After the shooting of two bodyguards of Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday, hopes that the death of Arafat would provide the opportunity for a new breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations are looking increasingly implausible. In the Financial Times a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – now happily renamed the Brigades of Martyr Yasser Arafat – says he’d support PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas as the candidate for the Palestinian Authority chairmanship as long as he abided by the Palestinians’ “unalterable demands.” Which are: a state on pre-1967 lines, its capital in Jerusalem, the right of return of refugees, and the release of prisoners. Demands which Israel of course will never accept.
Armed Fatah militants may be on course for a showdown with the new Palestinian leadership unless it gives them a role in the post-Arafat era, one of their senior commanders said on Monday.
Zachariah Zubeidi, head of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin, said he would not abide by the decisions of the central committee of Fatah, the dominant faction of which Arafat was commander-in-chief, unless it explicitly recognised the militants as its armed wing.
“With Abu Amar [Arafat], I could be confident that I could handle resistance to the Israeli occupation knowing that he was taking care of the political work,” Mr Zubeidi told the Financial Times at a safe house in Jenin. “Now I am uneasy.”
His remarks reflected tensions in Palestinian ranks since Arafat’s death and the emergence of Mahmoud Abbas as the senior member of an interim leadership pending presidential elections on January 9.
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