WASHINGTON — To Israel’s chagrin, the State Department has returned to business as usual, treating the Palestinian attempt to ship weapons to Gaza as old news.
Although the State Department has accepted Israel’s side of the story and has told the Palestinian Authority to explain its actions, the U.S. government seems more determined to resume peace efforts than await a response.
Special U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni is expected to return to the Middle East by the end of the month and continue his pursuit of a cease-fire and an end to violence.
That bloodshed continued this week.
On Wednesday, an Israeli Arab was killed in a shooting attack in the West Bank. The body of the man, a resident of eastern Jerusalem, was found in a bullet-ridden car near the settlement of Sanur. The car bore Israeli license plates, and Israeli security forces believe the terrorists thought they were shooting a Jew.
A day earlier, two Israelis were killed in separate shooting attacks just outside Jerusalem.
In the first incident, Avi Boaz, 71, a building contractor with dual Israeli-American citizenship, was kidnapped at a Palestinian security checkpoint and driven to Beit Sahur in the West Bank, where he was shot repeatedly at close range. The body was so badly disfigured that Israeli officials said it may have been abused after Boaz’s death.
Later in the day, Palestinian gunmen attacked two Israelis in a car at a gas station just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. One woman was killed and another seriously injured.
That followed violence Monday in which a leading Palestinian terrorist, Raed Karmi, was killed by a bomb in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. Palestinians blamed Israel, which refused to comment but noted that Karmi was responsible for killing at least seven Israelis in various terrorist attacks.
In retaliation, gunmen from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Party shot and killed an Israeli soldier and wounded another in the West Bank.
On Tuesday, the chief of staff of the Israeli army, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, told a Knesset committee that Arafat’s agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad not to attack Israel had been canceled and that Iran had ordered new terror attacks. Mofaz warned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Palestinians have smuggled rockets into the West Bank and may use them against Israeli population centers and airports in the near future.
Still, the Bush administration said it would continue to work for peace.
But some say the Bush administration is returning to diplomatic gestures too soon after the startling capture of the weapons shipment, without the Palestinian Authority facing any significant consequences.
“This issue needs to be looked at in the eye and not swept under the table,” said David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Based on Israeli evidence presented last week, Bush administration officials have concluded that the 50 tons of weapons seized in the Red Sea were headed for the Palestinian Authority and that the Palestinians planned the operation together with Iran and Hezbollah.
Israel says the evidence clearly implicates Arafat. For one, he keeps such tight control over the Palestinian Authority’s purse strings that it is inconceivable that $10 million or more could be spent on weapons without his knowledge, Israeli officials said. In addition, the operation was planned and directed by several top Arafat aides.
The Bush administration, however, still stops short of linking the shipment directly to Arafat — perhaps for fear of what might occur if he were displaced.
Israel has not opposed Zinni’s return, however, as the government hopes to reach a short-term cease-fire and, possibly, a long-term resolution of the Palestinian intifada.
A State Department official cautioned that sending Zinni to the region should not be seen as a reward for Arafat.
“Zinni’s mission is ending the violence, which is in the interest of both parties,” the official said.
There is an American interest as well. With officials considering the next target in the war on terrorism — perhaps the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — the United States hopes to calm tensions between Israel and the Palestinians in order to calm Arab allies.
Further adding to the pressure to send Zinni is a feeling that the United States has no alternative. Canceling his mission would appear to confirm that the Palestinian Authority can’t or won’t control terrorism and that Arafat is not a peace partner, leaving the United States with no one to talk to among the Palestinians until, eventually, an alternate power center emerges.
If the Bush administration finally connected Arafat to the terrorism against Israel, “there would be no turning back,” one official with an American Jewish organization said.