Interesting development in the Mideast -- the PA press now says stop shooting. This will actually appear in Arabic.
Until now Arafat has only said "Cease fire" in English while telling his lieutenants "Kill one settler a day" in Arabic, and then going round the world asking for monitors for the "cease fire". I call this "shoot'n'whine" strategy.
To implement this strategy, Arafat needs to keep the violence on a low flame. This article may be nothing more than adjusting the flame; still, we haven't seen this before.
Of course, if Arafat had any brains at all, he would have focused on getting half a million people into the streets for peaceful demonstrations. But that's too sophisticated for him. Besides, it might encourage democracy, and nothing scares him more.
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From HaAretz:
Stop shooting, says Palestinian press
By Amira Hass
The Palestinian news agency Wafa yesterday ran a lead editorial dubbed "The Stone and the Shoe," calling for an end to the military aspects of the Intifada and attacks inside Israel, saying the Palestinians should use stones and shoes instead of weapons to challenge the Israeli occupation.
"We have to admit that no matter how many casualties we may cause the Israelis, we will not be able to win the war against them, and threatening the Europeans and the U.S. is a foolish step that will affect us negatively," says the editorial. As the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa generally reflects the thinking of the Palestinian Authority's top leadership. The editorial, signed by the "Wafa Political Editor," is expected to appear throughout the Palestinian press this morning.
"Only by political means we shall be able to achieve our goals, by the use of rocks to fight the Israelis, on the roadblocks and in the settlements, not inside Israel, and not using firearms," says the editorial.
"The Intifada did wonders," it begins, "influencing the world's public opinion, with the stone, as its major weapon, caused an historical turn and exposed the Palestinian people, as the true owners of a just right to self determination and to establishing their own independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
"And today we have to choose our slogans, words, attitudes and priorities rationally, and we should refrain from taking any hasty decisions."
The editorial praises the official Fatah leadership for renouncing a press release that threatened U.S. interests, and says "Fatah has to deal with Sharon's massacres by exposing the true Sharon and the true face of his government to the whole world, and mainly to his godfather, the U.S.A."
According to the editorial, the photographic images of Muslim protesters at Al-Aqsa last week throwing their shoes at police, "was more effective than mortar shells fired at Israeli settlements ... the stone and the shoe are doing the job, and not the mortar shells."
The article is an indication of genuine anxiety within the Palestinian leadership about a total collapse, if suicide missions in Israel draw a harsh Israeli response. Sources in the PA have been saying that the assassinations of the Hamas leaders in Nablus this week were aimed at giving the government the "excuse" to escalate the conflict, if there are any major terror attacks on Israelis. The editorial, in effect, calls on the Palestinians not to give Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that excuse.
The editorial is aimed at more than influencing the public: it is an indication of the PA's rejection of all the calls for revenge through the use of arms and explosives being heard in the territories since the Nablus attack.
It also may indicate the PA is going to take much more stringent action against armed groups. In Gaza, for example, residents report that the security apparatus in the northern part of the strip were seen preventing activists from the local resistance committees from approaching Israeli-controled areas. The article may also be a signal to Fatah not to try to imitate the Hamas.
Since the assassinations in Nablus, the slogans of the various PLO groups have converged with those of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with calls for revenge attacks both against Israeli targets in the territories and inside the Green Line. But in the PA leadership there are elements opposed to attacks in the territories as well, because it won't help the effort to enlist international support for the Palestinian cause, and indeed will do the opposite.
Some local Fatah activists say that those opposed to the military attacks inside the territories are mostly those people in the PA who arrived from Tunis, who have economic interests that are being damaged by the Intifada.
But the editorial's overall criticism of the use of firearms in the Intifada is a reflection of much of the political thinking inside the PLO, who long for a return to original Intifada - a civil uprising. |
