PA patroling hot spots as Rafiah battle mars
truce
U.S. sticks to arms-length policy; Russia sends
envoy
By Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Daniel
Sobelman
Ha'aretz Correspondents and
Agencies
A relative calm prevailed yesterday, the third
day since the Dolphinarium massacre prompted international pressure
on Yasser Arafat to order a cease-fire on the part of his forces to
meet the Israeli unilateral cease-fire announced last week by Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon.
There was fighting in the Rafiah area,
which the army says began when Palestinians fired on an IDF
engineering crew uncovering Palestinian tunnels between the
Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Three IDF soldiers were lightly
wounded and treated on the spot, while the Palestinians reported
that more than 20 Palestinians were wounded, including some
seriously.
Elsewhere, however, Palestinian forces were seen
patroling friction points, including Beit Jala, the Arab
neighborhood opposite the south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo,
which has been under on-again, off-again fire for the past six
months.
PA arrests 2 bomb suspects
The PA
reported to Israel the arrests of two suspected accomplices of Said
Al Hutari, the suspected suicide bomber who killed himself and 20
others at the Dolphinarium on Friday night. Hutari was a Palestinian
from Jordan who lately had been living in Qalqiliya and security
service sources say he was supplied by the Hamas infrastructure in
the Qalqiliya area. While the report of the arrests of the two
accomplices appears genuine, Israeli government sources say there is
still no evidence of the PA cracking down on Hamas or Islamic
Jihad.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, is sticking to its
arms-length approach to the conflict, deciding to refrain, for now,
from sending a high-level official, such as CIA Director George
Tenet, to the area. But the U.S. is keeping up pressure on the PA,
calling on it to tighten the cease-fire before talks begin on the
implementation of the Mitchell Commission report.
CIA
chief Tenet to stay home
Top officials in the Bush
administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, spent Sunday arguing
whether to send Tenet or any other envoy, but decided to make do
with Powell's Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs
William Burns, most recently U.S. ambassador to Jordan, as the point
man for U.S. involvement. The Palestinians regard Tenet as an ally
in the U.S. government, but Israel has indicated to the Americans
that for now they prefer the CIA boss stay home.
The
diplomatic effort continued however. German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer, who was in Ramallah on the morning after the suicide
bombing, has canceled all his other plans and is staying in the
region. He met yesterday with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, before
heading to Egypt. Peres meanwhile briefed foreign ambassadors on the
state of the cease-fire, calling it "fragile." But he did appear
somewhat more upbeat than he has been in recent months.
Also
getting involved are the Russians. Peres spoke with his Russian
counterpart yesterday and Russian President Vladimir Putin sent
Andrei Vdovin, a special envoy to the region, to sound out the
sides.
Peres appears pleased by the general international
consensus that now includes the U.S., Europe and Russia, which have
been pressing Arafat into a cease-fire. "As long as those three -
U.S., Europe and Russia - keep up the pressure, the cease-fire can
hold," Peres predicted to the ambassadors.
Diplomatic sources
in Jerusalem said that Sharon is still waiting for Arafat to take
steps to enforce the cease-fire. Sharon insists on an end to the
violence and incitement, and arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
operatives. The Israelis have also told Arafat they want him to keep
illegal weapons out of the public eye, in other words, to prevent
the kind of weapons shown at Hamas demonstrations where masked men
parade with arms.
There are some clear indications that the
PA is taking the cease-fire seriously - or at least trying to do so.
In the Rafiah fire fight, PA troops arrived on the scene to try to
halt the shooting, but IDF sources said that some of those troops
then joined the gun battle.
Prior to the Rafiah firefight,
the army reported six shooting attacks by Palestinians since
Saturday. In addition, a mortar shell was fired at a Jewish
settlement in Gaza late Sunday and a bomb exploded in an industrial
area along a major West Bank road yesterday. There were no injuries.
Later, another mortar shell was fired at an Israeli military outpost
in Gaza.
Still unclear is whether Arafat has full control
over his troops. Military Intelligence believes he does, but the
Shin Bet, which has long been arguing that he may not have full
control over all the armed elements in the territories could point
yesterday to the events in Rafiah and the mortar fire as evidence
that Arafat is in a struggle to keep things quiet.
Arafat
convened leaders of his Fatah movement late Sunday to deliver his
cease-fire orders, and the leaders said they supported the call. But
Palestinian officials said Arafat would not meet Israel's demand to
arrest militants. Participants said it was agreed in the meeting to
stop shooting, but to continue with other protests against Israeli
occupation, such as demonstrations and stone-throwing on Israeli
soldiers.
The Islamic militant Hamas has hinted that it
wouldn't challenge Arafat's order. "Hamas will never ever clash with
our brothers in the Palestinian Authority," spokesman Abdel Aziz
Rantisi said. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
said yesterday it didn't back Arafat's cease-fire and would
"continue the uprising with all means, including an armed
struggle."
Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader at the head of
the Tanzim in the West Bank, also said that "the Palestinian people
will never give up their right to oppose the occupation." But he,
too, appeared to indicate that he was referring to civilian
demonstrations, and not armed activity. Furthermore, he said that he
only supported action against occupying troops and settlements in
the West Bank, not against civilians inside Israel
 
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© copyright
2001 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
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An
Israeli soldier checking a Palestinian's papers at a checkpoint in
Qalandia on the road from Jerusalem to Ramallah yesterday.(Photo:
Reuters)
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