Israel Needs Arafat as Ally in a Showdown With Hamas : Palestinian leader’s words must be backed by deeds

Prime Minister Shimon Peres vows that Israel will move against “the Hamas infrastructure in every possible place, and with every means at our disposal” in answer to the series of terrorist atrocities for which the radical Palestinian Islamic group says it is responsible. But the all-out war that the politically beleaguered Peres promises an Israeli populace left grieving, anxious and outraged by the indiscriminate suicidal bombing attacks on civilians can only be waged effectively if Israel has committed allies. Its indispensable partner must be Yasser Arafat. That is a responsibility that the man who would be not merely the leader of a semiautonomous Palestinian entity but the president of an independent state can no longer evade.

Arafat has signaled that he is ready at last for a definitive showdown with Hamas, but here more urgently than ever is an instance where deeds must unambiguously give force to words. It will take political guts to crack down on Hamas, which has a substantial activist minority of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank behind it. It has cemented its popular support not just with acts of terrorism that some Palestinans perversely laud as noble deeds of war, but with a network of social services and an image of incorruptibility that contrasts starkly with the high-living, pocket-lining reputation that for so long has clung to those closest to Arafat.

Hamas represents those Palestinians who still believe Israel’s very existence is an intolerable affront and who embrace the notion that only through violence can full Palestinian political aspirations and national purity be achieved. Arafat must act in behalf of those Palestinians who have had enough of conflict and killing, and whose greatest longing is for normal, peaceful and productive lives.

Israel’s national election is now less than three months away. The dominance in the polls enjoyed by Peres and his Labor Party in the aftermath of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination last November has collapsed in the wake of the Hamas terror spree. An electoral victory by the right-wing Likud would, at a minimum, indefinitely freeze the peace process with the Palestinians and probably bring peace talks with Syria to a stop. Arafat knows that. So does Hamas.

Likud has long taken pleasure in twitting Labor for relying on the parliamentary votes of Israeli Arabs to hold on to its majority. There is now at least an even chance--and the odds may be tilting further every day--that Likud’s return to power could be propelled by the bombs of Hamas fanatics.

Israel says that it is ready to carry its war against Hamas into Arafat-controlled territory, even if that violates the accord underlying the peace process. How soon? Maybe immediately, but more likely only if it concludes that Arafat is incapable or unwilling to take on the fanatics who pose a mortal threat not to Israel, but to what the Palestinians in the last few years have moved so close to achieving. Given the mood in Israel, Arafat may have very little time left to show what he can do.