Assassination theories, Thursday, September 08, 2005

This is what happens when the same medical report is read by two different sets of eyes: The New York Times reporter in Jerusalem, seeing the medical report on the cause of Yasser Arafat’s death, rules out AIDS or poisoning, and refers only to an infection of unknown origins. Haaretz and Israel Radio, whose reporters Amos Harel and Avi Issacharof, respectively, saw the same report, apparently with the same source, headlined their respective media with ‘Arafat died of AIDS or poisoning.’ Army Radio was quoting the New York Times – but one suspects that has more to do with competition with Israel Radio than with any deliberate decision that the Times report might be more accurate than the Haaretz-Israel Radio report.

Given the state of anarchy in Gaza, less than a week before the Israeli army departs and announces it has ended its 38-year occupation of the much maligned Strip, one wonders whether anyone really cares at this point how Arafat died.

Much more pressing an issue is can PA President Mahmoud Abbas somehow come to grips with the fact that his government’s security services seem rudderless – willing to make an effort as long as it doesn’t mean risking their lives.

The reports from Gaza are saying that the estimated 100 armed men who took over one of the most prominent residential areas in Gaza City on Tuesday night, pulled Moussa Arafat (the late chairman’s cousin) out of his home and assassinated him in the street with no fewer than 23 bullets, were from Hamas. Hamas denies it. Other reports say it was the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), a semi-criminal organization controlled by the Samahanda clan of southern Gaza, which has also denied it was responsible. What is evident, if not openly declared, is that the 100 intimidated the police stationed on the street to step aside – or maybe had their cooperation for the operation. Indeed, some reports indicate that it was troops from one of the rival security forces that Arafat had alienated while he was head of security for a while after his cousin’s death last November, who were behind the assassination. Nobody is pointing fingers directly, but it has been suggested that there was something particularly coincidental about Mohammad Dahlan, laid up with back pains in a Jordanian hospital for weeks, suddenly recovering enough to go home to Gaza the day after Moussa Arafat was killed.

So, Abbas is said to have canceled his planned trip to the UN General Assembly next week, presumably to coordinate efforts to capture those responsible for the assassination of Moussa Arafat, a man generally considered very powerful and very corrupt, with far more enemies than allies, a symbol of the cronyist-nepotist management style that Yasser Arafat, the perpetual revolutionary, brought to Gaza and the West Bank via the Oslo accords.

But the question is not whether those arrests can be made or will be made. The question now facing Abbas and his administration is whether he has the political strength to order the Palestinian security forces to challenge the armed groups. Can he order the stick as well as the carrot?

Until now, he has been using a carrot approach – join the PA security services, he’s been telling groups such as the PRC, knowing full well that the Samahanda clan’s interests are much more tied to the black marketeering derived from the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Sinai, than to what still are abstract ideas about self-government for the Palestinians.

But as of next week, self-government for the Palestinians in Gaza at least will become much closer to the reality. True, there is still no final deal on how exactly the border crossings will work, but as of next week, the Israelis know full well that at least one border passage between Gaza and Egypt will have to be free of any Israeli intervention for the world to recognize an end to the occupation. That was the point of the unilateral disengagement from the start. The Egyptians, Palestinians and Israelis are still working on new border crossing arrangements.

Sharon has approved an Egyptian proposal regarding control of the Gaza-Egypt border following the pullout. Egypt will close the Rafah border terminal for six months of repairs as soon as Israel leaves. During this time, people and goods will enter Gaza through the Israeli terminals at Kerem Shalom and Nitzana, respectively. When the repairs are completed, people will cross through Rafah, under the supervision of European border inspectors, while Israeli inspectors will keep tabs on that traffic via cameras. Goods will continue to come through Nitzana, or possibly Kerem Shalom, allowing Gaza to remain in a customs union with Israel. Thus, for the first time, Israel accepted internationalization for the supervision of Gaza's borders. It’s a precedent that could have far-reaching implications both for immediate issues like the Gaza sea and airports and perhaps in the West Bank, where the focus for Palestinian liberation from Israeli occupation will surely move within weeks.

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