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Arafat Names Prime Minister, Will Continue Terror
DEBKAfile Special Report
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Nominating his most outspoken
critic, Mahmoud Abbas, 68, the veteran PLO secretary general usually known as
Abu Mazen, as first Palestinian prime minister certainly stuck in Yasser
Arafat’s throat. Yet he went through with his presentation to the PLO Central
Committee and the Central Council in Ramallah, on Saturday, March 8 and
Sunday March 9. |
To make sure the Palestinian leader did not back out at the last minute,
Israel conveyed a hint that he may be closer to deportation than he thinks.
Monday, March 10, the Palestinian Legislative Council is due to
determine what authority the new position will carry.
The showdown between Arafat and Abu Mazen over the division of authority
between them is the focus of heated deliberations in these labyrinthine
institutions. But a senior Palestinian source reported to DEBKAfile that at
this stage, Abu Mazen has been neatly outmaneuvered. The nominee insists that
without real powers, he will not take the job. He is demanding authority to
lead any negotiations with Israel and choose his ministers. He is thinking in
terms of a cabinet of apolitical technocrats and he hopes for majority backing
at the Legislative Council meeting on Monday, March 10. However, on the way to
the Council meeting, our Palestinian source reports a decision rammed through
by Arafat’s backers leaving him in full command of all Palestinian security and
police organizations. Any authority conferred on Abu Mazen to negotiate with
Israel or achieve a ceasefire is valueless as long as the power to halt
Palestinian terror is out of his hands.
Mahmoud Abbas has long been Arafat’s official deputy. Decades ago, they
established the Fatah together, but their relations are complicated. Abu Mazen
is one of the group’s few surviving founders. Born in Safed in British-mandated
Palestinian in 1935, he studied law in Egypt before taking a PhD in Moscow.
Usually a background figure, he has built up a network of powerful political
contacts in the Arab world and Israel and is generally regarded as the
architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Abu Mazen is described by visitors as being
deeply depressed since his son was killed in a road accident in Kuwait last
year and because of the long and agonizing treatment he is receiving for
cancer. Despite his poor health and the fact that he is not a charismatic
figure, he is acceptable to Fatah power brokers, who would not consider any
non-Fatah candidate for the post of first Palestinian prime minister.
Abu Mazen strongly disputes Arafat’s basic precepts, the mainsprings of
the Intifada he launched against Israel 30 months ago, to which he clings even
amid his wrecked fortunes. Arafat is still utterly convinced that Palestinian
violence, especially his campaign of suicidal terror, will destroy Israel once
and for all. He is equally sure that his ally, Saddam Hussein, will beat the
Americans. When that happens, he believes the anti-war world bloc ranged
against Washington – France, Germany, Russia, China and Belgium - together with
Syria and the Hizballah, will swing their support behind the Palestinian cause,
the pro-American Arab regimes will be swept away and the new Arab rulers will
put Arafat back on his pedestal.
Abu Mazen regards Arafat as deluded. He sees no sign of Israeli cracking
under the Palestinian campaign of terror. Rather, in private conversations with
Israelis and outside contacts, he fears the Palestinian people is on the verge
of breaking down and the emblems of independence won at Oslo are slipping away.
He views the all-out support for Saddam Hussein as a repetition of the
disastrous blunder Arafat committed in the first Gulf War in 1991. He fears the
Palestinian people will lose everything they ever hoped for by Arafat’s mistake
and his persistence in maintaining his terrorist offensive against Israel. Abu
Mazen therefore publicly advocates a one year general truce, during which
Israelis and Palestinians will try and forge common denominators as a basis for
resumed peace negotiations.
With Arafat and Abu Mazen poles apart on goals, principles, as well as
character and personal traits, DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources were not
surprised when the two leaders came away from their meeting Thursday, March 6,
at Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, at odds over the relegation of powers to the
incoming prime minister.
Yet Arafat did put the nomination forward and Abu Mazen did not demur.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that Arafat, for one, had no option. Since last
year, Washington has demanded the appointment of a prime minister, the key to
sweeping reforms, as a pre-condition for sponsoring any peace process. The
Sharon government has steadily refused to treat with Arafat until he renounces
terror. Arafat was unmoved. But last week, the Palestinian leader was finally
cornered by his last remaining supporters, the Europeans. The European Union
emissary, Miguel Moratinos, and UN Middle East Envoy Terje-Larsen, bearded
Arafat in his Ramallah office and issued a blunt warning. “If you don’t appoint
a prime minister with real authority, by next week you’ll find yourself in
Cyprus!”
This was the second reference to his impending deportation to reach
Arafat.
Three weeks ago, “sensitive intelligence data” reached him that prime
minister Ariel Sharon had ordered a special forces unit to be regrouped,
retrained and standing by in case of a decision to storm Arafat’s Ramallah
headquarters. He was to be separated from the 30 or so terror chiefs living
under his protection since last year and put aboard an outgoing flight.
Moratinos evidently knew what he was talking about.
At the same time, after Sharon was returned in Israel’s last general
election on January 28, Abu Mazen came to Arafat and reported his impression
that the new prime minister would be willing to accept President George W.
