Egypt plays Mideast peace broker

When Mahmoud Abbas, the front-runner to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority, helicoptered in with Mr. Arafat's body from Egypt for the funeral Friday, an important player in the contentious matter of Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was by his side.

But it wasn't an official from the quartet of nations who have backed the road map for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, the man at Mr. Abbas's side was Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief who has emerged in recent years as a key broker between the Israelis, Palestinians, and the US.

Mr. Suleiman quickly got a taste of the potential drawbacks of wading into the muddled Palestinian politics. A seething, emotional crowd surrounded and rocked the helicopter when it landed in Ramallah, keeping the men trapped inside for almost half an hour. The crowd's grief, and poor Palestinian security arrangements, threw the plans for Arafat's burial completely off kilter.

But the turmoil and Mr. Suleiman's presence illustrate both the threats and the opportunities of Arafat's passing. Egypt's deep engagement with Palestinian issues has had much to do with the fact that neither the US nor Israel would talk to Arafat, having come to see him as a untrustworthy partner for peace. At US urging, Egypt became a sort of back-channel between the sides.

Arafat's death opens the way for US and Israeli demands that new leadership be found before talks could resume. But competition among various Palestinian power centers, ranging from the mainstream Fatah movement Arafat founded to the hard-line Islamists of Hamas, may also make it harder for new leaders like Abbas to deliver on any political deals they cut. This could leave Egypt, which is expected to play a role in securing Gaza after the scheduled Israeli withdrawal next year, in the middle of the competing factions.

"This is a historical chance for the resumption of negotiations, but it will depend on what the Palestinian factions do,'' says Emad Gad, a political scientist at Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "If there is fighting and obstruction among the factions, it will leave [Abbas] and [Ahmed Qurei, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority] managing in very difficult circumstances."

Those difficult circumstances began yesterday when gunfire erupted as Abbas visited a tent in Gaza set up to mourn the loss of Arafat. Witnesses said a Palestinian bodyguard was killed and five people were wounded, according to the Associated Press. AP television showed a group of about 20 men entering the tent where Abbas, former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan, and other key Palestinian leaders had congregated. The gunmen shouted: "Abbas and Dahlan are agents for the Americans." Abbas was not hurt. Dahlan, speaking on Al Jazeera television, denied it was an assassination attempt.

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