ARAFAT KEPT SAFE BY SHARON PLEDGE, EVEN AFTER HORRIFIC SLAUGHTER
by DEBKAfile 28 March 2002
"Many thousands of police and troops spent the first day of the Passover festival patrolling the streets and synagogues of Jerusalem on a high alert that never ends. After the outrage in Netanyas Park Hotel cut short the Passover Seder Wednesday, March 27, the men in uniform can only pray for eyes in the back of their heads. In the last two days, Jerusalem has been saved a succession of major terror strikes by security vigilance, including an all-out attack on the main city mall at Malha, to which most shoppers have been driven by the massacres in downtown Jerusalem. Wednesday morning, a Red Crescent ambulance from Nablus was stopped between Ramallah and Jerusalem at one of the many Israeli roadblocks protecting the capital. The driver looked nervous. When challenged, he revealed the bomb belt hidden under a stretcher.
In Netanya, Wednesday night, 20 of the 400 or so Passover celebrants sitting
round the ceremonially laid tables were murdered by a Palestinian from the
West Bank town of Tulkarm. He entered the hotels dining hall and blew
up a huge explosive charge containing the usual spikes and screws. Of the
170 injured and taken to five hospitals, not all are expected to survive.
After the horrific news filtered through, few people up and down Israel went
back to their Seder ceremonies. Most switched on television and radio and
stayed glued to their sets.
By Thursday morning there was no official word from the Israeli government
on a reaction to the Netanya slaughter. A senior security source
was quoted as saying that the suicide terrorist had murdered the truce-seeking
process. Most Israelis have long lost hope of any processes. An eve- of-festival
newspapers Wednesday carried an interview with prime minister Ariel Sharon,
in which he disclosed that the first time he met President George W. Bush
in Washington a year ago, he gave his word that he would not harm Yasser Arafat.
Today he admits he repents this promise. Yet he never went back to Bush to
say that the pledge was misplaced and must be recalled.
DEBKAfiles political sources comment that for a mistake of this magnitude,
most leaders would step down or be driven out. His pledge to the US
president has had the effect of crippling in advance any counter-terror offensive
launched by the army, security and intelligence forces. For this reason, they
are incapable of hermetically sealing off the countrys towns and streets
to suicide killers. The man who orders the killers to strike as many Israelis
as they can reach on buses, in markets, at roadblocks, army positions, highways,
hotels and villages on both side of the Green Line, enjoys immunity from punishment
from the victims own prime minister.
In these circumstances, Arafat can and does - fuel the flames of terror
at will. He is assured that Sharon is constrained from taking any effective
step to hold him back. This is a war that Israels leaders prevent its
military forces from winning.
Those sources recall that when Sharon gave Bush his solemn word not to harm
Arafat, it was only weeks after he won a national election by promising to
keep Israelis safe. He also assured them that he knew how to fight terror,
though warning it would be a lengthy war that required patience and national
unity.
These were code words to conceal his other commitments. By lengthy war, Sharon
was saying he was bound by his long-term pledge to the US president; for unity,
read his political alliance with the dovish Labor leader, Shimon Peres, which
too hinged on the promise of immunity for Yasser Arafat.
As long as that promise is kept, the Sharon government is safe from a Labor
walkout.
The call for patience can scarcely be applied any longer, for it means that
Israelis must put up with the slaughter of innocents indefinitely.
In Washington, the US President responded to the Netanya tragedy with a mantra
that sounds increasingly Clintonesque: Arafat must work harder to rein in
the terrorists.
After the Sharm el-Sheikh conference at the end of 2000, Clinton and the rest
of the world waited with baited breath for Arafat to order his people in their
own language to halt the terror. He had just signed a solemn promise to do
so at the Egyptian resort in the presence of the US and Egyptian presidents,
the king of Jordan, the UN secretary general and the European Unions
senior executive.
Exactly what happened then is happening now. Arafat, after returning to Gaza,
never made good on his promise or called off his terrorists to this
day.
Yet the Israeli prime minister continues to stand by his word to a foreign
ruler that places the well-being of an avowed enemy above that of his own
people. No wonder US secretary of state Colin Powell can declare with such
confidence that the Zinni mission will continue without fear of being gainsaid
from Jerusalem.
That appears to be so, even though Zinnis presence inhibits any Israeli
military attempt to deal with Palestinian terrorism root and branch. Above
all, it is a guarantee of Arafats continued immunity from paying the
price for the Passover slaughter."