Arafat's historic support wanes

Beginning with a much-anticipated speech today by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the US is expected to engage in Middle East peacemaking with new vigor. US and European officials have already made explicit what Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat will have to do to keep the Americans interested: stop Palestinian violence against Israelis.

Mr. Arafat already faces resolute opposition from Palestinian militants and their supporters. Roughly a quarter of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip back the Islamic Resistance Movement and the Islamic Jihad group, their terrorist tactics notwithstanding. These groups scorn peace negotiations.

What is potentially more significant is the trouble Arafat is having with the Palestinian mainstream, particularly the political faction known as Fatah, which the Palestinian leader himself helped found four decades ago.

During the 1990s, Fatah was a pillar of the peace process, providing Arafat with the popular backing he needed to risk negotiating a peace with Israel. Today, it staunchly supports the Palestinian campaign of often-violent resistance to Israeli occupation. Its leaders see no reason to desist.

"This is the time to negotiate and to fight," says Marwan Barghouti, the leader of Fatah in the West Bank. "There will be no benefit in engaging in negotiations without pressure on the ground."

His words highlight the slow-motion train wreck that US mediation will somehow have to finesse: how to reconcile the Israeli demand that violence cease with the view of most Palestinians that "resistance" is their most effective tactic.

Relations between Arafat and Fatah have been testy before - at various times Fatah leaders have sought to replace or even kill their leader - but the current difficulties are significant. "This is the first time Fatah has been so estranged" from the Palestinian leadership, says Manuel Hassassian, the executive vice president of Bethlehem University.

Officials close to Arafat acknowledge the distance that has emerged between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its main source of support. "We have to convince Fatah that the Israelis are serious" about negotiating and implementing peace agreements, says Col. Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian Authority's chief of preventive security in the West Bank. "Then we can do everything."

By "everything," Colonel Rajoub means the arrest of Palestinian extremists who would use violence to destabilize a resumption of negotiations. As things stand, this task is delicate. When Rajoub's officers arrested an Islamic Jihad militant in the northern West Bank town of Jenin last week, a man the Israelis accuse of involvement in suicide bombings, angry Palestinians took to the streets on three consecutive days.

The opposition is hardly limited to extremists. "I am against any arrests of people for political reasons," says Fatah's Barghouti.

Ever since hostilities broke out between Israelis and Palestinians more than a year ago, Fatah has been more of an opposition party than a bastion of support for the PA. Fatah leaders have struck this stance in order not to pay a political price for the perceived failings of the PA's policy of negotiation.

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