Skepticism Greets U.S. Mideast Envoy

Israelis and Palestinians were skeptical Monday that retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the latest U.S. envoy to wade into the Mideast conflict, will succeed in halting 14 months of bloodshed.

Zinni arrived to find Israel on a high security alert and violence surging in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The militant Islamic organization Hamas is threatening to avenge Israel’s killing of its military chief in the West Bank. Over the weekend, Palestinians fired mortar shells at Jewish settlements in Gaza, and Israel retaliated by launching airstrikes against Palestinian security offices.

Tensions were exacerbated by a suicide bombing at the Israeli-controlled Erez checkpoint at the northern end of Gaza on Monday. Tayseer Ajrami, a 26-year-old tailor, strapped explosives to his body and blew himself up just hours before Zinni arrived in Jerusalem. Two border police officers were injured.

In a note he left behind, Ajrami said he was avenging the deaths of five Gaza schoolchildren killed last week when they stumbled across a bomb planted by Israeli special forces in a spot the army said was used by Palestinian gunmen.

Zinni, the retired head of the U.S. Central Command, brought Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, veteran peace negotiator Aaron Miller, and instructions from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to broker a cease-fire that will stick.

In a development that may give Zinni’s mission at least a slight boost, the Israeli army said today that it withdrew its troops from Jenin, the last of six West Bank towns the army moved into in October after Palestinians assassinated a Cabinet minister. The army spokesman said troops and tanks were pulled back from Jenin to nearby positions that interim peace accords designate as Israeli-controlled.

Zinni has two things going for him that previous envoys did not, said Philip C. Wilcox, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington think tank. One is Powell’s Nov. 19 policy speech in Louisville, Ky., “which articulated the U.S. position and the need for peace more precisely,” said Wilcox, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem.

The second, he said, “is that Zinni is a prominent, brilliant soldier-diplomat who knows the Middle East very well.”

In the week since Powell announced he was sending the 58-year-old Zinni to secure the cease-fire that CIA Director George J. Tenet thought he had arranged in June, Israeli politicians and commentators have engaged in intense speculation about him. Most of it revolves around where his sympathies lie and how much clout he has within the Bush administration.

“I am skeptical” about Zinni’s chances of success, said Danny Naveh, a Cabinet minister without portfolio, “because American administration officials more senior than Zinni--with all due respect for Gen. Zinni--have already been here. The U.S. secretary of State himself was here, as well as the CIA chief.”

Israeli and Palestinian leaders, analysts said, are accustomed to negotiating with heads of state and their foreign secretaries. Zinni, an unknown to both sides, will have to prove that the administration is serious about wanting a halt to the violence that has claimed more than 900 lives and threatens to derail the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition.

One strength Zinni brings, analysts in Washington said, is that his appointment is open-ended.

“In comparison to Tenet and Burns, Zinni has no time limitations,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “He doesn’t have a day job. He can stay out there until the parties achieve something. . . . That is the biggest innovation.”

Some Israeli officials fear that Zinni will sympathize with the Palestinians because of his stint with the Central Command and his close ties to many Arab governments.

The Central Command oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast and Central Asia, stretching from Somalia to Kazakhstan. It does not include Israel, which is assigned to the European Command.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans an all-out effort to win Zinni over to the view that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is not a fit partner for peace. Sharon intends to escort Zinni on a helicopter tour of Israel today.

The prime minister has ordered the defense establishment to take the U.S. envoy on other field tours and give him intelligence briefings bolstering Israel’s allegations that Arafat and his security forces are directly involved in attacks on Israelis. He appointed retired Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan, known for his hawkish views, to head Israel’s negotiating team.

Palestinians want Zinni to see the hardships imposed on civilians by Israel’s policies of road closures, sieges and military strikes.

“We do not want new American ideas, but a solid stance to stop the aggression and implement the agreements,” Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo told a news conference Sunday.

Analysts here said each side will focus more on persuading Zinni that the other is to blame for the failure to achieve a true cease-fire than on ways to make a cease-fire work.

The envoy’s toughest task may be convincing each side that it can stop the shooting without handing the other side a victory.

Sharon still insists on seven days free of attacks as a condition for taking the first steps toward restarting the negotiations that an international panel headed by former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell recommended last spring.

Arafat continues to resist demands from Israel, the European Union and the U.S. administration that he round up Palestinian militants, disarm militias and recommit himself to settling disputes with Israel only at a negotiating table.

“It is questionable whether Zinni has anything to work with in either Sharon or Arafat,” said Joseph Alpher, an Israeli strategic analyst. “I don’t discern a genuine strategy in Sharon or Arafat for either winning this struggle or making peace.”

However, Alpher noted, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III had even less to work with when he pushed Israelis and Palestinians into attending the Madrid peace conference in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Then, too, a right-wing leader--Yitzhak Shamir--was prime minister of Israel.

Shamir wanted nothing to do with the Palestine Liberation Organization and set stiff conditions for Israel’s participation in the conference. But he attended, eventually opening the door for Israel’s recognition of the PLO and signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993.

“If this administration gets really serious, it could force the parties to communicate better, it could create a new dynamic, which is what Baker did,” Alpher said.

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Curtius reported from Jerusalem and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.