Big and small bangs, Thursday, December 15, 2005

But that’s not all that has begun changing on the political scene. An Israel Radio poll released this morning showed Binyamin Netanyahu and Silvan Shalom are now in a neck and neck race for the party leadership, with the gap between them smaller than the margin of error in the poll. Thus the big bang continues to reverberate – even though the polls are now notoriously unreliable ever since Amir Peretz set off the bang with his surprise win over Shimon Peres in the Labor Party leadership race last month.

And speaking of big bangs and their reverberations, Israel took the unusual step last night of allowing jailed Marwan Barghouti to speak with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as the two tried to work out a Fateh list both could agree on for the January elections in the PA: the reason for the urgent call was a decision made earlier in the evening for Barghouti, followed by Mohammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and a host of ‘younger generation’ politicians associated with Fateh, to form a breakaway party called Future, in which the oldtimers and hangers on from the Tunis-era of Fateh are nowhere to be found, replaced by younger Fateh leaders from the territories who want Barghouhti as prime minister and their representatives in the Palestinian parliament.

The Barghouti candidacy is not merely curious because he is serving five life sentences for murder in Israeli prison. He is leading the Future Party list – but Abbas also placed the popular Barghouti as the number one on the Fateh list. In effect, as of right now, Barghouti is running as the leader of two lists in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Barghouti’s wife presented the Future list to the Palestinian Election Commission last night, but there is talk – including the phone call personally approved by Prie Minister Ariel Sharon last night – of Barghouti and Abbas working out a joint list that both can accept. Fateh desperately needs to present a united front against Hamas, which can only gain from a split in the ruling Palestinian party. The Palestinians, by the way, are convinced that Barghouti will soon be released from prison to take up his role in Palestinian politics. That’s not likely, however, if at all, until after the Israeli elections. despite changing moods in the Israeli electorate, it would be a politically dangerous move for Sharon before the elections in Israel to apply the political pressure that will have to be applied on President Katsav to issue a clemency order for Barghouti.

Meanwhile, the Israeli defense establishment was publicly proud of a ‘pinpoint prevention’ yesterday that killed four Islamic Jihad men on their way in an explosives laden car to the Karny Junction, where the IDF says they planned to blow up the car and themselves. In another attempt, the air force appeared to target a leader of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee, a mostly southern Gaza group identified with the Samahanda clan, which for years controlled the smuggling routes between Gaza and Egypt. Since they were not invited to the Cairo talks that led to the tahadiye (lull) in fighting, the PRC has emerged as a rogue player in Palestinian politics. The target, one Amar Karmout, was not at home when the rockets struck his Beit Laqhiya house. The IDF later said the attack was against a weapons storehouse, not Karmout personally. Also struck by Israel Air Force attacks yesterday in Gaza was an Islamic Jihad spokesman, lightly wounded in a Gaza City missile attack. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has give orders for harsh responses to any firing of Qassams or mortars at Israeli communities in the Negev, which are now in range of Palestinian rockets. And in the West Bank, troops uncovered a weapons cache containing more than 100 kilos of explosives – and a Qassam-like rocket. One of Israel’s greatest worries is Qassams reaching the West Bank and launched at Ben Gurion International Airport.

And in another development, the Israelis caved into American pressure and will start allowing ‘bus convoys’ between Gaza and the West Bank (thought apparently not yet in the other direction. Kadima politician – and deputy defense minister – Ze’ev Boim said today Israel should have ‘resisted American pressure’ because it is a mistake to open the route. But it’s his boss, Ariel Sharon, who made the decision.

The Israelis are said to be planning to begin with five buses, carrying 250 Palestinians, and accompanied by a police escort as the buses transverse the Negev to the Tarkumiya junction south of Hebron. The Palestinians on board will obviously be veted by the Shin Bet and searched before boarding the bus in Gaza. Israel is careful to avoid using the term ‘safe passage,’ because it is an Oslo-era term, and was supposed to involve many more than five buses a day.

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