Israelis Are Now Finding That Arafat Is Not So ‘Irrelevant’

One week after the government declared him “irrelevant,” Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is very much on the minds of the Israeli military establishment, the press and even Cabinet ministers.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office confirmed Wednesday that the head of Israel’s General Security Service, or Shin Bet, has been authorized to meet with Arafat’s security chiefs despite a Cabinet decision to sever all contacts with the Palestinian Authority.

The confirmation came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Sharon in a telephone conversation that “Israel needs to be prepared to do its part to create an environment in which Palestinians can sustain and expand their efforts,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Boucher said Powell also telephoned Arafat and told him that the Palestinians had taken “some positive actions” but that “there need to be more actions to make an effective end to violence.” Powell reportedly also demanded that regular security talks between the two sides be resumed.

The U.S. requests seemed Wednesday to be having some effect. A senior Palestinian police official in the Gaza Strip confirmed that officers arrested a dozen members of the Palestinian security forces, all from Gaza, for allegedly violating Arafat’s cease-fire order. Some of the men were also members of Fatah, the faction Arafat founded. It was the first time since fighting erupted in September 2000 that the authority has moved on members of its security forces.

Early this morning, Palestinian police surrounded a house in Gaza where a leading Hamas official, Abdulaziz Rantisi, was said to be hiding, and demanded that he surrender. According to wire reports, hundreds of Hamas activists, some armed, confronted the police, and both sides fired into the air. Israel Radio reported that three Palestinians were injured and hospitalized.

On Wednesday night, Palestinian and Israeli security officials met for three hours near Ramallah in the West Bank.

Before the meeting, a senior official in the prime minister’s office confirmed that Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter offered Palestinian security chiefs a deal earlier in the week: Israel will lift its military blockade of Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city, if they will crack down on Islamic militants there.

“We say that Arafat is irrelevant, but anyone who wants to take steps toward a cease-fire is relevant,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We said: Take Nablus, a hotbed of Hamas activists and Hamas operations, and we’ll stop all military operations in that area, we’ll pull back and let you pass troops in.”

Palestinian sources said it was unlikely that the offer would be accepted. The Palestinians are insisting on a broader withdrawal of Israeli troops and a lifting of blockades on all Palestinian towns and villages.

The significance of the offer lay in the fact that it was made despite Israel’s public declaration last week, after a series of deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis, that it will no longer rely on the Palestinian Authority to hunt down militants.

The security chiefs, Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, report directly to Arafat. In an interview with an Arabic newspaper published Wednesday, Dahlan said Arafat is supervising telephone contacts that Dahlan and other Palestinian officials are continuing with senior officials in the Israeli Foreign and Defense ministries.

“We do not hold any contacts unless there is prior approval by President Arafat, and we agree with the president on the form of response,” Dahlan said.

Confirmation of security talks overseen by Arafat and of other high-level contacts came as the Israeli media reported bleak assessments by senior security officials that the army’s campaign of assassinations and arrests of militants has not defeated Palestinian assailants and that additional devastating attacks are in the works.

“All of the anti-terror measures which we’ve implemented during the past year can be compared figuratively to trying to empty the sea by using a spoon,” one senior security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Israeli reporters Tuesday.

“It is clear to all of us,” the security official said, “that there is no military solution to terror. Nowhere in the world have such situations been solved via military action. You can reduce terror, but you certainly can’t eliminate it.” He estimated that about 400 hard-core military operatives from various Palestinian factions remain at large in Gaza, with a similar number in the West Bank.

The official asked rhetorically the question that has been debated within the Israeli security services since the Palestinian revolt erupted last year: “Is it that [Arafat] doesn’t want to do the job or is it that he can’t do the job?” A second senior official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said Arafat is still “the only Palestinian leader with whom an arrangement can be achieved.”

The published assessments provoked fury from some right-wing Cabinet ministers, who said the security establishment’s public airing of its views was inappropriate.

“Arafat is irrelevant for conducting negotiations. He is relevant as the head of the terrorist system,” Education Minister Limor Livnat said.

Labor Minister Shlomo Benizri said it was wrong of the security establishment to criticize the government in the media. “I can’t understand what is behind its change of heart,” he told the Maariv newspaper.

As the military establishment continued to parse Arafat’s actions, the political establishment closely examined his latest words. Israeli officials pounced on a speech Arafat made in Ramallah to activists Tuesday, two days after his televised demand that all factions observe a cease-fire with the Jewish state.

According to Israeli press reports, Arafat quoted a passage from the Islamic oral traditions, saying, “One shahid [martyr] in the Holy Land is worth 70 shahids anywhere else.”

“He used all the code words you use to recruit people,” said the official in the prime minister’s office. “He didn’t call on them to put down their arms. He used the old slogans, the incitement.”

The official charged that the speech was meant to incite Palestinians to carry out suicide attacks on Israelis, a charge strongly denied by Arafat’s aides. They said Arafat’s use of the allusion to martyrs--a term Palestinians apply to anyone who dies in any confrontation with Israelis--had been misinterpreted and taken out of context.

Israeli lawmaker Ahmed Tibi said the Israeli interpretation of Arafat’s words reflected “ignorance of Arabic and Islam.” Tibi, an Israeli Arab who is close to the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview that the attention devoted to Arafat is evidence of how little impact the government’s declaration that he is irrelevant has had.

“It’s very interesting that being so irrelevant, everybody talks only about him, concerning security issues as well,” Tibi said. “He is much more relevant today than at any other time. This decision [by the Israeli government] restored the international support of Arafat as the one and only elected and legitimate leader of the Palestinian people.”