Waiting for Albright
Palestine, Analysis, 9/9/1997

A day before the arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the region, the Palestinian National Authority complained of lack of security coordination with Israel, a demand that the US Administration has tried to further between the two sides after the latest wave of suicide attacks in Israel. Tayyeb Abdul Rahim, secretary of the Palestinain presidential office of Yasser Arafat said that Israel has so far refused to share with Palestinian security officers information on the Ben Yehuda triple blast in Jerusalem last Thursday.

"Israel does not want to admit that the three suicide bombers have come from abroad using Israeli ports, because this fact undermines Netanyahu's claims against the PNA as being responsible for the attacks," he said. He added that the explosives used in the attack last Thursday were similar to the explosives used in the July 30 attack. In both the explosives used were RDX that are hard to detect via normal X-ray machines that Israel uses in its ports. The assumption is that the suicide bombers came from abroad, whisked the explosives with them and carried out their attacks in West Jeruaslem after they may or may not have received logistical aid from Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Albright arrives in Israel today where she is scheduled to stay for three days before meeting with leaders from other countries in the region, including PNA President Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Syrian President Hafez Assad, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Albright's visit, the first to the region since she took office, is being seen by both Palestinian and Israeli sources as an important landmark in efforts to renew the peace process in the Middle East. Israeli reports spoke of a determined Albright who is going to demand strongly that the PNA clamp down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad activities in the PNA areas, but other reports in the Israeli press Tuesday said that Albright is also determined to make it clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that lack of security cannot be used as a pretext to justify Israel's failure to go ahead with the implementation of its agreements with the Palestinians.

Despite the last attack in Jerusalem, Secretary Albright does not intend to abandon efforts to move the peace process forward, said a top US official on Monday. Maariv Hebrew daily on Tuesday quoted the US official as saying that Albright is seeking a situation of "a return to the principles of the Oslo agreements, which would include the liquidation of the terror infrastructure." But the official stressed that "wiping out terror is not the whole picture: the United States is trying to create an atmosphere in which there is no Palestinian suffering under a prolonged closure and the halting of payments to the PNA by Israel."

Top US Administration officials told The New York Times on Monday that Albright intends to demand that Arafat act against "terror organizations" and in parallel clarify to Netanyahu that "he cannot use security issues in order to evade a discussion about Israel's share of responsibility for the collapse of trust between the Palestinians and Israel."

Meanwhile, Yediot Ahronot Hebrew daily reported Tuesday that Israel has passed secret messages to Syria which focused on Israel's readiness to discuss new ideas for a renewal of negotiations between the two sides. Sources close to Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed that messages were sent to Damascus, but refused to provide details on their content. A senior official in the Prime Minister's office told the paper that if Netanyahu's coalition partners were to find out how far the Prime Minister was willing to go, as reflected in the messages he sent, the coalition would fall apart. According to him, Netanyahu authorized a few officials to inform Damascus that he would be ready to adopt Rabin's formula -- "Depth of withdrawal form the Golan Heights as contingent upon the depth of peace with Syria." The Prime Minister denied the claim, but the most right-wing sources close to him confirmed in the past few days that the messages passed to Syria recently were meant to bring about a breakthrough in the stalemate with Damascus.

The report appeared amid rumors reaching from Washington and saying that during her visit, Albright will make a serious effort to revive the Syrian-Israeli talks, since the hope is that both Assad and Netanyahu, for various reasons, are very interested in renewing the negotiations between them. Close associates of Albright, including those involved in the Israeli side of the visit, do not expect a momentous breakthrough in either the Palestinian or the Syrian channels. Everyone speaks in cautious terms about the beginning of high-level American brokerage, and nothing else.

Previous Stories:
  Albright is coming . Hamas arrests while Levy and Netanyahu fight it out   (9/8/1997)
  Cairo summit gathers 3 Arab leaders   (9/8/1997)
  Albright to meet Gulf foreign ministers   (9/5/1997)

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