Road Map To Hell

By Johanna McGeary

No one in the blood-soaked corner of the Middle East contested by Israelis and Palestinians really believed the cease-fire declared by Islamic militants two months ago would hold. But that hardly mitigated the shock at the brutality that ripped it apart last week. On Tuesday night a suicide bomber blew himself up aboard Bus No. 2 as it carried many ultra-Orthodox Jewish families home from prayers at Jerusalem's sacred Western Wall. A bomb laced with ball bearings killed 20, wounded 100 and left searing images of tiny corpses on stretchers, screaming toddlers with scorched faces and hysterical parents. Six of the dead were children under 16. MARTYRS! REVENGE! shouted newspaper headlines. On Thursday afternoon on a crowded Gaza City street, five Hellfire missiles launched from Apache helicopter gunships slammed into a white Volkswagen Golf, incinerating Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab and his two bodyguards. Fifteen bystanders were wounded. "Martyrs! Revenge!" shouted thousands of Palestinians as they dipped their hands in Abu Shanab's blood.

That's the punch-counterpunch of violence that has ruined hopes of peace for decades. And this latest round shredded holes in the fragile road map the U.S. put forward four months ago to bring the two sides to a permanent settlement. Israeli tanks immediately reimposed a military cordon around most Palestinian cities and towns, locking them down and hunting out militants. Hamas officials, along with the militant Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, tore up the cease-fire with a fiery call for earthshaking revenge. Bush Administration officials struggled to salvage peace prospects, while Secretary of State Colin Powell warned, "The end of the road map is a cliff that both sides will fall off of."

In fact, the glacially slow progress of the road map was as responsible as anything for the breakdown. Palestinians, perhaps impatiently, had expected to see tangible improvement in their lives by signing on to the road map and the cease-fire. "We didn't agree to all this just to reopen the Gaza road," said a Hamas supporter a few weeks ago. Israelis, just as impatiently, expected the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, to arrest, disarm and dismantle Hamas and other militant bands. Neither side delivered, and each accused the other of purposefully stalemating progress.

There is never a precise beginning for these spasms of violence, but this one seems to have been set in motion on Aug. 8, when Israeli troops, raiding an explosives lab in Nablus, killed two Hamas activists. Hamas and the Tanzim militia responded with two small-scale suicide assaults that left two Israelis dead. Suddenly the number of daily alerts gathered by Israeli intelligence of prospective attacks jumped from 19, the lowest during the cease-fire, to 25, prompting Israel to go after Mohammed Sidr, an Islamic Jihad militant who was allegedly plotting a Jerusalem car bombing. Sidr was killed in a shoot-out. That, said Raed Abdel-Hameed Misk, 29, of Hebron, in his videotaped will, was what inspired him to blow up the Jerusalem bus. Happily married, a father of two with another on the way, weeks away from earning a master's degree at the West Bank university where he taught Islamic studies, Misk seemed an unlikely candidate for martyrdom. But he was a fervent Muslim who preached jihad at his local mosque. And he was a longtime Hamas activist who served as a liaison with different factions' leaders, including Sidr.

What's less clear is why Hamas would have ordered such a destructive act at this time. The attack may have been an act of private revenge. Some Hamas sources in the West Bank say it grew out of differences within the organization. West Bank hard-liners accused Gaza political leaders of surrendering to U.S. and Israeli pressure in accepting the truce. "Why should we sit idle while the Israelis are assassinating our leaders in Hebron and Nablus?" asked one militant. "What measures have the Israelis taken to make the lives of Palestinians less painful?"

Intentionally or not, Hamas has, in President Bush's words, "reaffirmed it is a terrorist organization" that the U.S. and Israel insist must be destroyed for the road-map plan to go forward. Both are pressing Abbas to take down the extremists once and for all: arrest their leaders, jail their operatives, collect their weapons, shut down their bomb shops, cut off their cash, ban them from the airwaves. The trouble is, the Palestinian Prime Minister, installed at Washington's bidding in March after the Bush Administration turned its back on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, doesn't have the political clout or military muscle to clash with the militants. Now his credibility and utility are on the line. He's unpopular on the Palestinian street--Gazans at Abu Shanab's funeral Friday shouted for him to resign--and he's constantly undercut by the machinations of a disgruntled Arafat. He disappointed Israel by negotiating the temporary truce; it wanted a drastic crackdown, but he feared that would spark a civil war.

At this point, says the government of Ariel Sharon, either he does it, or we do it. The U.S. hopes to salvage its policy by pressing Abbas to take decisive action. The Administration made a gesture by slapping a freeze on the assets of six Hamas leaders and five Hamas funding organizations. But those groups are in Europe, and it's hard to imagine Hamas leaders' having accounts that can be easily frozen. Powell phoned Arab and European leaders for help in pressuring the Palestinian Authority. He even broke the Administration's silent treatment toward Arafat, appealing to the sidelined President, who still wields considerable power over the Authority, for help. Powell wants Arafat to lend the Authority the security forces under his control to make Abbas strong enough to challenge the militants. According to a Palestinian source, before he acts, Abbas wants guarantees from Arafat, including a written statement supporting a strike against Hamas. Even then, the prospect of fraternal bloodshed might daunt the Palestinian Authority rank and file. An Authority soldier told TIME a few weeks ago, "I don't want to betray my people or be killed for the $300 a month I earn."

Abbas and his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, complain that Israel's assassination of Abu Shanab has forced them to shelve their plans for disarming the militants. Sharon's officials counter that the Authority was not doing anything anyway, leaving Israel no choice but to take on Hamas. "The Palestinian announcement to freeze all measures against Hamas and Islamic Jihad is ludicrous," said an Israeli intelligence officer, "since there is no activity to freeze." In the Israeli view, the militants had just been using the cease-fire to rest and rearm. According to a senior military official, Hamas has spent the past six weeks planning attacks, stockpiling explosives and improving the range of its rockets. Despite the battering they have given the Palestinian security infrastructure over the past year, Israeli officials insist Dahlan has enough strength to squelch those preparations. "The question," says the intelligence officer, "is if he also has the motivation."

The Palestinian Authority is in a jam. Gaza is up in arms, as angry at Abbas as at the Israelis. The targeted killing of a political leader--one considered rather moderate at that--outraged Palestinians in all factions and threatened to carry the violence to a terrible new level. A senior Israeli military official retorted that all Hamas leaders are equally at risk: "We don't distinguish between military and political levels in Hamas." Meanwhile, Hamas leaders went underground after calling for "Jewish blood to flood in the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa." Alas, there is no road map for where that kind of talk can lead. --Reported by Massimo Calabresi/Washington, Jamil Hamad/Amman and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington, Jamil Hamad/Amman and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem