AFTER ABBAS

  Artículo de  “The Economist” del 8-9-03

 

Mahmoud Abbas's resignation as Palestinian prime minister has dealt a blow to the Middle East “road map”. His successor, Ahmed Korei, is no more likely to forge peace with Israel

LITTLE after three months since it was launched, the American-backed “road map” to peace between Israel and the Palestinians lies in shreds. On Saturday September 6th, Mahmoud Abbas submitted his resignation as Palestinian prime minister. Within hours, Israeli warplanes tried to kill Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and other leaders of Hamas, a militant group, with the help of a 500lb bomb dropped on an apartment in Gaza City; 16 Palestinians were wounded, among them civilians. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, shrugged off the disappointment. “They’re dead men,” he said, meaning every member of Hamas.

Dead almost certainly describes the prospects of the revamped peace process. America had predicated its return to peacemaking on the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister with “real authority”, independent of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian president, whom America and Israel accuse of encouraging terrorism and have thus tried to sideline. America had always made it clear that Mr Abbas, a leader “of vision and courage” according to President George Bush, was the preferred choice. Mr Abbas had predicated his entire reformist strategy on brokering a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire, above all with Hamas.

 

This, he told his sceptical people, would help the Americans to persuade Israel to relax the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, freeze the building of Jewish settlements and free Palestinian prisoners. After seven weeks of relative quiet—but no end to the occupation, settlement construction, assassinations of leading Palestinians or militant attacks on Israeli targets—the ceasefire collapsed. In practice, it ended with the Hamas bus bombing that killed 22 people in Jerusalem on August 19th; officially, it was Israel’s assassination of a Hamas political leader, Ismail Abu Shanab, two days later that killed the truce.

Mr Abbas had been in hell in recent weeks. Addressing his parliament last Thursday, he said the “fundamental” cause of his resignation was Israel’s slowness in implementing its commitments under the road map, aggravated by America’s unwillingness to “exert sufficient influence” on Mr Sharon to do otherwise. But Mr Abbas was also clear that his power to rule had been disabled by the ongoing, festering crisis of faith between himself and Mr Arafat, manifested in “harsh and dangerous domestic incitement against [his] government” and Mr Arafat’s refusal to devolve power, especially over the Palestinian Authority's police forces.

But the last straw was lack of political support, say Palestinians. Last week, Mr Abbas was warned that should he risk a parliamentary vote of confidence in his government, he would probably lose. This had less to do with disagreement over his policies than the growing consensus among Palestinian lawmakers that change could only be carried out in “co-ordination” with Mr Arafat. Confrontation was increasingly being read publicly as part of an Israeli-American agenda to unseat him. “We are definitely not going to sacrifice Arafat for Abu Mazen [the other name by which Mr Abbas is known],” said Hatem Abdul Khader, a lawmaker from the Fatah movement, to which both Mr Arafat and Mr Abbas belong.

Finally rid of his troublesome prime minister, Mr Arafat moved swiftly to fill the void, nominating parliamentary speaker and veteran Fatah leader, Ahmed Korei (better known as Abu Alaa) as his successor. Mr Korei has yet to accept the post; before doing so, he wants guarantees from Europe and America that they will back the current peace plan. Like Mr Abbas, he was an architect of the Oslo peace accords in the early 1990s, is opposed to the armed Palestinian intifada (uprising) and has good relations with Europe, the Arab states and many Israelis. Unlike Mr Abbas, he appears to enjoy the trust of his leader.

He is likely to get little co-operation from Mr Abbas's allies, but that will bother neither Mr Korei nor Mr Arafat. On Sunday, Muhammed Dahlan, Mr Abbas's preferred choice as head of the PA security forces (but cast by Mr Arafat as a Judas in the pay of America), announced that he would only serve in a government headed by Mr Abbas. It remains to be seen whether America and Israel will be so accommodating to the new Palestinian premier.

Mr Abbas's resignation, and the finger of blame that he himself pointed at Mr Arafat for undermining him, have strengthened demands from inside the Israeli cabinet for Mr Arafat's forcible removal. One extremist minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has called for the army to bomb the Palestinian president's Ramallah headquarters. More senior ministers say they want to see Mr Arafat deported out of the occupied territories. 

Mr Sharon, thus far at least, is resisting these calls. At the weekend, his aides cited firm warnings from Washington against deportation or any other action directed personally against Mr Arafat. On Monday, however, Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported that the prime minister's men believed they had detected the beginning of a turnaround in this American attitude. For the moment, at any rate, and with Mr Sharon having left on Monday for an official visit to India, pressure to act against Mr Arafat has eased, though it would quickly well up again if there were another big terror attack inside Israel.

The nomination of Mr Korei as the Palestinians' new premier could help head off a showdown between Israel and the PA, at least initially. The official Israeli position following Mr Abbas's resignation was that it would not work with any Arafat appointee. But Mr Korei cannot be dismissed as a mere stooge or yes-man of the Palestinian president. He has longstanding relationships with several highly placed Israelis, going back to the days of the Oslo accords. While there is little optimism in government circles, or indeed among most commentators, that he can succeed where Mr Abbas failed, there is a certain grudging readiness to give him a chance. A key test, in the official Israeli view, will be whether Mr Korei is able to wrest control of the various Palestinian security services still run directly by Mr Arafat.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials maintain that the policy of hunting down senior Hamas men will continue without reference to the political changes in the PA. They say Saturday's attack on Sheikh Yassin, even though unsuccessful, was effective as a signal of Israel's resolve to kill the entire top leadership of the organisation, political as well as military. Informed sources say Mr Sharon gave the order to go after Sheikh Yassin following the bus bombing in Jerusalem. They say the prime minister is gratified that the current campaign of what Israel calls “targeted killing” of Hamas figures has not drawn any serious criticism from Washington. The Israeli government was particularly pleased that on the day it targeted Sheikh Yassin, the European Union's foreign ministers resolved to blacklist the political wing of Hamas. Until now, only the military wing was designated by the EU a terrorist organisation.