Assessing terror's political costs

Hussein Sheikh, a senior leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, sits in his expansive living room and relates how he and others persuaded Palestinian militants to put their suicide bombers on hold - at least inside Israel and at least for now.

"We explained to Hamas," Mr. Sheikh says, referring to the Islamic Resistance Movement, whose members have carried out the most deadly attacks on Israeli civilians, "that any weapons we have are political instruments and that we cannot allow a situation where we would be labeled as terrorists and where this conflict is called a clash of civilizations."

It has taken a few months, but a key post-Sept. 11 reality seems to be taking hold on both sides of the Middle East's most intractable conflict: The political costs of terrorism are becoming impossibly high.

Two weeks after Mr. Arafat used this logic to impose a cease-fire, the Palestinian public largely supports his position, meaning that the Palestinian leader has again turned events beyond his control to his advantage. At the same time, his crackdown on Hamas is more gentle than the Israelis and the Americans would like - a possible reflection of Hamas's own recognition of global realities and its ability to make political deals with Arafat.

The Israelis have already capitalized on America's "war on terrorism" by securing broad international acquiescence for military actions against the Palestinians - actions that were formerly criticized as overly harsh or disproportionate.

Now Mr. Arafat is citing the war on terrorism to demand that Palestinians desist from tactics that can be lumped together with the attacks on the US this fall. The message seems to be sinking in. "We don't live in another world," acknowledges Hamas spokesman Hassan Yousef. "We are very much aware of the negative international, and especially American and Israeli, pressure" that Palestinians are facing.

In doing so, the Palestinian leader seems to be stemming the decline of his own popularity and that of his Fatah movement. An opinion poll conducted just before Christmas shows that Arafat's popularity stands at 36 percent, up from 33 percent in July 2001. The independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), the firm that conducted the poll, says it is "possible that the trend of continued decline in Arafat's popularity may have finally ended."

Arafat's decision to declare a cease-fire on Dec. 16 and to authorize the arrests of suspected militants and those who support them - widely criticized among Palestinians as undemocratic and authoritarian "political arrests" - have not hurt Arafat's standing.

Except for a burst of violence Sunday night in which Israeli troops killed six Palestinians reportedly preparing to conduct attacks, the cease-fire seems to be holding. The Associated Press calculates that one Israeli has been killed in political violence since mid-December, compared with 37 such deaths during the first half of the month. More than 70 Palestinians were killed in December, most of them before the cease-fire.

But Palestinian officials and analysts say the cease-fire will not last unless Israel begins to reciprocate in ways that ordinary Palestinians can appreciate. Since Arafat's cease-fire, Israel has more or less maintained its harsh measures.

At the very least, Palestinians demand that the Israelis stop assassinating suspected militants, withdraw from Palestinian-ruled areas, and lift the "closure" of their cities, towns, and villages - the Israeli roadblocks and restrictions that stifle economic activity and freedom of movement.

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