Suddenly, we are being told, Egypt is being helpful and, in relative terms, cosying up to Israel. Israeli and Egyptian officials are meeting openly and smiling together for the cameras. What's the catch?
Egypt has its own ideas of what to do with the diplomatic ferment created by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. Most of the coverage of Egypt's involvement pretends that the premise of Israel's plan – its unilateralism – is accepted, so all that is left is to prevent Hamas from filling a vacuum.
It should not be surprising, however, that there is another, less noticed aspect to the Egyptian agenda. For all of Egypt's reported frustration with Yasser Arafat and renewed willingness to pressure him, that pressure is effectively being exerted to toward reform rather than removal.
In his meeting with Israeli ministers, Egyptian Intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman pressed for releasing the PA Chairman from his imprisonment in the Mukata in Ramallah. The purpose of this release would, presumably, be to allow Arafat to more effectively head the security forces he is being asked to consolidate from some dozen to three, under a newly appointed interior minister.
The Israeli side, to its credit, strenuously objected to any role being played by Arafat, but on the ground, he is still calling the shots and the Egyptians and the members of the Quartet whose representatives met on Thursday in Taba to approve the Egyptian plan, are once again taking him into account. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns also brought the Arafat issue up during his meeting with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in Tel Aviv on Friday.
It seems almost incredible that after all that has transpired over the last four years, one still has to explain why Arafat can never again be seen as a credible partner for negotiations or security arrangements and that any plan involving him is inevitably doomed to fail.
The fact that any plan for the existing Palestinian organizations to battle terror is hopeless was evident from comments made by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, reported last week in this newspaper. According to Qurei, not only does the PA have no plans to dismantle the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, but his top priority is to safeguard the security of its members still wanted by Israel. Qurei's promise that the Brigades would play a "political role" in the future came on top of Arafat's invitation to the group's members to join the official security apparatus.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades is not just another breakaway organization, its members are responsible for a large proportion of the suicide bombings that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis. It is officially recognized by the US as a terror organization, the likes of al-Qaida, Hizbullah, and the Hamas.
In this context, the problem is not the efficiency of Arafat's security services but the direction in which their guns are pointed. To expect that direction to change on the basis of a reorganization would be as if the US had tried to tame Iraq by asking Saddam Hussein to consolidate his Republican Guards and hydra-like security apparatus. So that there be no confusion on this point, a senior Fatah official has just announced that the PA has no intention of confiscating the weaponry of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, regardless of any "consolidation" of forces. (I guess we'll have to keep on "whacking them.......Snooker)
A diplomatic success of the Sharon administration has been to convince a significant part of the international community that Arafat is irrelevant to any peace process. It has also become a matter of consensus in the Israeli public and even on the political scene, outside of the Arab parties, it is almost impossible to find an MK who supports resuming talks with Arafat. This achievement is coupled with the IDF's ongoing success in preventing major terror attacks, with no help from the PA.
Israel, the international community, and the Palestinians themselves, share an interest in the Palestinian abandonment of terrorism and the suppression of elements that refuse to do so. There is no reason to believe that the current Palestinian leadership will end its support of terror, let alone actively combat it. The international community, therefore, should focus on that leadership's removal, rather than its resurrection.
