A critical test for Israel

[Violet_Crumble]

When four civilians are killed and 50 are wounded in the heart of the city at the height of a cease-fire and the blood is boiling, the brain becomes feverish. On the one hand, "security sources" explain that the Islamic Jihad sent the murderer to sabotage the new Abu Mazen government, and to foil its attempts to rehabilitate the political channel and increase security cooperation with Israel. On the other hand, the defense minister decides to punish the Palestinian Authority by freezing the transfer of security responsibility to them for cities in the West Bank.

There is an argument that external forces - like Syria and Iran - are responsible for fanning the flames, and that the PA "is not doing anything to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure." Has it not occurred to anyone that the reason the terror needs support from outside the PA is because public opinion back at home in the PA is tired of it? Is it so difficult to understand that the human and material resources of the PA's security apparatus, which was destroyed over the last four and a half years, cannot be rebuilt in barely four months? Even if there is something to the claim that the PA could do more to prevent terror attacks (see the sealing of the smuggling tunnels), what can be expected to strengthen it? Empowering the security and civilian apparatuses of the PA - or weakening them?

The terror attack on Friday in Tel Aviv is a critical test for Israel. It can be expected that in the coming months, until the July elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Abu Mazen's opponents will do everything they can to drag the Sharon government into retaliatory and punitive actions, to depict Abu Mazen's policies of reconciliation as hollow and empty. A mistake in judgment, such as a careless "assassination," could turn the democratization process under way in the PA into a boomerang. The anger, despair and desire for vengeance are the strongest cards in the hands of the Hamas candidates in the vital struggle for public support.

High marks in the elections test are a necessary - though not sufficient - test of Abu Mazen's success. The rest of what will really determine the longevity of his political career and his policies will come the day after the completion of the disengagement. That test has long since been prepared, in black and white, in the form of the United States' road map plan. Along with the campaign against terror, the Palestinian public will ask their leader what he is doing to ensure implementation of the article that stipulates that "the government of Israel takes no actions undermining trust, including deportations; attacks on civilians; confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property, as a punitive measure or to facilitate Israeli construction; destruction of Palestinian institutions and infrastructure; and other measures specified in the Tenet Work Plan." The following stage is described as the establishment of an "independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty - as a way station to a permanent status settlement."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/545716.html