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May 2, 2002/Nisan 30, 5763 Vol. 55, No. 36
Peacemaking faces obstacles
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - On the face of it, conditions are ripe for a new chapter in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
The American victory in Iraq has changed the regional balance of power, and the "road map" marks a new, widely accepted international peace plan.
Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian Authority prime minister, says he is com-mitted to stopping violence against Israel and resuming peace talks, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he wants to crown his career with a major peace-making achievement.
But beneath the surface, things aren't so simple, as both Sharon and Abbas face powerful domestic opposition to peacemaking.
Those difficulties were illustrated just hours after the Palestinian Parliament confirmed Abbas' Cabinet, when a suicide bomber struck outside a Tel Aviv pub the night of April 29, killing at least three people and wounding 35. Abbas' own Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the attack, as did Hamas.
Still, because of the changed conditions, it's too early to discount the road map's chances of success.
On April 27, the head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Avi Dichter, outlined to the Cabinet what he saw as Abbas' main difficulties.
First and foremost, Palestinian Authority Pres-ident Yasser Arafat will still be around, breathing down Abbas' neck and trying to trip him up.
Moreover, Abbas' position vis-a-vis Arafat is weak, as many top figures in the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement don't accept the new prime minister's authority.
The Palestinian legislature confirmed Abbas on April 29 by a vote of 51-18 with three abstentions.
Just before the vote, however, Arafat made two major moves to shore up his position that may hamper Abbas' room to maneuver.
First, he set up a National Security Council that will have ultimate control over Palestinian security organ-izations and will report directly to Arafat. This was a clear, 11th-hour attempt to undermine Mohammed Dah-lan, who is the minister responsible for security affairs in Abbas' government.
Second, Arafat forced Abbas to make Saeb Erekat chief negotiator with Israel in his government. Erekat is an unreserved Arafat loyalist.
As for Sharon, he faces growing opposition from right-wingers in his coalition and his own Likud party. They have set up a new lobby group for the West Bank and Gaza settlers, dedicated to undermining the road map and preventing the estab-lishment of a Palestinian state.
Sharon himself seems to be torn: He knows it would be foolhardy to obstruct American-led peace efforts, but he is loathe to give up settlements that he himself was instrumental in setting up over the years.
Sharon believes one of the keys to peacemaking will be Abbas' handling of the fun-damentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad militias. He insists that they be disarmed - by force, if necessary.
That, indeed, is perhaps Abbas' greatest dilemma: whether to confront the radicals head-on or try to reach a hudna, or temporary cease-fire, agreement with them.
Sharon fears the radicals would simply use a hudna to regroup for another round of terrorism against Israel.
Does this mean the road map is destined to fail?
Not necessarily. What the road map has that previous plans lacked is a clear linkage between a cease-fire and the political endgame. The equation is simple: Pale-stinian quiet equals Pal-estinian statehood, gua-ranteed by the international community.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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