Heading into summit, key question is whether Arafat can contain Palestinian fury

By Laura King

After 2 1/2 weeks of bloody battles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip _ and scores of Palestinian funerals like this one in the West Bank town of Hebron _ the question is not so much whether Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will call for an end to the violence, but whether his people will pay any heed if he does.

Israeli officials call it "riding the tiger" _ bitter shorthand for their contention that Arafat has unleashed forces he may now be unable to control.
As the Palestinian leader heads into Monday's summit with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, many on both sides wonder whether any call for calm will simply be too late.

"I don't think Arafat can rein things in to the extent needed in order to continue the peace process," said Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel's domestic Shin Bet security service.
"The uprising has gathered its own momentum _ it's not easy for Arafat to take the decision to stop it," said Palestinian political analyst Ziad Abu Amr.

At Saturday's funeral in Hebron for 22-year-old Monsour Sid Ahmed, fatally shot a day earlier in a clash that raged in the narrow streets of the city center between Palestinian rioters and Israeli troops, the dead man's uncle delivered a fiery eulogy promising he would not go unavenged.
"This martyr gave his blood for Jerusalem!" he cried out. "The mother and children and wife of the murderers should be very afraid .... Our path is jihad to expel the occupier."

Many of the young mourners _ fired up and chanting "Allahu akbar! ( God is great!)" _ hurried straight from the cemetery to the city center to face off with Israeli troops yet again.
But it is not only young hotheads who are eager to continue the battle. Mourner Wael Sharif, a soft-spoken 40-year-old office manager, shook his head when asked whether Arafat could clamp a lid on the clashes, as he has often proved able to do in the past.
"It makes no difference now what Arafat says," said Sharif. "If the enemy keeps killing us, we will surely strike back. We must strike back."

The carnage of the past 17 days has left the Palestinian leader in a quandary. As long as he is seen as standing in solidarity with his people in the fight against Israel, his popularity soars. But if he appears to back down from confrontation in the face of U.S. and Israeli pressure, that public support could evaporate, with hard-liners like the radical Islamic group Hamas becoming the political beneficiaries.

So far, Arafat has been careful not to give any suggestion he is prepared to yield. On Thursday night, after Israeli combat helicopters rocketed Palestinian targets including his own residential compound, the Palestinian leader toured a Gaza hospital to visit the injured.
Pausing before one injured man, he embraced him repeatedly, even bending over to shower kisses on the bandage covering the man's wounded leg. "Our people...don't hesitate to continue their march to Jerusalem, their capital of the Palestinian independent state," he said defiantly while touring areas targeted in the rocket strikes.

Still an open question is when Arafat will declare Palestinian statehood _ something Israel has warned him not to do unilaterally, but as part of an overall peace treaty. Abu Amr, the political analyst, said if the peace process collapse, Arafat may have no choice but to move ahead.
"I think if the intefadeh continues, escalates, and there is no point in going back to negotiations, or if the negotiations reach a dead end, or if the peace process collapses _ all these are likely circumstances for him to declare the state," he said.

In the meantime, it's a tricky balancing act for Arafat. He has taken steps to appease Hamas, which vehemently opposes any peace accord with Israel. Hamas last week participated for the first time in a Palestinian Cabinet meeting, and scores of prisoners from the radical Islamic movement were freed from Palestinian jails, though 14 were back in jail in the West Bank town of Nablus by Saturday night.

In a gesture of unity, Hamas and Arafat's Fatah faction now march together at rallies, something that was unusual in the past. At Sid Ahmed's funeral on Saturday, the body was first draped in a Palestinian flag and then a Hamas banner, and both Palestinian and Hamas flags fluttered in the crowd of hundreds.

Even on Saturday, the day the summit was announced, Arafat appeared determined to avoid being outdone by more radical elements. Fatah declared it was forming a militia in Hebron, and 2,000 men _ including teen-agers and old men _ turned up after a televised appeal for recruits. They were divided into groups of 100 for basic military drills. Out on the main street, their training began immediately.

In the Gaza Strip on Saturday, hundreds of Palestinians _ most from Hamas _ took to the street, calling on Arafat not to go to the summit, and spray-painted slogans on walls demanding that the Palestinian leader not make any deal.

"The blood of the martyrs is not yet dry," read one. (

(ba/sda)