On the Front Line. Marie Colvin

the Palestinians, Arabs, Christians and Muslims.’

      On the eve of Netanyahu’s summit with President Bill Clinton tomorrow, Arafat knows he has no alternative but to continue the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Yet if he accepts the new Jewish township he will lose any credibility among his own people.

      From the Israeli side, Arafat is faced with overwhelming force and an intransigent prime minister. The Americans, meanwhile, are pressuring him to halt street protests. They also want him to arrest extremists who have dispatched three suicide bombers to attack Israel since the bulldozers began clearing the way for homes to be built for 30,000 Jews on a pine-covered hill known as Har Homa to the Israelis and Jebel Abu Ghneim to the Palestinians.

      An Arab League decision last week to sever Arab ties with Israel gave Arafat some support for what he calls ‘the battle for Jerusalem’. But the backing of other Arab countries has been largely rhetorical. Thus Arafat feels very much alone as he marches in his headquarters by the sea.

      For his part Netanyahu, say those who know him, believes that if he can force Arafat to accept the new settlement, the Palestinians will ‘lower their expectations’ in future peace talks. Yet Arafat, already under attack for conceding too much to the Israelis in the Oslo agreements, cannot give up any more if he is to survive as leader.

      ‘Netanyahu must stop this settlement on Jebel Abu Ghneim,’ he insisted, adding that this was a condition for Palestinians returning to the peace talks. ‘Netanyahu must return to the honest and accurate implementation of the peace process. Nothing less.’

      Arafat says he has ‘no contact’ with Netanyahu these days. He has ordered his security chiefs to stop sharing intelligence information with their Israeli counterparts. Netanyahu’s generals have warned that this is dangerous. Since Arafat took over Gaza and the West Bank cities, shared information from Palestinian security forces has prevented several planned attacks against Israeli targets.

      But the Palestinian leader has lost faith in any idea that Netanyahu can be a partner in the peace process. Instead, he sees him as dangerously dependent for his political survival on the support of religious and ultra-right-wing parties who believe in Eretz Israel, or greater Israel.

      ‘I am sorry to say Netanyahu is following the ideology of the (Jewish) fanatic groups,’ said Arafat. ‘He must remember he is committed to Oslo, which was signed by the previous Israeli governments, or we will be at a real impasse.’

      For a few moments, Arafat stared through his heavy black-framed glasses into the middle distance, as if trying to see the way ahead. There was none. ‘We are at a real impasse now,’ he sighed.

      One possible hope is American mediation. ‘The peace process now needs the attention of the American administration – especially President Clinton,’ the Palestinian leader said. ‘The agreement was signed under his supervision. This is not a bilateral agreement. It is an international agreement.’

      Arafat has not yet received an invitation from Washington to take part in a meeting with the Israelis. But some analysts believe the Americans are trying to work out a deal. Sources in Washington say the Clinton administration is trying to piece together a compromise that would include delaying the settlement, rather than definitively stopping it, while simultaneously speeding up the schedule for final negotiations.

      At the moment, however, the Americans, who have generally supported Netanyahu’s position that the Palestinians must stop their protests before peace talks can resume, seem intent on winning concessions from Arafat.

      Last week Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, telephoned Arafat twice to seek his approval for three-way talks. She urged him to try to calm the violence in the West Bank, arrest Islamic extremists and resume security co-operation with the Israelis.

      In one lengthy telephone call, Arafat explained that as Netanyahu had ignited the crisis with his ‘violent’ action of sending in bulldozers, she should be asking the Israelis, not him, for concessions. He could not return to security co-operation before the political negotiations resumed.

      ‘Let’s not get into a discussion of which came first, the chicken or the egg,’ Albright responded. To which Arafat replied, cryptically: ‘But we have to remember that in the end there is the hen and there is the egg.’ The response of the new secretary of state is not recorded.