No peace through the barrel of a gun

by Musa Keilani

It does not make sense that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should order a cut-off in all contacts with the newly elected Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, following a bombing and shooting attack on Thursday that killed six Israelis and three Palestinians.

Sharon is demanding that Abbas "rein in" militant groups before launching contacts aimed at renewing peace negotiations. The order to suspend contacts came a few hours ahead of Abbas' swearing in as Palestinian president.

Now, the key question is: How does Sharon expect Abbas to meet his demand? Sharon should be the first to know that Abbas and his Palestinian National Authority (PNA) do not have the infrastructure to do any serious policing around in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Whatever was built in terms of a Palestinian police force was totally wrecked by the Israeli army in 2003, at Sharon's orders, and most of the over 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli detention belong to the police force.

Is there a police station worth the name in the West Bank or Gaza? Does any of the policemen remaining outside Israeli detention have any weapon to enforce law and order? According to Sharon, Abbas knows who carried out Thursday's attack and so he should have stopped it. Obviously, the scenario that would suit Sharon is that of Abbas gathering Palestinian resistance fighters who are loyal to him and ordering them to launch an all-out fight against their comrades in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. What would that mean? A Palestinian civil war. Probably that is what Sharon wants.

When the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat worked out the Oslo agreements in 1991, critics said that Arafat was being given the role of a Palestinian policeman for the Israelis and as long as he served that out, he would remain in Israel's grace, plus, of course, in that of the US.

We know what happened when it became clear that Arafat would not serve that role. He was not only ostracised and termed irrelevant to peace-making, but also placed in virtual detention until his death.

Obviously, Sharon sees the attack on Thursday as having given him an opportunity to "test" Abbas and figure out whether he would serve Israel's purpose. As far as Sharon is concerned, Abbas could also be termed irrelevant if he does not "crack down" on armed resistance as represented by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which is an offshoot of Abbas' Fateh group.

Abbas rightfully pointed out, as Arab Israeli parliament member Talab Sannee said on Friday, that it is not fair that Israel should apply pressure on him even before he was sworn in as Palestinian president. But then, that is the way the Israeli script was written and is being played out.

When Arafat died in November and Abbas was named his successor as chairman of the PLO, there was euphoria that the locked door to peace could be reopened. Israel and the US sought to portray an image that Sharon and US President George W. Bush were trying hard to make Israeli-Palestinian peace all along and Arafat was the stumbling block.

Thursday's attack was not unexpected; the timing and site might not have been known, but it remains a perennial feature of life in Palestine today that armed resistance would continue and Israeli actions would only fuel frustration and push more and more Palestinians into taking up arms against the occupation forces.

Sharon has to accept it if he genuinely desires to pursue avenues for peace with the Palestinians. He has to recognise that Abbas and the PNA are not in a position to meet his demands and to adopt a scorched-earth policy against armed resistance.

Peace talks have to proceed on a parallel track despite armed attacks and Sharon has to work hard to send clear signals to the Palestinians that he is genuinely interested in finding a solution to the conflict. If he insists that peace talks could resume only after Abbas "reins in" armed resistance, there would never be any negotiation worth the name.

If Sharon is genuinely interested in ensuring "security" for his people, he has to make a sincere effort. The first step he should take it is to abandon his conviction that peace in Palestine would come through the barrel of an Israeli gun.

This article was published in the Sunday, January 16, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.