Meanwhile, the hudna vs non-hudna factions seem to be splitting apart in the West Bank. The IDF just reported terror attacks for July: 167, down from over 300 in June. Not so much of a hudna, none at all if any of the three intercepted suicide bombers of last week had managed to go 'boom'.
No 'hudna' in Jenin
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
The leaders of Fatah and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin never received orders to observe the unilaterally declared hudna (cease-fire) from the only authority that matters - Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat - the two said Wednesday.
The remarks confirm concerns for both Israel and the PA that, should violence once again break out, it would be the terrorists of this northern West Bank city who will light the first spark. They also cast doubt on Arafat's commitment to the tenuous cease-fire.
"Neither I nor Zakariya received orders from Arafat to make a cease-fire with the Israelis," said Atta Abu Rumeyli, the Fatah leader in the Jenin refugee camp and one of the city's strongmen. Abu Rumeyli was referring to Zakariya Zubeidi, chief of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank.
"Arafat," Abu Rumeyli continued, "does not believe the struggle should end. We have to continue to fight for our land."
Fatah's Jenin organization was surprisingly disbanded on Tuesday night, and many of its fighters were incorporated into the renegade Aksa Martyrs Brigades northern division, which is headed by Zubeidi.
Effective Tuesday night at 9 p.m., the Fatah political branch ceased to exist in Jenin. Disbanding the group, the leading and most veteran Palestinian organization in the territories, was engineered to "escalate the situation with the Palestinian Authority," Abu Rumeyli said.
He slammed the PA leadership for cowing to Israeli and American pressure, adding that PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's "weak-kneed" approach in his trip to Washington this week sealed Fatah's fate.
"Fatah as a political unit no longer exists here," he declared, waving his hands in front of his chest. "Now there is only the military way. Members of Fatah can now join Aksa."
Zubeidi has refused all calls for the hudna because "this truce does nothing for our people," he said. "What, should we throw roses at the Israeli tanks when they come into our city?"
He states with pride that his group is responsible for the bulk of the hudna violations in the past month, including half a dozen shootings in the northern section of the West Bank.
Zubeidi claims each attack was a direct response to Israeli operations against Palestinians.
The charismatic 27-year-old Zubeidi, who fancies himself as something akin to a Palestinian Robin Hood, stumbled wounded out of the April 2002 battle in the Jenin refugee camp and emerged a local legend.
One of the IDF's most wanted men, Zubeidi - who always carries two cellphones and a glinting silver Smith and Wesson pistol hooked onto his belt - owes his survival to the support of locals who shelter him.
"I consider any person who gives me a loaf of bread an Aksa fighter," said Zubeidi, whose face is peppered with black scars suffered from a grenade explosion during the battle.
One would think that Zubeidi, who scurries from hideout to hideout, would appreciate the quiet afforded by the hudna. But the tall, slim terrorist believes that the violence will resume with ferocity once the hudna ends.
"So why wait?" he asks.
The fissure between leaders in Ramallah and Jenin is widening, with each side sniping at the other. According to the Jenin leaders, many Palestinians now recognize two streams of Fatah. The first is the Arafat stream, which continues to support the "struggle." The second consists of the reformers - or, as the Jenin militants call them, the "politicians" - those too willing to concede to Israeli demands.
Zubeidi and Abu Rumeyli stopped just short of calling the later group traitorous.
"These two [groups]," said Zubeidi, "are doing nothing to achieve the national rights of our people."
Zubeidi was not nearly as generous to Jenin Governor Haider Irsheid last week, when he abducted the PA appointee and accused him of corruption - lining his own pockets with funds earmarked for the rehabilitation of the refugee camp - and collaboration with Israel.
Only a direct call from Arafat spared the terrified Irsheid, who fled the city immediately after the incident, leaving it with no active PA government control. Arafat appointed Ramadan Bata to replace Irsheid on Tuesday but Aksa gunmen, who don't like Bata either, vowed to bar him from the city as well.
While PA chiefs in Ramallah dismiss Zubeidi and Abu Rumeyli as radicals carelessly rattling their sabers in a far-flung town, the Jenin leaders repeatedly reject them.
Abu Rumeyli, considered the city's strongman and the de facto mayor of the refugee camp, rebuffed PA Minister of State Muhammad Dahlan recently: "I told him, 'Unless you get wide concessions from Israel, don't come.'"
Zubeidi also claimed that Dahlan sent him NIS 50,000 "to keep quiet, but I refused."
"I did take the money and spread it among the people of the refugee camp," Zubeidi said. "Better they have it than the corrupt [Palestinian] politicians," he said.
While a PA source found the claims "extremely difficult to believe," he admitted that the PA had made initial moves two weeks ago to incorporate men from the Aksa Martyrs Brigades and Tanzim into the PA, which includes paying their salaries. "What theses guys say to the press, and what they say behind close doors, is quiet different," said the source.
He called the mutiny "a problem if the situation continues to be like today," yet he reckoned when Aksa views the "changes on the ground, they will find it hard to reject the hudna when most Palestinians overwhelmingly support it."
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