A Challenge to Abu Ala

A Challenge to Abu Ala

By Andrew Friedman

Canberra Times - September 18, 2003

Initial comments that Tuesday's homicide-bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were "retribution" for Israel's failed assassination attempt on senior Hamas leaders two days earlier were predictable, but the latest crime against Israeli civilians was a warning first and foremost to incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, better known as Abu Ala.

Predictable, too, was Abu Ala's repeated demand for "assurances" from Israel and the United States to ensure the success of his administration and the resurrection of the moribund Roadmap to Middle East Peace. In fact, the success of the latest peace plan- as well as Abu Ala's government-rests squarely on Palestinian shoulders.

To be sure, the early signs are not good. Even before taking office the Prime Minister -designate confirmed he would not disarm Islamic fundamentalists, preferring to continue with former PM Abu Mazen's program of negotiation to "persuade" militants to cease their attacks on Israeli civilians. Conversely, he called on Israel to fulfill its Roadmap responsibilities in order to revive give the plan a chance, and to cease the assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

But the Palestinian position is unacceptable. By calling on Israel to abandon its defensive posture vis-a-vis Islamic terrorists, while at the same time refusing to pursue using domestic Palestinian forces, Qurei's stance boils down to a call on Israel to accept the legitimacy of homicidal suicide attacks on its own civilians.

On the other hand it is reasonable to expect Israel to adhere to its Roadmap obligations, but it must not allow Palestinian demands to overshadow the actual Roadmap requirements. For starters, the plan requires the removal of "settlement outposts erected since March 2001", not all the settlements currently in the West Bank and Gaza. And the plan was never intended to be a series of unilateral Israeli "goodwill gestures". The demand for Israel to dismantle settlements was envisioned in tandem with a crackdown on Palestinian terror; indeed, the demand to dismantle settlements while openly refusing to combat terrorist groups - including those associated with Yasser Arafat - is to demand Israel surrender strategic assets with no reasonable expectation that peace will follow.

Critics will surely argue Israel's demand for a crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad amounts to calls for a Palestnian Civil War. Yet that is precisely what Israel - and the Palestinians themselves - need. Not insignificantly, a precedent exists for just such a demand, and for just such an action, from Israel's own experience. As the state of Israel came into being in May 1948 Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, worried about competing military forces in the nascent state of Israel, took aggressive action against the rival Irgun militia commanded, going so far as to sink an Irgun weapons ship off Tel Aviv in order to assert the authority and supremacy of the Israeli army. Though controversial at the time, Ben Gurion never wavered from the conviction that he had acted correctly.

As for Abu Mazen, the biggest problem for Abu Ala will be Yasser Arafat. To be sure, Hamas enjoys the support of many elements of Palestinian society, but Arafat continues to control the dozen-or-so security forces in the PA - another breach of the Roadmap - and all agree he alone dictates PA security policy. In addition, his recent appointments of Nasser Yusef and Jabril Rajoub to senior security positions underscores his continued control of the situation. The critical battle, then, will not be Abu Ala-Hamas, but rather Abu Ala-Arafat.

To be sure, such a fight will be difficult for Abu Ala to win. Should he decide to crackdown on terrorists and take on Arafat politically he can count on extensive support from Israel and the United States. Such a crackdown would go light-years towards restoring public faith in the peace process and open the door for Israel to aggressively dismantle settlement outposts, as per the Roadmap. And a determined reform policy to reign in Palestinian corruption - another potential Qurei-Arafat battleground, as well as Roadmap requirement - would be positively viewed in the United States, not to mention Palestinian society at large.

Although neither the US nor Israel is in a position to provide military support for Abu Ala should the worst-case Palestinian scenario come to pass, one mustn't discount the important support they can offer in other ways. But, as Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom remarked following the homicide attack that killed 21 Israelis in mid-August, the Palestinians must choose between peace with their extremists and peace with Israel.