RAMALLAH: The collapse of a truce following a surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence has weakened reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, analysts say, and cast a shadow over the US-backed “roadmap” peace plan.
By failing to deliver any political gains during nearly two months of calm, the United States and Israel have effectively let Abbas down and helped Palestinian President Yasser Arafat gain the upper hand in his power struggle with his prime minister, they say.
“Abbas is in a very difficult situation now. His government has failed to achieve its programme based on reform and ending violence, and its effectiveness has collapsed,” Palestinian political analyst Ali al-Jirbawi said.
“It (Abbas’s government) could live for a long time, but it will be ineffective,” he said.
Armed with limited resources and eager to avoid internal Palestinian bloodshed, Abbas opted for diplomacy to put the brakes on nearly three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, a key condition for implementing the peace plan which was designed to lead to a Palestinian state by 2005.
But the hard-won ceasefire he brokered with militant Palestinian groups spearheading the revolt appeared doomed from the start, thus giving Arafat the upper hand.
“With no US restraint on Israeli actions, (Abbas’s) post must now be in question,” said Neil Partrick, Middle East analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.
“Abbas is caught between two fires. While Hamas is going too far and imposing its own agenda on the Palestinian people, he can’t take dramatic steps against Hamas in a vacuum of political moves — (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon has given him nothing,” a senior Palestinian official said.
Faced with a tightening of Israel’s military grip after the Jerusalem bus bombing last Tuesday, thousands took the streets of Gaza on Thursday chanting “No to Abbas and his roadmap”.
ARAFAT HOPES TO SHOW HE CAN STAND AND DELIVER: Palestinian officials said Arafat has retained control of two of the Palestinian Authority’s largest security forces powers and limited those of the prime minister he appointed last April under international pressure, hoping the United States would come to realize who was really pulling the strings.
So when a seven-week-old ceasefire collapsed last week in a surge of violence that included a Hamas suicide bombing that killed 21 people in Jerusalem and an Israeli assassination of a senior Hamas leader, Washington had to swallow its pride.
Implicitly acknowledging Arafat’s pride of place among Palestinians, US Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to him to work with Abbas and make available security forces under presidential control to rein in militants.
“Abu Mazen needs to unite the security apparatus under his command so the security apparatus won’t fight among each other and create their own civil war, but Arafat refuses to hand them over to him,” a senior Palestinian official said.
“Arafat believes this is his chance to show the Americans he is relevant and he alone can deliver — not Abu Mazen — that he still has influence over the money, the security and the people,” the official said.
Underlining Arafat’s continued role, Partrick said: “He (Abbas) was almost bound to fail, given that he did not have full control over all the necessary elements and he lacks significant political authority of his own.”
While Abbas’s security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, has promised to “restore law and order” in the Palestinian territories in a bid to salvage the peace “roadmap”, Arafat appears to be in no mood to help out two of Washington’s favourites.
But it remains to be seen whether he will make the mass arrests that the United States and Israel are demanding.
Jirbawi said Abbas could risk a confrontation with the militants only if he were able to hold out a realistic promise of gains for ordinary Palestinians — such as an end to Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
In the meantime, Israeli troops are sweeping through West Bank cities in search of militants and poised at the entrances to the northern Gaza Strip.
Partrick said there would be a huge hole to fill if Abbas resigned or was forced out.
“It will be hard to find another Palestinian interlocutor — who would wish to pick up such a poisoned chalice?” he asked.—Reuters
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