Al-Ahram Palestine Updates

Friday night's bombing in Tel Aviv nixes inter-Palestinian talks scheduled for Cairo next week, Khaled Amayreh reports from the West Bank

A new decisive round of talks between the various Palestinian factions, due to take place on 5 March under the stewardship of the Egyptian government, was postponed this week. Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, including former PA security official Jebril Rajoub, who discussed the subject with Egyptian officials, attributed their postponement to "procedural and technical matters".

Surely, however, it was the bombing on Friday in Tel Aviv, which killed three members of an Israeli army unit and two women, which was the main reason for the postponement.

Israel's refusal, following the bombing, to allow some factional representatives from leaving the occupied territories to take part in the talks effectively made the talks pointless.

According to reliable sources in Ramallah, the PA leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, angrily blasted Islamic Jihad for "not keeping their word", referring to the ceasefire commitment which was solemnly conveyed to Abbas during a meeting with the faction's leaders in Gaza two weeks ago.

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Light and dark
The London conference might have sent the Palestinians a message of hope but not necessarily assurance. Dina Ezzat reports from the British capital

"There is some light but we should not overstate it," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the end of what was called the London Meeting on the Assistance of the Palestinian Authority that convened on Tuesday for one day at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.

Blair described what transpired at the gathering as a coherent plan specifying in great detail Palestinian commitments to political reform and good governance, security and economic development. These were the clearest results of the international meeting that was hosted by the British government and that brought together ministerial and other high-level representation from the Quartet, Palestine, the Arab League, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Conference resolutions underlined the commitment of the Palestinian Authority to exert maximum effort to upgrade its security performance, take further action to combat corruption and pursue economic development with the assistance of the international community which pledged to provide financial support and offer some guidelines.

The resolutions also referred to the right of Palestinians to have a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. In return, the international community pledged to take the necessary action to address short-term reform priorities as identified by the Palestinian Authority and the World Bank, including budget support, pension and social assistance schemes, and support preparations for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

But the resolutions offered no specific aid budget with a defined delivery timetable. "This is not a pledging conference," British officials from Blair on down repeated. The end results also did not offer clear commitments on the part of the international community to secure an Israeli pledge to start final status negotiations. "We are still not there yet," Blair told the concluding press conference.

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Third parties
The Tel Aviv bombing may have been against Abu Mazen. But it has also underscored the Palestinians' need for a democratic political system, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem

On 25 February a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis and wounded 50 others outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv. It was the first attack inside Israel since 1 November. It also brought to a close the period of calm that followed Mahmoud Abbas's ceasefire declaration at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on 8 February.

Calm is relative of course. Since 1 November, 170 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli army and settlers. Twenty-five have been slain since Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) announced a de facto moratorium on military operations on 23 January.

But the truce's one-sidedness did not diminish the shock, and not only among Israelis who long ago again started clubbing in Tel Aviv and dining in West Jerusalem. There was anger too among Palestinians. Whatever their frustration over Israel's tardiness in freeing political prisoners and withdrawing from West Bank cities, most still back their president's efforts to trade violence for democratic governance and a return to meaningful political negotiations.

That mood was registered in the speed with which Hamas, Jihad and the AMB dissociated themselves from the blast. It was there also in the confidence with which Abbas blamed "third parties" for the attack. In PLO-speak, "third parties" means foreign rather than national forces, with the Lebanese Hizbullah whispered as the likeliest suspect.

The whisper became louder. Two AMB men said they had been contacted by Kais Obeid, a Palestinian-Israeli citizen long accused by Israel as the link between Hizbullah and Palestinian militias in the West Bank. Obeid allegedly told them he had recruited the bomber for Hizbullah but wanted the AMB to claim responsibility. Hizbullah dismissed these innuendoes as "lies".

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