No road and no map

One week after their militias abandoned the blood-soaked "hudna" Palestinians in the occupied territories are once more hostage to an Israeli offensive aimed at "pressurising" their leadership into war with its national and Islamist opposition. Israel is aware this is a line no Palestinian leader -- neither Mahmoud Abbas nor Yasser Arafat -- can cross. Indeed, the demand is made precisely because it cannot be met, thus granting the army a licence to impose a new post-roadmap order on Israel's terms.

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Less publicly Israel has used the smokescreen of its new "war on terrorism" to deepen its colonial grip on the occupied territories. On 22 August Israeli bulldozers commenced work in Abu Dis on extending the Jerusalem section of the security barrier. Few know now the depth of its territorial reach. But Palestinians know from bitter experience that at the very least it will formalise the already de facto severance of East Jerusalem's 14 Arab villages from their West Bank hinterland.

Faced with these military and territorial onslaughts the PA appears isolated internationally, weak in the eyes of its people and divided at the top.

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Rajoub knows the ball will be slammed back in the PA's face. Israel has made it clear it will not recognise, let alone reciprocate, any Palestinian ceasefire unless the PA goes after the militias root-and-branch. He also knows it is backed in this stance by the US. And in the absence of American intervention and the relegation of the Quartet to cheerleaders when the going is smooth and bystanders when tough it is difficult to see how the post-ceasefire order can be other than its pre-ceasefire preamble: a war of attrition based on unequal military confrontation and a politics of the last atrocity.

Faced with this vista Palestinian fighters shrug that they have nothing to lose. The danger is that the longer they fight the less their people will have to win.


http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/653/fr1.htm