A time to decide

I said it on January 26:

But the real test is yet to come. There will at some point be another attack. Everyone knows it or damn well should know it. It could be by Hamas. It could be by some now-unknown splinter group of a splinter group, furious with Hamas for agreeing to that "period of calm." It could be by Israel, claiming one of those "ticking time bombs." The question is, what happens then? That's when the test of sincerity comes, that's when the actual commitment to peace and a negotiated settlement arises.

I said it again on February 9, in response to a comment on a post from the previous day:

There will be tests enough for everyone soon enough. Soon enough there will be some serious incident, soon enough there will be the chance to say "they don't mean it." At that point, do they say that - or do they say "we are not going to let those who oppose a settlement undermine it?" Saying the latter will be a true sign of sincerity.

The first test has come. And the results are mixed.

On Friday, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis and wounded 50 more in a blast outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv. Seven people have been arrested - five by Israel, two by the PA - in connection with the attack.

Palestinian sources say the bomber was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, but also recruited and funded by Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants - though a Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut has denied this.

Israel blames Islamic Jihad and goes beyond that to blame Syria.

"We see Syria as responsible by allowing those extremists to have their headquarters there, their training camps there and to give them all the assistance that they're asking," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said.

Meanwhile, all the Palestinian militant groups have specifically denied responsibility, even though such responsibility is something they have not been shy about claiming in the past. What's most notable here is that everyone seems to agree that the source of the attack came from outside the area even if some locals may have been recruited for the actual attack.

Despite that, it's being used by Israeli authorities to renew demands on the PA for an immediate, harsh crackdown on all militant groups before any more progress toward a settlement can be made.

A top Sharon adviser, Raanan Gissin, told the BBC that the Palestinian Authority must take "the necessary, concrete steps to dismantle the terrorist organisation, collect the illegal weapons, make the necessary arrests".

A few days later, Ariel Sharon told a cabinet meeting that

peace efforts would be halted unless the Palestinian Authority acted against Islamic Jihad....

If no action was taken, "Israel will have to step up its military activities that are aimed at protecting the lives of Israeli citizens", Mr Sharon said.

"There will not be any diplomatic progress, I repeat, no diplomatic progress, until the Palestinians take vigorous action to wipe out the terror groups and their infrastructure in the Palestinian Authority's territory," Mr Sharon told the Israeli cabinet. ...

Israel has already announced it is freezing plans to hand over control of five West Bank towns to Palestinian security forces, which had been promised after the 8 February summit in Egypt.

In short, Israel is backing out of promises it made about troop withdrawals and is threatening to abrogate the ceasefire unless the PA does what the Israelis have failed to accomplish in over 30 years of trying.

This is the same Ariel Sharon who just over three weeks ago said

"We must move forward cautiously. This is a very fragile opportunity, one that the extremists will want to exploit. They want to close the window of opportunity for us and allow our two peoples to drown in their blood." He said if the two sides did not act now, the extremists "may be successful in their scheme."

That same Ariel Sharon is now threatening to give those extremists exactly what he knows they want: to destroy the chances for peace. Going back on those earlier words would be especially tragic now not only because of the hopes that have been raised but because of the incident itself, which I believe was something the possibility of which I suggested earlier: a splinter group of a splinter group, a shard of a shard, a handful - even if they received help and/or guidance from outside - who felt betrayed by the ceasefire and undertook their attack for the specific purpose of making it collapse.

And yet - the ceasefire has not ended and it may yet prove that the handover of authority in those five West Bank towns has merely been delayed, not actually frozen. Both Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon are engaged on their respective sides in a delicate balancing act. It may be - may be - that Sharon is blustering because he feels he has to maintain an attitude of tough talk, the better to contain the true reactionaries on his own side, to keep from further inflaming the Israeli rejectionist front. Nonetheless, as Haaretz (Israel) columnist Akiva Eldar notes, this time represents

a critical test for Israel. It can be expected that in the coming months, until the July elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Abu Mazen's [as Mahmoud Abbas is popularly known] opponents will do everything they can to drag the Sharon government into retaliatory and punitive actions, to depict Abu Mazen's policies of reconciliation as hollow and empty. A mistake in judgment, such as a careless "assassination," could turn the democratization process under way in the PA into a boomerang.

So far, the Israeli response has been tough words and a "freeze" that could be thawed in an instant. It would have been better if Sharon had included some statement about how "some want to undermine the process. They will fail." It would been even better if instead of a "freeze" on the handover of the West Bank towns, he had announced a "delay to consult with Palestinian authorities on security measures related to the handover." But he didn't and perhaps he felt that politically he couldn't. Maybe - again, maybe - he actually did the minimum he thought he could in response to the bombing.

Even so, coupled with the fact that Abbas has not condemned the freeze (at least not that I'm aware), which may mean he is counseling some patience, cutting Sharon some political slack, it means that while things have hit a real pothole, they haven't gone off the road. But right now, events are still pointed toward the shoulder. If the "freeze" proves to be a real one, they could go right into a ditch.