To more secular audiences he offered a possible argument for the conditional or temporary nature of his commitments by addressing them in the context of the "Strategy of Stages" for the Liberation of Palestine, as endorsed by the PNC in 1974.

References to the 1974 decision to establish a "Palestinian Authority" on any piece of land Israel would withdraw from were made by Arafat both on the White house lawn in September 1993, and on the occasion of the first session of the P.A. Legislative Council in March 1996 (Al-Ayyam, March 8, 1996).

This instrumental view of the commitment to non-violent means, central as this commitment may have been to the entire process, was shared by Arafat's lieutenants.

In a speech (documented on video) to a forum in Nablus in January 1996 -- again, at a time when the negotiations were going forward -- Nabil Sha'ath described the strategy in terms which then sounded unrealistic, but now ring familiar:

"We decided to liberate our homeland step-by-step... Should Israel continue -- no problem. And so, we honor the peace treaties and nonviolence... if and when Israel says 'enough'... in that case it is saying that we will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom... If we reach a dead end we will go back to our war and struggle like we did forty years ago".

Following the change of government in Israel, and three weeks before the actual outbreak of violence over the opening of the Western Wall tunnel in Jerusalem, a senior Palestinian Officer -- Muhammad Dahlan, the Head of "Preventive Security" in Gaza and currently complicit in the license given to terrorist activity there -- warned (Al-Hayyat, September 2, 1996) that a return to the armed struggle, with the active participation of the P.A. forces, cannot be ruled out in view of the impasse in the process.

In the wake of the "Tunnel" events (referred to by the Palestinians as the "al-Aqsa Campaign"), Arafat spoke at the Dhaisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, and again stressed the continuous nature of the Palestinian Jihad ("we know only one word...") and the fact that "All the options are open"....

More recently -- to some extent, under the influence of what was perceived as the "victory" of Hizbullah in Lebanon -- references to the violent option proliferated, and indeed the training of children for the armed struggle was deliberately used -- during the Camp David Summit -- as a hint of what was to come if Palestinian demands were not met.

As the present crisis unfolded, it was Nabil Sha'ath again who offered an explanation as to what Arafat had meant when he said that "All the options are open": in an interview with ANN television in London (October 7, 2000) he reminded his interlocutor that "No one believed him when he used to say it...[but] The choice is not at all between options of negotiation and fighting: you can have negotiations and fight at the same time" (as did the Algerians and the Vietnamese). Hence, "the Palestinian people fight with weapons, with jihad, with Intifada and suicide actions... and it is destined to always fight and negotiate at the same time."

Specific aspects of non-compliance

The issues listed below are by no means exhaustive. They do, however, prove that the rationale for non-compliance, as presented above, actually led to a repeated pattern of abuse, misconduct and outright violence on the part of the P.A.

In this respect, the current crisis does mark a watershed. It has been preceded by previous "eruptions," including the "Tunnel" Crisis of September 1996, and the short-lived "Nakba" events in May 2000. Nevertheless, nothing in previous P.A. practice resembles the collapse of all existing commitments, and the systematic creation -- day by day, week by week -- of an atmosphere of raw emotions, fear and hatred, in pursuit of a general Palestinian and Pan-Arab mobilization.

All of this is not only in breach of the clearly stated commitments offered at the beginning of the Oslo process, but also in obvious, at times blatant, rejection of the understandings reached at the recent Sharm al-Sheikh Summit. The overwhelming pattern of disregard for both written and informal understandings (overt or otherwise), and in particular the use of an illegally armed militia -- answerable to Arafat -- in a Low-Intensity Conflict masked as "popular protest" or an "Intifada," all confirm that from a Palestinian point of view, the new dynamics of the "struggle" -- and of the call for Arab and international intervention -- take precedence over "pacta sunt servanda."

Beyond the current state of warfare, Palestinian non-compliance encompasses broad aspects of everyday practice, from school texts to car theft. Some (not all) of these are discussed here.

Direct Use of Violence

Clearly, the most obvious breach of the Palestinian commitments involves the direct participation of its armed forces -- the Palestinian "Police" (in effect, Arafat's regular army) and the various Security organs -- in armed clashes with the I.D.F. or in attacks on Israeli citizens.

The pattern evident in the current crisis had already been established in 1996, when Palestinian policemen played a major role in the extensive clashes that left 15 Israeli soldiers dead; in effect, they acted as a fighting force -- even in places where only hours earlier some of them participated in the Joint Patrols with the I.D.F., according to the Interim Agreement.

In the recent crisis, the role of the regular Palestinian forces has been somewhat more ambiguous in line with Arafat's interest in keeping his hand half-hidden, and using mainly his militia forces -- the Fatah "Tanzim" or cadres -- in the firefights and attacks on

[(Continued on p.7)]

Outpost               - 6 -               December 2000