Arafat between kisses and behavior
Palestine, Analysis, 10/6/1997

Since Palestinian leader Arafat kissed Rantisi--Hamas' political leader--at the Palestinian "national unity"conference in Gaza last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the gesture as evidence that Arafat is more interested in embracing terrorists than fighting them.

Last week, Arafat repeated his gesture by kissing the face of the ailing spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Yassin, when he visited him in Jordan.

However there is a big difference between Arafat's kisses and his behavior. Last week following Israel's alleged identification of four of the five bombers responsible for the last two suicide attacks in Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority arrested about 70 Palestinians on suspicion of being Hamas activists and closed down 20 Islamic institutions.

Most of the closed institutions were charitable Islamic organizations located in the Gaza strip providing services to needy Palestinians.

So, the shutting down of the Hamas institutions by the PA is not destroying the infrastructure of Hamas, but it's destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority itself.

Hamas institutions serve at least 8,000 families, which given the average family size in the self rule areas, means about 69,000 people. With unemployment rates in the Gaza strip at 35 percent "at a minimum" due to Israel's closure policies, the shutdowns will hurt poor Palestinians far more than Hamas' military activities.

Analysts said that the closures and arrests by Palestinian authority are illegal, and consider them to be the direct result of pressure placed on the PA by the Israeli and US governments.

But Hamas decided it will pursue its struggle on two parallel paths. The first is to maintain peaceful relations with the PA by avoiding all aggressive reactions to the arrests and closures. The second is to maintain the struggle against occupation of the Palestinian people and land.

The attack on Khaled Mishal, the head of the Amman-based political bureau of Hamas, by suspected Israeli agents carrying Canadian passports a week ago, could escalate the violent in the occupied land. In the meantime, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will resume next week in an effort to revive the battered Oslo process.

On October 6, eight Palestinian-Israeli committees will be reactivated to discuss the 34 issues still pending from Oslo's interim agreement, including opening a Palestinian airport and harbor in Gaza and establishment of a "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank.

But analysts fear that Hamas would not leave the Israeli assassination attack on Mishal unanswered without a suicide attack, like those in Jerusalem in recent months, to stop and collapse the new effort to repair the battered Oslo process.

Previous Stories:
  SPECIAL REPORT part 3: The downfall of Netanyahu: Mossad's assasination fiasco in Jordan   (10/3/1997)
  Special Report: Who were the four suicide bombers? New revelations   (9/25/1997)
  Hamas is still strong enough to initiate immediate attack   (9/24/1997)

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