December 17, 2001	Monday	Shawwal 1, 1422

BEIRUT: Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council said that Israel greeted the arrival of US envoys General Anthony Zinni and William Burns with a major military escalation against the Palestinians in line with its policy of wilful and deliberate provocation aimed at maintaining a situation of high crisis and ongoing instability.

You cannot look at the escalation of suicide bombing operations without looking at the escalation of military violence by the Israeli occupation. It was designed to produce a new cycle of violence in order to preempt Zinni’s mission - particularly to avoid implementation of the Mitchell Report recommendations with regards to the cessation of settlement activity and to avoid any kind of engagement on long-term and substantive issues such as the end of the occupation. These are very essential issues, and they entail steps that contradict the Israeli government’s policy and are entirely antithetical to it.

So far, Zinni’s negotiations with the PA and President Yasser Arafat have been characterized not just of willingness - by declaration by a very constructive spirit and a seriousness of intent by declarations not just of willingness, but also of ability to engage and intervene.

The US envoys are aware of the need to ensure that Palestinians see results that are rapid and that make a difference and are persuaded that is not an attempt to impose impossible pre-conditions to bring about any type of separation between security issues and political issues. According to Zinni, this is not a short-term of temporary engagement.

The message that US team conveyed to the Palestinians side was that they are resolved to take seriously the leadership task in the region, and play an effective role that will make a difference. They put forwar an assessment of what is needed by both sides in order to qualitatively elevate the discourse to a level of political engagement in order to bring about the end of the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Zinni intended very carefully to Arafat, he was very attentive and very aware of the situation on the ground and he saw what it means. He visited the settlements and understood their very destructive nature. In terms of the message he brought it was a message of commitment the US is ready when it comes to seeing this thing through. Of course, whether they can bring their influence to bear in practice remains to be seen.

The message the Palestinians passed on to the US team in return is a positive one. It is a message of willingness also to see out of necessary steps that are needed. The Palestinians presented a working paper for launching a process leading to a genuine peace that has both active components in terms of dealing with the actual realities on the ground and political components in terms of providing a framework, a focus and concrete steps towards achieving those goals. By all accounts they were very useful meetings.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians retain a very healthy dose of skepticism as to the ability of the US team to broker a cease-fire and a return to the peace table. This skepticism is the result of repeated past experience and of the Palestinians’ full grasp of the nature of this Israeli government and its anti-peace agenda.

The Palestinians have seen Sharon constantly seeking to foil US attempts not just to intervene but also to make a difference. Sharon’s policies are antithetical to the requirements of peace. The Palestinians know his views. He wants to carry out series of interim partial agreements in order as he says, normalize the occupation while keeping Israel in control - in other words to achieve a state of non-belligerency, while wreaking havoc in the region. He wants to be able to deal death and destruction to the Palestinians while placing responsibility on them to react to his excesses.

That mentally is a legacy of the past, it is actually a throwback to the past that is true and considered with Sharon’s history of using strong-arm tactics and military power to defeat the will of the people by resorting to belligerent measures and so forth while creating facts on the ground.

These are all components of the Sharon approach. So the Palestinians do not know if the Americans can stand up to this attitude and whether they have the political will to hold Israel accountable for further deterioration on the ground rather than constantly adopting the Israeli position and putting pressure on the weaker side.

One cannot emphasize too strongly that conditions on the ground in Palestine are extremely critical. They are very dangerous to every aspect of Palestinian life, including infrastructure, both collectively and individually. The realities here are very volatile and there is a total loss of confidence in Sharon and his policies.