Arafat’s Intent, Influence Being Called Into Question

The unending debate over Yasser Arafat turns on the questions of his willingness and ability to halt the gun and bomb attacks by Palestinians that so terrorize Israeli civilians.

Despite a position drastically weakened in recent months, the Palestinian Authority president retains enormous influence and often calls the shots. But he is also battling internal power struggles that shape his course of action.

In blaming Arafat for a suicide bombing Thursday, the second in two days, the Israeli government accused him of “exclusive responsibility” for yet another attack in a wave of violence that has killed about 115 Jews in the first 80 days of the year. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the deadly blast.

In the Israeli view, a news report that the assailant was a former police officer who had been in Palestinian Authority custody just last week, and that Palestinian officials were aware he had terrorism on the mind, bolsters the case of Arafat’s complicity.

Israeli government and military intelligence officials don’t allege that Arafat specifically ordered the bombing. Instead, they say, he creates and feeds a climate in which such actions are encouraged. He instigates and gives a green light. He has failed to expressly prohibit attacks, except when, as in a televised Arabic-language statement Thursday night, he comes under enormous U.S. pressure to do so.

“Arafat never gives his people instructions,” a senior Israeli intelligence official said. “He says everything in four languages, [but] his people understand exactly what he means and what he wants to do.”

Palestinians counter that it is Israel’s heavy-handed military actions, raids and economic and physical blockades more than Arafat’s statements in praise of martyrdom, or anything else he has said, that swell the ranks of suicide bombers and snipers.

The attacks, they say, come from rage and revenge.

“I’ve never seen this amount of people ready to die” for the Palestinian cause, Arafat advisor Marwan Kanafani said Friday. “It is becoming extremely difficult for the authority to convince people to lay down their weapons, cool down their activities and stop resisting while Israel continues its aggression. They feel like all the obligations are on the Palestinians’ shoulders, and that is more surrender than cease-fire.”

Judging Arafat’s role and responsibility has become more complicated in the last year and a half of vicious fighting. About 1,500 people have died, about three-quarters of them Palestinians. Palestinian militias have grown more powerful, and their leaders have gained in stature, to the point where some are mentioned as potential rivals or successors to Arafat, who is 72.

Top Lieutenant Contradicts Arafat

On Thursday night, even as Arafat went on Palestinian television to condemn the bombing in Jerusalem and call for an end to such attacks, his top lieutenant was doing the opposite.

Marwan Barghouti, a stout, fiery militant and the most popular leader of Fatah in the West Bank, spoke to the far more widely viewed Al Jazeera television network. He justified Thursday’s suicide bombing as a “response against Israeli massacres” and blasted U.S. diplomatic moves in the region, which he said were “doomed to failure.”

“We are confident that our people and our fighters will find the short path to the end of the Israeli occupation,” he said.

Barghouti, who has periodically defied Arafat, today ranks as, arguably, the most influential Palestinian in the West Bank. Israeli officials accuse Barghouti of having played a role in dozens of Israeli deaths.

As Barghouti’s profile has risen, so has that of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The underground militia has taken the lead in the war that Palestinians are waging against Israeli occupation and has staged some of the most brazen attacks yet. The Bush administration has added the militia’s name to its list of terrorist organizations.

The brigade is made up of numerous cells formed and operating locally in Palestinian towns and refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All offer nominal allegiance, though not total obedience, to Arafat and the Fatah leadership. But they appear to share little operational coordination, and cells carry out bombings and ambushes with a fair amount of autonomy.

How much control does Arafat have over Al Aqsa?

The fact that the Bush administration is declaring Al Aqsa a terrorist organization while continuing to deal with Arafat suggests that the Americans do not believe that the Palestinian leader has a direct command-and-control relationship with the militia.

“You can certainly connect the dots from the Al Aqsa brigades to Arafat, but it’s not the same thing as saying the brigades are mainstream Fatah,” a Western official said. Declaring Al Aqsa a terrorist organization “can be seen as a warning to Arafat, but not an ipso facto condemnation.”

Even among Israeli officials, there is disagreement over the extent of Arafat’s control over the militia. Intelligence officials suggest that Arafat’s authority is often subsumed to that of Barghouti and Fatah militias. Arafat, whom Israel had confined to his Ramallah headquarters for months, has lost touch with the reality of the larger West Bank and Gaza Strip, these analysts say.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disagrees: Barghouti and the militias would obey Arafat’s orders to stop attacking Israelis, Sharon says, if only Arafat would say the word, and mean it.

The militias “are part of Arafat’s flesh and blood,” said Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin. “Arafat wants to wave two flags: one, the banner of terror to pressure Israel for concessions, because he thinks negotiating under fire is the best way to gain results, and two, the flag of negotiations and peace to try to mend fences with the United States.”

Some of the emerging Al Aqsa leaders cut their teeth on the first intifada, when Palestinians rose up against Israeli military occupation from 1987 to 1993; many were hardened in Israeli jails, and some are little more than common criminals who now have an armed following.

It is not yet clear whether these fighters will submit to any cease-fire that Arafat declares. On Friday, one of the commanders, Naser Oweis, vowed to continue “our armed resistance . . . on the path of martyrdom.” And they will certainly resist being disarmed, a requirement of the CIA-drafted truce plan that the Palestinians and Israelis are negotiating.

Security Forces Left Dispirited

Col. Jibril Rajoub, the head of security for the West Bank and one of Arafat’s principal enforcers, told a Palestinian newspaper this week that the Al Aqsa fighters were embarked on a “noble” cause. He said he wouldn’t try to disarm them.

In fact, it is not at all certain that the Palestinian security forces have the resources or wherewithal to enforce anything. Israel has repeatedly bombarded police stations, jails and outposts and killed dozens of police officers, leaving Arafat’s security forces as angry and dispirited as most other Palestinians.

As Israel continues to question whether Arafat really has any interest in a cease-fire--a question that Palestinians also ask about Sharon--Arafat is pointedly not speaking out against attacks on Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

What Arafat is demanding--in his television appearance Thursday, and again in a meeting overnight with leaders of various Palestinian factions--is a halt to attacks on Israeli civilians inside Israel.

And on that singular point, Arafat couldn’t gain complete agreement in the meeting with faction leaders, according to two participants. Throughout the reportedly stormy session, as Arafat argued that Palestinian national interests would be best served by stopping attacks, one man remained notably silent: Barghouti.