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Hezbollah shadow looms over Palestinian talks
(TIME.com) -- Hezbollah may have become more of a problem for Yasser Arafat than it is for Ehud Barak. With the Iran-backed guerrilla army playing responsible guardian of border stability in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon, Barak can focus his attention and political momentum on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
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But with the back-channel negotiations between emissaries of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders reportedly set to resume Wednesday or Thursday at an undisclosed location, Arafat is having to contend with the inspiration provided by Hezbollah's example to the growing constituency among Palestinians that favors violence and militant pressure over endless talks as a means of dealing with the Israelis.
Arafat himself has conceded to Israeli leaders that the example of the Lebanese guerrillas who, over two decades, systematically ground down Israel's will to maintain its occupation of a section of their country, is making it more difficult for him to compromise on such key questions as the Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem and the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees Israel has refused to allow to return to their original homes inside the Jewish state.
Hezbollah's victory in Lebanon has focused unflattering attention by West Bank Palestinians on Arafat's achievements at the negotiating table, and on the limits of what the Israelis are prepared to offer the Palestinian leader.
And while the pressure on the Palestinian leader is real -- his most immediate priority is to get Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons to take their meals, for fear of a death creating a martyr and sparking a new outbreak of rage on the West Bank -- he'll try and turn this into to his advantage by trumpeting it in the hope of securing more concessions.
Of course, it's not as if the West Bank Palestinians have the capacity to mimic Hezbollah's guerrilla struggle, which was possible largely because it was allowed by Syria. But they do have their stones and gasoline bombs, which could still make life difficult for Israel -- and, potentially, for Arafat, too.
Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.