Last Thursday, as Israel’s major operation in the West Bank was in full swing, Israeli state television broadcast a very interesting report. Citing sources in the Israeli army, the reporter said that the Palestinian Authority, while publicly condemning the operation, was cooperating with Israel in its implementation, and that the two sides were in constant communication at both the political and military level.
It isn’t by chance that the phrase “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has survived since the 4th century BC, when it is first attested to in an ancient Indian treatise. And while one can certainly debate what kind of friendships this strategy gives rise to, especially between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the fact remains that the two sides currently need each other as they have done only very few times before. This is because they have a formidable common enemy to tackle: the clearly premeditated and primarily Iranian-instigated explosion of extremism in the Palestinian territories, which poses a threat to Israel, the power of the Palestinian Authority, and the entire region. If not far beyond it.
WHAT’S CHANGING ON THE WEST BANK?
The ongoing Israeli army operation in Jenin (with a secondary focus on Tulkarem and parts of Northern Galilee) is a good place to start outlining what’s happening in the West Bank today.
Jenin, a small town of just 14,000 inhabitants, is currently the epicenter of West Bank extremism, and the Palestinian Authority has long since lost control there, as it has elsewhere. And the extremism is growing—rapidly. It is common knowledge that, considering Ramallah to have lost the game with Israel, the majority of West Bank residents support Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Among young people in particular, the prospect of jihad and eternal paradise clearly holds more attraction than either the hard lives they lead in the West Bank today, or the 88-year-old leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, a figure more reviled than esteemed.
But the problem is also a practical one. The death of the Palestinian President will almost certainly also spell the end for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Even if the West Bank is held together by the Palestinian Authority’s cooperation with Israel and does not descend into immediate chaos, in the absence of a leader who holds any appeal to the people, the Authority is doomed.
Israel, which has tried out other “options” with disastrous results, including not stopping and sometimes bolstering Hamas, which Netanyahu hoped to control, knows that the collapse of the Palestinian Authority threatens it directly, and that it is clearly in its interest to find a successor for Abbas; ideally, a non-Islamist with popular appeal, untainted by association with the discredited and corrupt Fatah leadership, and representing a transitional condition that would allow Gaza to be brought under Palestinian Authority control in a way acceptable to the Israelis, for whom any Hamas presence in a post-conflict Gaza is off the table.
BETTER A THOUSAND OTHERS…
The “good news” is that such a leader exists. The bad news is that only one man now fits the bill. And that man is Marwan Barghouti. The 65-year-old Barghouti, who many considered Yasser Arafat’s natural successor, is currently serving five consecutive life sentences for the murder of five people, including a Greek monk from the Monastery of St. George of Chozeva. He has been in prison for 22 years. He is not a moderate, although he did return from exile in Jordan in the light of the Oslo Accords and genuinely supported the peace process for several years before renouncing it. But he is also a politician, and clearly a very smart one at that. His name also came up in 2011, when Hamas proposed he be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier it had kidnapped and held hostage for five years. However, Israel rejected the suggestion, choosing instead to release over a thousand prisoners who had killed five hundred or so Israelis between them.
BARGHOUTI WITH HAMAS
Marwan Barghouti is perhaps the last symbol of his kind among the Palestinians. In a poll conducted last March in the West Bank and accessible parts of Gaza, the Palestinian respondents were asked who they would like to see as leader. No fewer than 40% chose Barghouti, while only 23% chose the now dead Ismail Haniyeh and 8% Mahmoud Abbas. Asked to choose between Barghouti or Haniyeh, 42% answered Barghouti and 26% Haniyeh.
The worrying thing is that 70% of the people polled said they supported Hamas’ decision to go to war with Israel. As their preferred leader, the respondents clearly expect Barghouti to take a similarly hard line. This is why Israel refuses to discuss Barghouti, whose name has reportedly come up in the ongoing dialog on Gaza, with the Jewish state maintaining that the only clear difference between Barghouti and Hamas is that, as a politician, he was in favor—before his imprisonment, at least—of only killing Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, not in Israel itself. With Abbas’ biological clock counting down, the dilemma for Israel is growing. What will it opt for? A charismatic extremist or chaos? Admittedly, it is an agonizing dilemma. And here’s another one: would one lead to the other?
*Kostis Konstantinou is ERTnews’ foreign correspondent for Cyprus and Israel
