Pressure on Arafat to Produce

The pitfalls in Yasser Arafat’s vow of a cease-fire were in full view at the funeral Sunday of the Abu Obeid brothers.

Heavily armed gunmen attending the rites here said they had not been told to stop shooting. Mourners chanted that the blood of martyrs will not be wasted. And one of Arafat’s key lieutenants similarly scoffed at the idea of a cease-fire.

On all sides of the raging Israeli-Palestinian conflict, everyone is waiting to see what the Palestinian Authority president will do--and how Israel will react.

Under enormous U.S. and European pressure and anticipating fierce Israeli retaliation for a suicide bombing the day before, Arafat on Saturday announced a cease-fire. In the unlikely event that he pulls it off and succeeds in stopping Palestinian attacks on Israelis, the conflict could enter a new phase. Israel would finally have to talk to the Palestinians, and negotiations could resume.

If he fails, he will look weak to many, Israel might judge him irrelevant, and another spasm of escalating violence will probably follow.

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and many in his Cabinet, said Sunday that they believe Arafat’s move is tactical and not a significant shift in strategy. Israel says it will wait and see whether Arafat is serious before launching a massive military strike.

Several Palestinians said a cease-fire declared by Arafat is meaningless if it is not accompanied by political gains for the Palestinian people.

Arafat took tentative steps Sunday. He issued handwritten instructions to the heads of the dozen or more security forces that operate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip ordering a halt to shooting at Israelis from Palestinian-ruled territory. Shooting incidents were down drastically Sunday, and even Israeli officials acknowledged that the often inflammatory, anti-Israel tone of Palestinian television was less strident.

But the array of factions that joined forces in the uprising that erupted eight months ago, including Arafat’s Fatah movement and the more radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, vowed to press ahead with their struggle against Israeli occupation. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are responsible for most of the recent terror bombings, and Israel is demanding that their top militants be arrested--something that Arafat does not yet appear willing to do.

Palestinians further warned that any Israeli attack might derail efforts to calm the tensions.

So it was at the Abu Obeid funeral. The two brothers died early Sunday when their old blue Ford truck swerved on a road used by Jewish settlers outside Ramallah and crashed into a ravine. Israeli police said the crash was an accident, and they showed reporters the truck and its cracked drive shaft and axle, which had fallen off.

Palestinians, however, claimed that settlers had shot at the brothers, causing them to crash. No bullet holes were visible in the wrecked truck, but a third brother, who survived, said dizzily from his hospital bed that he had heard shooting and then lost control of the vehicle. He was speaking to an Arabic television station.

At the funeral, the truth mattered far less than granting the dead Abu Obeids the status of martyrs.

“This is the kind of cease-fire the Israelis are talking about?” demanded Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Fatah and a key militia commander. “What is the meaning of a cease-fire when there are Israelis everywhere and they can shoot anybody?”

Nasser abu Hmeid, a well-known Fatah fighter who narrowly escaped a purported Israeli assassination attempt a few weeks ago, strode to the funeral armed to the teeth. His bodyguards were sporting new M-16 assault rifles with telescopic sights.

As far as he was concerned, there is no cease-fire.

“We are all for a cease-fire, but the cease-fire we see is Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied territories and East Jerusalem,” he said. “It’s not up to Arafat. It’s up to Israel.”

This kind of resistance illustrates the difficulties faced by Arafat, who issued his cease-fire call prompted by fears that Israel was mounting airstrikes of unprecedented force against the Palestinians. Indeed, a senior Israeli security official Sunday confirmed that such an operation was in the works and was halted only when Arafat read his statement.

In the short term, Palestinian analysts say, Arafat will be able to rein in the array of formal security forces that operate in the West Bank and Gaza. Obedience from the militias of Fatah will be spottier, and Arafat’s ability to stop attacks by the most radical groups is definitely questionable, analysts say.

In the longer term, however, Arafat will not be able to persuade the majority of Palestinians to accept an end to the intifada without something to show for their efforts and sacrifice.

“His ability to sell something like this is almost zero, and his ability to actually implement it in the long run is also zero,” said Khalil Shikaki, who heads the Ramallah-based Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

The Bush administration has kept its distance from Mideast diplomacy, but Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used Sunday television talk shows to urge Sharon to show restraint in response to the suicide bombing Friday in Tel Aviv. He also called on Arafat to exert his “moral authority” to end violence.

“If he uses that authority to tell people that this is not the way to go about finding a political solution to our problems, that would carry great weight. I know that’s also what the Israeli side is looking for, the whole international community is looking for,” Powell said.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.