Israel Says It Won't 'Pay Price' of Coalition
Sharon Refuses to Relent on Palestinians to Help U.S. Build Support Among Arabs

By Lee Hockstader and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 18, 2001; Page A14

JERUSALEM, Sept. 17 -- As it ushered Arab countries into a multinational coalition against Iraq a decade ago, the first Bush administration persuaded Israel to stay in the background, even to hold its fire when Iraq launched Scud missiles at Tel Aviv.

Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has made it clear that times have changed. In a series of pugnacious pronouncements since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, he has insisted Israel will not sit quietly as the current Bush administration seeks to build a coalition of Arab and Islamic states against terrorism.

"It is inconceivable to grant [Yasser Arafat] legitimacy because someone thinks that might facilitate the inclusion of Arab countries in this coalition," Sharon told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, referring to the Palestinian leader. "We will not pay the price for the establishment of this coalition."

As it rages on, with both sides seeking to squeeze advantage from the crisis, the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis may for several reasons impair Washington's ability to assemble an anti-terrorism alliance in the Middle East and beyond.

One difficulty is the U.S. backing for and identification with Israel. The unswerving U.S. stand has long been condemned in the Arab world as unfair, anti-Arab and anti-Islamic. Public opinion in the Arab and Muslim world has been further influenced by months of televised images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continue to air on Arab-language satellite television.

That has been compounded by the Bush administration's reluctance to become actively involved in efforts to quell the violence that has shaken the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Israel for a year. Several of the friendly Arab governments to which Bush is now turning -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt -- have been pleading for months for more involvement by Washington.

Foreign Minister Abdul-Illah Khatib of Jordan, for instance, said it will be difficult for the Bush administration to line up Arab support without a commitment to solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute once and for all. "People will need to be convinced that Israel is not taking advantage" of the situation to demonize the Palestinian cause by comparing it to terrorism, Khatib said.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said today that the Israeli-Palestinian standoff "may be one of the elements which encouraged" the terrorist attacks. He said President Bush suggested to him in a telephone conversation that the United States will be "very active" in trying to arrange a cease-fire. "But what I'm seeing now is the Israeli government is seizing the opportunity and launching attacks now and then," Mubarak said on "Larry King Live." He added: "This will have terrible repercussions after that."

The United States, hoping to extinguish a fire that threatens the anti-terrorism effort, has urged Sharon and Arafat to make every effort to reach a cease-fire. But the two leaders have vastly different agendas, and both have balked at fully satisfying U.S. requests to cool things off.

"For all sides, everything has changed," said a high-ranking Western source. "The Palestinians simply have to decide which side they're going to be on -- are they going to tolerate the kind of support for terrorism that has characterized the last year? And on the Israeli side, are they going to make it easy for the Palestinians? Or are they going to insist that pressure be kept up to such a level that [Arafat] can't climb down the tree even if he wants to?"

Since the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, fighting has escalated here. Israel launched a fresh offensive, punching into Palestinian-controlled territory and towns and establishing a new military zone in the West Bank from which most Palestinians are excluded.

Sharon is eager to lump the Palestinians in with terrorists, discredit Arafat and justify the assaults in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that have killed at least 18 Palestinians in the past week. A real war on world terrorism, Sharon has said, must include a war on Arafat.

In that spirit, Sharon refused last week to allow his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Arafat to negotiate a cease-fire, despite a direct request from Bush in a phone call to Sharon on Friday. Sharon raised the bar over the weekend, demanding that any cease-fire talks be preceded by 48 hours of complete quiet -- in effect, a pre-cease-fire cease-fire.

"If there was already a cease-fire you wouldn't need talks to discuss a cease-fire," said an annoyed Western diplomat.

For Israeli hard-liners, the decision to hold back during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 is a bitter memory. Many, including Sharon, believe that leaving the war to the United States made Israel appear weak. Afterward, the United States pushed a reluctant Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir into peace talks.

"Sharon doesn't want to open the door to a repeat situation where Israel will be a passive actor in a coalition," said Gerald Steinberg, head of the program on conflict management and negotiation at Israel's Bar Ilan University. "The Americans don't understand the depth of Israeli views on this."

Israelis, who have suffered dozens of casualties from terrorist attacks, were convinced from the first day that they should be charter members of any anti-terrorism coalition. They bristled at suggestions they should help cool the conflict with the Palestinians to help Washington enlist Arab and Islamic allies.

"Terrorist actions against Israeli citizens are no different from bin Laden's terrorism against American citizens," Sharon told the Knesset, Israel's parliament, today. "Terrorism is terrorism, and murder is murder."

Arafat, meanwhile, has drawn his own lessons from the Gulf War, when he took the side of Iraq, the loser, and risked pariah status. He seems determined not to repeat that choice. After months of tolerating or encouraging terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, he is eager to show cooperation with the United States and demonstrate that Sharon is the one responsible for unbridled violence.

Although Bush has not phoned Arafat, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has urged Arafat several times to defuse the clashes and resume talks with Sharon's government. According to his close associates, fear is Arafat's prime motivation in wanting to cooperate. If Washington identifies him with the terrorist camp, it may embolden Sharon to launch an offensive to crush the Palestinian Authority. For that reason, Palestinian officials said, Arafat has dropped all preconditions for cease-fire talks with Peres, insisting he is ready to meet "anywhere, anytime."

"We can make it through this with the United States. We can't make it if left alone with Sharon," said Ahmed Abdul Rahman, Arafat's cabinet secretary. "We are wise enough not to make war with America."

Shortly after news of last Tuesday's attacks reached Gaza, Arafat called an urgent meeting of top political and military advisers to lay out a course of action. He grimly informed the half-dozen officials and the head of his combined security forces that he would immediately announce a pro-American position, said an official who was present.

Because Arafat recognized that many Palestinians who are aggrieved by U.S. support for Israel would show little sympathy for the United States, he ordered police and political parties to suppress anti-American demonstrations. Most dramatically, he warned leaders of militant Islamic groups to launch no terror attacks in Israel. If they did, he pledged to fight the groups ruthlessly, no matter how great the risk of internal Palestinian violence.

"Arafat's position is desperate," said Marwan Kanafani, an adviser to and spokesman for the Palestinian leader. "He is on a tightrope. His problem is how to avoid to being a victim of all this."

However, acceding to U.S. demands for quiet has its limits, Kanafani said. Arafat will not tell Palestinians to stand by and not fight in case of continued Israeli invasions of its territory. "We are still victims," Kanafani said.

Arafat believes he also has something to contribute to U.S. diplomacy: a Palestinian stamp of approval for the anti-terrorism coalition. If even the Palestinians, who are distressed by U.S. political, financial and military support of Israel, are willing to sign on, Arab leaders will find it easier to do so.

Williams reported from the Gaza Strip. Correspondent Howard Schneider in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.