> > From: DavidMcR at aol.com
>>
>> Ah me, always makes a man feel he is doing something right!
>>
>> First, I have absolutely no idea what I wrote to suggest Palestinians had a
>> propensity to violence - it would be a service to me if I could find out.
>
>I'll try to do you that service. Here is what you wrote in your
>first reply to me:
>
>"It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for the Palestinians
>to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried), but the
>tendency of the Palestinians to substitute rhetoric for organization
>and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions."
>
>How do you construe this syntax? Ordinarily with this construction "to
>substitute rhetoric" and "[to substitute] suicide bombings" would be
>parallel constructions dependent on "tendency of." If this means what it
>says, it is crudely racist. It is a tendency of Palestinians to
>substitute "rhetoric for organisation" and "suicide bombings for
>effective action."
It is said that David McReynolds is a friend of Palestinians in struggle, but his remarks make much less sense than what the following article in the _New York Times_ (of all things!) says:
***** The New York Times June 10, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 4; Page 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk HEADLINE: The World; Arafat Is the Leader, But Who's In Charge? BYLINE: By JOHN KIFNER
ISRAEL'S prime minister, Ariel Sharon, makes it sound simple: If Yasir Arafat wants peace, he must halt the suicide bombings and other acts of terror and he must do it by arresting the several dozen Islamic militants on a list Israel has handed him.
But, as always in the long Israeli-Palestinian struggle, the reality is much murkier.
As American and European envoys struggled feverishly last week to hold together an exceedingly shaky, bullet-punctuated cease-fire, Israeli officials publicly focused their ire on Mr. Arafat as a kind of supreme puppet-master. They did it to such an extent that it spurred speculation they had run out of patience and might somehow try to oust him.
"It has been proven categorically that Arafat controls what goes on in the field," said Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, the chief of military intelligence. Reuven Rivlin, the communications minister whose thinking is close to Mr. Sharon's, added bluntly: "Arafat is the brunt of the problem."
But others, including some in Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, paint a more complex picture of political infighting among the Palestinians . In the end, these analysts say, Mr. Arafat and the Islamic fundamentalists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad have starkly opposing, irreconcilable goals: Mr. Arafat, having achieved international recognition as the Palestinians' leader on the basis of the Oslo peace accords, wants to salvage what he can from the faltering agreement; the Islamicists want to wreck it.
"The basic relationship is one of rivalry," said Rashid Khalidi, a University of Chicago professor. "It's a competition for power and support, for who can appeal to the vast Palestinian middle. These are people who are not in the same ballpark as far as their objectives. They're like oil and water, it's a basic polarity."
At the moment, the Islamic forces are in the ascendancy, for several reasons. The eight-month-old second intifada, in which more than 484 Arabs and 108 Israelis have died, is directed not only at the Israelis and the frustrated hopes raised by the Oslo accords, but also, to a large extent, at Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Many in the West Bank and Gaza Strip see the authority as corrupt, high handed and dominated by cronies Mr. Arafat brought back with him from exile in Tunis.
Palestinian anger and bitterness has been fed by the draconian measures with which Israel has tried to suppress the uprising, including the use of snipers and targeted assassinations. A virtual state of siege has crippled what little is left of the Palestinian economy. Palestinian stone throwing demonstrations have turned into low-level guerrilla warfare, with roadside ambushes and bombs; Israel has responded with tanks, helicopter gunships and even an F-16 air raid.
Feelings have now hardened on both sides: After Hamas conducted a suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub, killing 20 teenage Russian immigrants, there were cries for "blood" and "war" even from Israelis who had voted for the dovish parties of the left. Many had come to doubt that Mr. Arafat ever intended to make a real peace. And a recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion showed that 75 percent of Palestinians supported armed revolt, including suicide bombings, and 80 percent thought Israel was not serious about seeking a halt to the violence. Similar polls showed drops in Mr. Arafat's already low approval rating.
With his people feeling that way, it appears politically impossible for Mr. Arafat to arrest the militants; he would be seen as a lackey doing Israel's work.
It was not always so. Dr. Khaladi, the descendant of a distinguished family of Jerusalem intellectuals who has long studied the Palestinian movement, noted that during the first years of the Oslo agreement, Hamas tried hard to disrupt the peace process but in the prevailing optimism found little support and abandoned the effort. After a resumed wave of bombing in early 1996, Mr. Arafat's security services began hounding the Islamic forces and continued until last summer, when about 300 Hamas and Jihad members were in jail. Human rights groups say about 20 Islamic fundamentalists died under torture in Palestinian prisons.
But when the intifada started last fall, the 300 prisoners were released. It is members of this group that Israel is now demanding be re-arrested.
The current public mood is one of frustration and rage, however, and when Mr. Arafat's police tried to arrest a militant in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp two months ago, they were met with an open revolt.
One of the more curious aspects of the tit-for-tat violence is that Israel's response has largely been directed at the Palestinian Authority's security units, rather than at the Islamicists themselves. It has hit, for example, the headquarters of a police force in Nablus much disliked for reining in demonstrations. The two heads of Mr. Arafat's preventive security forces who had been most effective in cracking down on militants in the past, Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza and Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank, are said to fear they are targets of assassination after having come under Israeli gunfire.
On the other hand, both Israelis and Palestinians are looking over their shoulders at the court of international opinion. Mr. Sharon declared his cease-fire late last month after his F-16 attack was followed by urgent calls from the United States to reduce the violence. Mr. Arafat's cease-fire declaration was virtually dictated to him after the Tel Aviv bombing by Terje Rod-Larsen, the United Nations envoy, and the German foreign minister, Joschka Fisher. But the Palestinians are less a tight command structure than a hodgepodge of forces. And even though the level of violence did fall markedly during the week, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, immediately announced: "The resistance will continue. Whatever agreements Arafat makes are not binding on us." Islamic Jihad added: "The martyrdom seekers will continue their missions."
The Israeli army has let it be known that it is readying a massive response, or as Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezar put it, "fingers are ready on the trigger." The leading newspaper Ha'aretz reported last week that the bombing had interrupted plans for a large operation to "stamp out terror" by invading the Palestinian-controlled areas to remove "suspects and heads of hostile extremist organizations," destroy some Palestinian Authority buildings and seize weapons.
All of which leaves the initiative in the hands of the next, inevitable, suicide bomber. *****
Yoshie