Gwynne Dyer: Smokescreen for Sharon

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called for a "period of calm" when he took over Yasser Arafat's job in January, and for a while some people allowed themselves to believe peace was within reach. But that delusion depended on the belief that Arafat had been the main obstacle to permanent peace, and it is now melting in the summer sun.

Last week began with a suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad - which never agreed to the ceasefire - killing five Israelis, and the ensuing tit-for-tat exchanges of the week ended on Friday with Israeli helicopters killing seven Hamas militants and wounding five civilians in rocket attacks.

It was a pattern all too familiar from the intifada of 2001-2004, but with the added complication that the Palestinians themselves were now on the brink of a civil war. By the weekend, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would visit the area in an attempt to save the ceasefire, but neither side has much incentive to help her out.

Israel would prefer the Palestinians to remain quiet, of course, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategy does not aim at serious negotiations with them. Instead, he is going for an imposed peace that leaves all the main Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank under Israeli control, and last August he gained official US support for that policy.

Sharon is building a "security fence" that translates that policy into a de facto new border for Israel. He is expanding Jewish settlements around predominantly Arab East Jerusalem to cut it off from the West Bank and eliminate the possibility that it could serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.

And Washington has promised to put no pressure on him for concessions to the Palestinians until he completes the unilateral withdrawal of 8500 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, due to begin next month.

The Gaza settlements never made economic or military sense because they are surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians. "Disengaging" from them cuts the burden on the Israeli Army and saves money, but it also gives Sharon a useful smokescreen - he can claim he is making a major gesture for peace, and that he cannot be expected to act on other issues when he is fully occupied with fighting off extreme right-wing Israelis resisting the "disengagement process". Sharon bluntly told the Knesset in April: "I am doing everything I can to preserve as much of the West Bank settlements as I can." He is succeeding. By the time the Gaza withdrawal is complete, so should be the wall that cuts through the West Bank and defines the de facto border between Israel and the occupied territories.

But since Palestinians understand all this, they have concluded Abbas' gamble that a "period of calm" would lead to genuine peace negotiations has failed.

Palestinians are turning more and more to Islamic movements that reject the whole notion of a permanent land division between Israel and a Palestinian state. Hamas' popular support has risen so fast that Abbas postponed the parliamentary elections scheduled, since a vote now might give Hamas a majority.

There is no reason to believe a visit by Rice will change anything. The Bush Administration has given Sharon a green light and Rice will not switch it to red.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.