October 22, 2001	Monday	Shaba'an 4, 1422

BETHLEHEM: The car ahead screeched to a halt, its driver frantically trying to find reverse. His Palestinian passenger glanced nervously through the rear window, a ghostly face floating in the dark reflections in the glass, as the sound of gunfire clattered across hills and valleys.

Passing him too fast we were confronted by the reason for the driver’s panic: the olive bulk of an Israeli armoured car bristling with weapons - a main battle tank close on its tail - grinding and fighting their way down the suburban streets, as residents and Palestinian gunmen scattered.

Too late to stop, we sped straight past, waving reassurances in the direction of the tank driver’s slit, as a heavy burst exploded somewhere behind.

Last week, at the behest of President Bush, British prime minister Tony Blair took the proffered ball of the Middle East peace process. On Monday he shared a platform in Downing Street with Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat to announce his vision for a viable independent Palestinian state to which, he said, Britain was committed. By Friday, in the streets and squares of Bethlehem, it was killing time, as Israeli tanks invaded Palestinian territory and gunmen fought one-sided running battles with the Israeli armour.

By Saturday morning the tanks were still continuing to move in as Israel continued its incursions, moving into the West Bank towns of Kalkilya and Tulkarem in the early hours. And the death toll continues to mount. On Friday here and elsewhere across the Palestinian areas, hospital officials reported eight Palestinians dead.

In Kalkilya and Tulkarem by Saturday morning three more were dead, including two Palestinian policemen killed when an Israeli helicopter fired missiles at their position. The prospect of Israel agreeing to a Palestinian state seemed more illusory than ever. Tony Blair’s full-scale initiation into the Middle East peace process has been as punishing as it has been hubristic.

If there is a ‘peace process’ left after a year of the Al Aqsa intifada for Blair and Bush to work with, then it is a strange and brutal one, based more on words and wishful-thinking than the reality on the ground. Instead it is the peace of the gunmen, tank-gunners, suicide bombers and assassins. It is the pessimistic peace of the ambulance driver and gravedigger. It is peace only in that it is still not yet quite war. Last week the margin between that most imperfect and lethal peace, and war, was narrowing by the day and by the hour.

It has not been spoken out loud but the deadline for the handing over of the gunmen behind the most high-profile assassination of an Israeli political figure in its half a century of history - the murder of the extreme right-wing Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi - will run out on Wednesday.

The deadline may be unspoken, but Israeli Cabinet members say that Yasser Arafat ‘knows’. Arafat, Cabinet ministers have said that if the killers of Ze’evi are not surrendered then Israel will treat him in the same way as the Americans have treated the Taliban for its protection of Osama bin Laden. They will treat him as a sponsor of terrorism, they say, and declare effective war aimed at dismantling the security structures of the Palestinian authority. And to a White House and Downing Street weary with the permanence of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, last week’s fighting matters. For all their insistence otherwise, it is neither humanitarian nor idealistic.

It matters to them because the Palestinian issue - the deep sore of the denial by Israel of the ambitions for a Palestinian state - is at the root of the present Islamic anger with the West. It matters because Osama bin Laden has allied himself to the Palestinian cause.

It matters because on Israel’s response to the murder of Ze’evi - and America’s ability to influence that decision - may hang the future of the coalition against Osama and Al Qaeda itself. Already in a sign of the growing tensions between America and Israel the US State Department responded by taking a slap at Israel, telling its Middle East ally to stop military incursions into Palestinian-held areas.

The State Department also has publicly criticized Israel for targeting terrorism suspects for assassination, saying such actions were provocative and detrimental to prospects for a settlement with the Palestinians.

But in the aftermath of last week’s killings, there was little promise of progress towards a cessation of this most dangerous violence. Instead the obituary is being written for the peace process.

It had followed the targeted killings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of gunmen with Hamas, marking a return by Prime Minister Sharon to a policy of assassination of Israel’s enemies, even as Yasser Arafat was in Europe to talk peace .

And the room for manoeuvre for Israel’s the combative Sharon has run out. His policy of stalling the peace process - while restraining his hand in more aggressive retaliations, in particular to a spate of suicide bombings - has angered right-wingers in both the Israeli Cabinet and in his own Likud Party. Likud activists have told him pointedly to start behaving like a right-wing prime minister or they will find another leader. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.