hamas officials said the attacks came in retaliation for Ayash’s death.
Despite Erekat’s statements, there is another possible reading of the Cairo communique.
A day after the communique was issued, the two men who signed it, Zanoun and Mash’al, appeared at a news conference, where they were asked whether the agreement called for a end to Hamas’ armed struggle against Israel.
Zanoun evaded the question, but Mash’al said, “The resistance is aimed against the occupation, as long as it exists, but we do not intend to harm the authority or to embarrass it.
“On the contrary, we believe the resistance strengthens the Palestinian side in the negotiations with Israel.”
Mash’al would not elaborate, but it appeared clear from his remarks that Hamas intended to continue its attacks against israel.
Nor did Zanoun, the representative for the Palestinian Authority, say anything to counter that interpretation.
His silence may well say volumes about a long-standing charge made by opponents of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — that Arafat and Hamas have long been indulging in behind-the-scenes cooperation.
The exact meaning of the communique recently caused a political debate in Israel.
Likud Knesset member Ze’ev “Benny” Begin, who has a hardline approach toward the negotiations with the Palestinians, blamed the government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres for concealing the communique’s contents in order to cover up the alleged cooperation between Arafat and Hamas.
The Israel Defense Force chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak, subsequently countered that there was no “secret agreement” between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in effect echoing Erekat’s statement that the Palestinian leadership had rejected all Hamas terror activities, from wherever they were launched.
However one interprets the communique, the recent series of Hamas suicide attacks indeed created some “embarrassment” for Arafat.
Faced with Israel’s closure of the West Bank and Gaza, which is still in effect more than seven weeks after the terror attacks, and faced with the virtual breakdown of the peace process, Arafat had little choice but to order the widespread crackdown on Hamas supporters.
But Palestinian security officials have so far failed to achieve their primary goal: the arrest of Mohammad Deif, the 31-year-old commander of the Hamas military wing who is believed to be behind the recent suicide attacks.
Deif tops a list of 13 people whom Israel has ordered the Palestinian Authority to detain.
Seven on the list have already been arrested by the Palestinians, but Deif and five others are still at large.
Peres has demanded that Deif be arrested as a precondition for easing the closure on the territories, for renewing the peace process and for the IDF redeployment in the West Bank town of Hebron that was scheduled to have taken place last month.
Arafat himself may be awaiting Deif’s arrest before resuming the negotiations, from a position of strength, with Hamas.
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