Control Issues

Suppose for a second that Israel strikes a cease-fire deal with Yasser Arafat. Would the Palestinian Authority president be able to deliver? Arafat himself may not know for sure, as the extent of control he retains over the many military factions he has created or allowed to flourish in his territory is unclear.

On paper, the Palestinian Authority is made up of eight major security organs, each with a specific agenda. In practice, however, many of the groups compete with each other, making it difficult to maintain a clear military hierarchy and discipline — and obfuscating Palestinian Authority responsibility for each group’s actions. Complicating the scene further is the fact that there are at least four nonofficial organizations actively involved in intifada terrorism, and it is unclear to what extent they respond to Arafat’s orders or signals.

The four nonofficial organizations are: the Izz a-Din al-Kassam Brigades, the military wing of the Muslim fundamentalist Hamas organization; the fundamentalist group Islamic Jihad; the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a prominent faction in Arafat’s PLO, and the Tanzim, a militia of Arafat’s Fatah movement that in recent months has been particularly active in terrorism both in the West Bank and Israel proper.

Until the outbreak of the intifada, little was known of the Tanzim, whose Arabic name can be translated as "the organization." A militia of some 10,000 to 40,000 Fatah supporters, the Tanzim usually recognized the authority of the Palestinian Authority in the past. In the Gaza Strip, the group was led by Ahmad Hils, but its more prominent West Bank leader was Marwan Barghouti, a veteran of Israeli prisons but also a supporter of the Oslo peace process.

The 18-month-old intifada has changed Barghouti. From a marginal local activist in Ramallah, he has become a national leader, a militant who time and again has vowed loyalty to Arafat — but also has made it clear that he will not hesitate to carry on attacking Israelis even if Arafat orders him not to.

Indeed, Barghouti’s influence has expanded to such an extent that some Israeli analysts believe that sooner or later, Israel might prefer to negotiate with him rather than with Arafat. Barghouti has reached his lofty status through violence. Some of the bloodiest recent attacks have been carried out by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group created during the early stages of the intifada by militant Tanzim elements.

The group has overshadowed another Fatah-linked militia known as the Pioneers of the Popular Army — The Brigades of Return. Last week the U.S. State Department officially labeled the Al Aqsa Brigade a terrorist organization — much to the delight of brigade members, who said it would induce them to increase the pace and ferocity of their attacks.

The Palestinian Authority leadership occasionally has called on Palestinians to refrain from attacks on civilians inside Israel proper — arguing that they hurt the Palestinians’ international image — and to concentrate instead on attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yet the Al Aqsa Brigade has continued to engage in terror on both sides of the 1967 border. In fact, the radical Muslim organizations no longer have a monopoly on suicide bombing, as secular Al Aqsa Brigade terrorists also have adopted this mode of fighting.

While the fundamentalist groups believe that no accommodation with Israel is permissible, members of the secular factions — with wide popular support, according to opinion polls — believe that a steady drumbeat of terror attacks alongside peace talks will force Israeli negotiators to make additional concessions.

A spokesman for the Al Aqsa Brigade told the BBC in a recent interview that the group has some 300 suicide bombers ready to attack Israelis. Since the intifada began, secular organizations such as the Tanzim have shown close military cooperation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, undermining the classic division many analysts used to make between the secular and supposedly moderate PLO and its extremist fundamentalist opposition.

The rising popularity of the secular militias has affected the political power of security bosses like Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank and Mohammad Dahlan in the Gaza Strip, the influential chiefs of the Palestinian Authority’s preventive security apparatus. Perhaps in response, Rajoub, a longtime participant in security talks with the Israelis and who is often described as a relative moderate, recently came out with strongly anti-Israel statements.

The militias and fundamentalist groups complement the Palestinians’ official military force, whose 35,000- 45,000 members are divided among the security groups, intelligence groups and police forces. The official Palestinian forces contain far more armed men than the number stipulated in the various agreements that accompanied the Oslo peace process. While many elements of the official Palestinian bodies have planned or participated in terror attacks, the forces have not been deployed against Israel in a coordinated military manner during the intifada, a development that Israeli officials fear.

Consistent with Arafat’s tactics during his 35-year leadership of the PLO, he has placed the various security organs in competition with each other, and they are riddled with personal rivalries. Despite their rivalries, the majority of the security bodies remain loyal to Arafat.

The big question mark remains Barghouti. Despite the fact that Barghouti’s hands are stained with Israeli blood, many Israelis see him as a potential negotiating partner — primarily because they consider the Tanzim "the least of all evils" if Arafat leaves the scene.