Palestinian leader enters bitter fray

Following two Palestinian suicide attacks that killed 15 Israelis on Tuesday, incoming Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia is appealing to Israel to "think seriously how to make peace."

"After you used all your muscle, all your force," he said in brief remarks to reporters Wednesday, addressing himself to Israeli leaders, "I don't think this is the way: the killing of Palestinian people, the collective punishment of Palestinian people."

Mr. Qureia - one of the founders of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that began in Oslo, Norway, in 1993 - displays an undimmed determination to continue negotiating with Israel. "I am a fighter for peace," he says.

But Palestinians are increasingly disenchanted both with a decade of peace talks and the leadership that has pursued these negotiations.

Their frustration is heightened by their experience of the past four months, when PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, declaring violence against Israel to be a disaster, renewed negotiations in accordance with a US-backed road map toward peace.

Mr. Abbas resigned on Saturday, saying he had been hobbled by Israeli intransigence, a lack of US support for its own plan, and power struggles with PA President Yasser Arafat. Wednesday Qureia accepted Mr. Arafat's nomination that he become Prime Minister, and said he would form an emergency cabinet.

Palestinians, tired by the past three years of fighting, were willing to give Abbas a chance, says Palestinian legislator Abdul Jawad Saleh, but "now they say 'the hell with them' - Arafat, [Abbas], the Americans, the Israelis."

Abbas's failure, says pollster Nader Said, a sociologist at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, was "the last straw in damaging the relationship between the Authority - the leadership - and the general audience of Palestinians."

The result, according to Professor Said and other Palestinian analysts, will be a political vacuum that will encourage some Palestinians to recommit themselves to a strategy of violence against Israel, others to push harder for elections to replace the Palestinian Authority, and still others simply to endure their situation.

Hani al-Masri, a former journalist who is now a senior official in the PA Ministry of Information, has devised an unusual method for charting public opinion.

He lives in a cooperatively run apartment building in Ramallah, and every week the building's 22 heads of household meet to manage their affairs - and talk politics.

In July, after Abbas had helped to convince Palestinian groups to agree to a cease-fire, more than half of Mr. Masri's fellow apartment owners said they were against any further suicide attacks against Israelis. At their meeting a little over a week ago, those opposed to such violence had dwindled to Masri and one other person.

Page: 1 | 2