A Few Gunshots Deliver Arafat to a True Crossroads

Just when U.S. efforts to calm bloody Israeli-Palestinian waters seemed to be paying off, the first-ever assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister by Palestinian gunmen threatens to hurl the region into new and dangerous chaos.

After more than a year, the daily drama of death and destruction had fallen unusually quiet. Shootings had dropped off precipitously in the last few days, Israel pulled back several tanks and roadblocks, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, remarkably, floated the idea Tuesday night of renewing talks with the Palestinians.

By Wednesday morning, however, any hopes of progress were destroyed. U.S. and European diplomats who have been coaxing Israel and the Palestinians to heed a cease-fire were suddenly and urgently seeking to prevent a headlong crash into all-out war.

“Everything has changed,” a stunned Sharon told an emergency meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, three hours after Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi was shot dead in a hotel corridor. “The situation is different today, and it will not be like it was yesterday.”

“It’s as if, somehow, history was being determined not by rational choices but by a series of acts perpetrated by people on the fringes, who nevertheless affect the course of events,” said Sari Nusseibeh, a respected Palestinian philosopher and president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.

The killing of Zeevi, an ultranationalist icon of Israel’s hard right, puts competing pressures on both Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. No small part of this comes from the Bush administration, which has sought to silence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Washington leads a coalition to war against Afghanistan-based terrorist suspects.

The assassination may prove a turning point toward disaster, analysts and diplomats said, or toward new actions, especially by the Palestinians, that could ultimately ease tensions.

The initial focus is on Arafat, who is at a true crossroads, diplomats say.

On Wednesday, he received warnings from enemies and allies alike that he must capture and punish or extradite those who claimed responsibility for the assassination: the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which said it was acting to avenge Israel’s assassination of PFLP leader Mustafa Zibri in August.

Even before Wednesday, Israeli and U.S. officials were demanding that Arafat crack down decisively on militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for most of the suicide bombings that have killed dozens of Jews in the last year. Eager to curry Washington’s favor, Arafat made efforts, however minimal, ordering Palestinian factions to halt attacks on Israelis.

Confronting the PFLP will be a more complicated endeavor for Arafat. Unlike the Islamic groups, the Front belongs to Arafat’s own Palestine Liberation Organization, where it ranks second only to Arafat’s Fatah movement in popularity.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, unique among Israeli officials in his pursuit of peace talks with Arafat, warned that if the Palestinian leader does not act this time, “everything will go up in flames.”

It may be Arafat’s only way to salvage his authority in the face of Israeli wrath. But any attempt to arrest Palestinian militants will probably be met with violent resistance.

Last weekend, for example, Palestinian police in the Gaza Strip who were trying to arrest a radical Islamic imam from Hamas were driven back by stone-throwing crowds, Palestinian sources said.

Making it even more difficult for Arafat to take on his own people, Israel in the last year has slain dozens of Palestinian militants, political operatives and bystanders as part of a policy of “targeted killings” that Palestinians and international human rights groups see as extrajudicial assassinations.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special envoy to the region, met twice Wednesday with Arafat to urge him to act or face dire consequences. He said he thought Arafat understood that the Zeevi assassination was “extremely damaging to the Palestinian cause” and that he would have to arrest the culprits and prove himself capable of leading and controlling his people.

“That test is now,” said Roed-Larsen, who is generally considered friendly to the Palestinians. “Words are not enough. This has to be followed by deeds.”

Late Wednesday, Israeli radio reported that the Palestinian Authority had arrested a PFLP militant, Ali Jaradat, after he bragged about the assassination on Arabic radio stations. But the faction’s deputy secretary-general, Abdul Rahim Mallouh, was defiant in an appearance on Al Jazeera satellite television. He said he was confident that Arafat had “enough political wisdom” not to attempt to clamp down on fellow Palestinians.

Sharon faces another set of pressures. U.S. diplomats are urging him to exercise restraint while much of his own nation is demanding swift, crushing action against the Palestinian Authority.

In his initial response, Sharon froze diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians and reimposed the stifling closures on Palestinian towns and villages that were just beginning to be relaxed two days ago. He vowed still-unspecified military retaliation, and this morning, tanks and troops were moving in or around the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Jenin. There were some reports of a few shells fired, but no reported injuries.

Arafat also will be banned from using the Palestinian airport in the Gaza Strip. This would force him to leave home only by land--and through Israeli checkpoints.

Government ministers and several politicians from the right echoed Sharon in speaking of a “new reality” with no holds barred in the “war on terror.” They likened the shift to Sept. 11 for Americans, when terrorist attacks altered the United States’ sense of well-being and safety.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to challenge Sharon for leadership of the right-wing Likud Party, said the Zeevi slaying proved that “either we crush the forces of terror, or they crush us.”

Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, another hard-liner, gave Arafat until Wednesday night to arrest and turn over the guilty parties or “all bets are off.”

From the Israeli left, there were words of caution. Yossi Sarid, head of the opposition Meretz Party, repeatedly reminded Israelis that the last similar attack--the 1982 attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to London--gave then-Defense Minister Sharon a pretext for invading Lebanon.

“We must stop, take a deep breath, wait for a day, comprehend the trauma, hold the funeral, and only then think long and hard about where we go from here,” said Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, Israel’s deputy defense minister and daughter of Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated by a Jewish ultranationalist in 1995.