Bush’s road map as formulated by the Quartet (US secretary of state Colin
Powell, UN secretary Koffi Anan, the EU and Russia). In other words, the
Palestinians may have finally recovered a potential peace partner.
Arafat heard his deputy out and told him to carry on with his informal
exchanges with the Israelis. But, in private, he never for a moment abandoned
his conviction that his fate vis a vis Israel and Saddam’s fate opposite the
Americans were inextricably linked. To his close aides, he confided his belief
that “they” – meaning the Israelis and the Americans - were pushing the Abu
Mazen appointment forward as a vehicle for getting rid of him and effecting a
regime change in Ramallah analogous to their goal in Baghdad. But he promised
to fight with all his might so as not to let “them” get away with it.
To preserve his standard weapon, Arafat torpedoed Egypt’s painstaking
efforts to bring Palestinian terrorist factions round to a ceasefire. The Hamas
quickly followed Arafat’s lead. And Abu Mazen, sensing which way the wind was
blowing at the Cairo conference, stayed clear.
Arafat was moved to prevent the Cairo conference from tying his hands
with a ceasefire by three considerations:
1. He felt bound to keep his terror campaign escalating in order to
provide Saddam Hussein with a second warfront.
2. He was determined to deny Egypt and its president Hosni Mubarak,
supporters of the US offensive against Iraq, the kudos of achieving a ceasefire.
Since his August 2000 encounter with President Bill Clinton and prime minister
Ehud Barak at Camp David, Arafat has had nothing but contempt for Egypt and
Saudi Arabia and acknowledges only Iraq, Iran and Syria as regional powers.
3. A ceasefire would serve Abu Mazen as a springboard for leaping into
the prime minister’s seat.
He responded to European pressure therefore on two levels. While taking
the formal steps for nominating a prime minister, he stoked his terror machine,
making sure it coincided with
the run-up to the American assault against Saddam Hussein.
In three terrorist strikes in three days – one foiled – Palestinian
terrorists murdered 18 Israelis - sixteen on an Egged 37 bus carrying mostly
students and pupils from well-to-do backgrounds. The target was deliberately
chosen to hurt youngsters belonging to the established classes – unlike the
last attack two months ago in the foreign workers’ district of Tel Aviv. For
this operation Arafat fielded for the first time in the 30 months of his Intifada,
an elite terror unit under the mixed command of Fatah’s al Aqsa Martyrs’
Brigades officers living under his protection in the Ramallah headquarter and
the field operatives of the Hamas and Jihad Islamic trained by Hizballah
instructors imported from Lebanon. This unit stood ready for special
emergencies and back-up action during the war against Iraq. It represents the
pro-terror coalition that will back him against the incoming prime minister Abu
Mazen and disrupt any peace moves he may initiate.
In an earlier article on this page, DEBKAfile exposed the background of
Mahmoud Adnan Selim Kawasme, the bomber who blew up the Haifa bus last
Wednesday and the identity of his Hizballah trainer. Kawasma was supplied with
intelligence and logistics for the attack from Nablus.
Two days later, the same elite outfit murdered Elie and Dinah Horowitz
in the Kiryat Arba suburb of Hebron, but failed to reach Negohot further west.
Four terrorists were shot dead in the two attacks.
Saturday morning, March 8, four Israeli helicopters rocketed the car
carrying the Hamas military commander in Gaza, Ibrahim Maqadma, a shrewd blow
against the inner workings of the terror network since, aside from his senior
position in Hamas, Maqadme was Arafat’s liaison man with Iran, the Hizballah,
as well as the Hamas and Jihad Islami commands in Damascus. Israeli forces have
also take over several square miles of the northern Gaza Strip to put a stop to
the Qassam rocket attacks against southern Israel.
Israel thus drew a line in the sand, warning the two Islamic groups they
would not be allowed to become Hizballah’s operational arm in
Palestinian-controlled areas against Israel, nor would Arafat be permitted to
deploy his special elite terror unit.
Abu Mazen himself may bargain hard for more authority, but is unlikely
to turn down the historic opportunity of becoming the first Palestinian prime
minister. In any case, he would not want to give Arafat the chance of saying
with a shrug that he did everything he could, but Abu Mazen refused the offer.
His duel with Arafat over powers will continue after he takes office. He will
strive to build his support in the moderate wings of the Fatah for his
pro-American posture and his attempts to achieve a cessation of hostilities and
open the door to talks with Israel. Arafat will pull against him by political
maneuvers and violent terror.
The European rationale for bullying Arafat into accepting a Palestinian
prime minister fits in with its campaign to stop the United States from going
to war against Iraq. If Arafat can be induced to embark on regime change by
relegating powers to an advocate of non-violence, the Eurocrats will argue that
Saddam too can eventually be persuaded to voluntarily dismantle his
unconventional arms and step down. Ergo, there is no need for war.
The hole in this argument will only emerge when it is too late to mend,
emanating from the failure to take account of the two men’s inborn
predilections. Arafat will no more renounce terrorism than Saddam Hussein will
give up his unconventional armory. There is as much chance of Arafat meekly
standing down as of Saddam offering to be sacked. Washington is therefore
staying out of the Ramallah spectacle, aware that what is happening there has
little to do with the two events rushing forward relentlessly: More Palestinian
terror and a US-led offensive against Iraq.