Netanyahu and the Palestinians

Adam Keller is an Israeli peace activist and editor of The Other Israel (POB 2542, Holon 58125, Israel). He studied history at Tel-Aviv University and published "Terrible Days," an analysis of Israeli society and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He participated in dialogue wit the PLO at the time that it was forbidden for Israelis to do so, and served several terms in military prison for refusing military service and spraying peace slogans on tanks.

IT REALLY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE. For months, all of us in the peace camp had ended practically every article and leaflet with the warning that continued blocking of the peace process would lead to an explosion. Mainstream politicians and respectable commentators mentioned it as well. Even the Security Services pointed out in their regular "confidential reports" to the Prime Minister that frustration and anger among Palestinians were reaching a dangerous level. Yet, when it did happen, everybody was stunned by the dimensions of the popular upsurge and the swiftness with which the conflagration spread.

Binyamin Netanyahu has promoted himself as the advocate of two ideologies: radical Jewish nationalism and neo-liberalism. His extensive international contacts are with individuals, groups (and funders!) supporting one or the other. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, these two ideologies -- though both are right-wing and conservative -- turn out to be mutually incompatible in the Israeli context. A neo-liberal program of privatization and deregulation could only be carried out in the context of a developing peace process, since that would produce increased openings of international borders to a flow of goods and labor, and attract foreign investors. The Israeli business community overwhelmingly favored Shimon Peres, endorsing is vision of "The New Middle East." A nationalist policy, retaining occupied territory against Arab resistance, would entail the opposite -- erecting barriers between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, driving away foreign investors who dislike such risky regions, a high level of government involvement in the economy to mobilize it for war, and to direct a national drive of settlement on Arab lands.

Logically, a nationalist policy should aim at strengthening the armed forces. Yet the Netanyahu government's neo-liberal economic policies included slashing by more than half the (already meager) grants for conscripts at the end of their three years' service. The angry reactions of soldiers in South Lebanon ("We risk our lives, and get a slap in the face!") filled the press. An attempt to cut salaries of the higher echelons has been delayed after unprecedented bickering between army generals and finance ministry officials was reported in the mainstream daily press. Thus, while Netanyahu's political policies steadily increased tensions and brought the danger of all-out war closer, his economic policies caused frustration and anger at both ends of the military hierarchy. The growing realization of this inherent contradiction and of the agonizing need to choose between these alternatives may account, to a large degree, for Netanyahu's often incoherent behavior since he was elected.

Many factors have contributed to the government's chronic instability. In part, it was Israel's new hybrid electoral system, in which the Prime Minister is directly elected but still requires a parliamentary majority. Overestimating his powers under the new dispensation, Netanyahu sought to staff his cabinet with "non-party experts," and establish "an Israeli White House" complete with such institutions as a Council of Economic Advisers, an Office of Budget Management and a National Security Council.

These plans were nipped in the bud by the entrenched bureaucracies of the finance and defense ministries, jealously guarding their privileges and power. Netanyahu's rivals in the Likud, whom he tried to keep out of the cabinet, proved powerful enough to elbow their way in. The only "expert minister" Netanyahu did get in was the shrewd but shady lawyer Ya'akov Ne'eman, who lasted a single, stormy month as Minister of Justice before being hauled off to police investigation, on charges of having suborned a witness in a political corruption trial.

The religious community, though divided into numerous parties and sects, gave Netanyahu its overwhelming support, in return for which it expected the new government to enact measures enforcing a more religious tone in public affairs -- a path opposed, however, by secularists inside the Likud like Finance Minister Meridor. The issue came to center on a Jerusalem thoroughfare whose closure on the Sabbath was demanded by the ultra-Orthodox inhabitants, leading to demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, widespread rioting and clashes with the police. A government order to close the controversial road was blocked by the Supreme Court resulting in anonymous threats on the life of Justice Aharon Barak by extreme Orthodox groups. Respectable rabbis openly called for "non-recognition of the ungodly court." Netanyahu drew fire by declaring himself in favor of "limiting the Supreme Court's authority."

On still another front, the Netanyahu government immediately found itself involved in a controversy when the new Prime Minister introduced extensive cuts in the welfare budget, modeled on the program of the U.S. Republicans with whom Netanyahu has a close ideological affinity. However, the program encountered considerable opposition inside the Likud, a party with a populist tradition, whose voters are drawn mostly from the poorer half of Israeli society. Many Likud rank-and-file activists joined in the one-day general strike called in protest by the Histadrut Trade Union Federation. Netanyahu backtracked, promising to modify some of the draconian welfare cuts he originally planned. At other times and places such controversies would have occupied a government's full attention and energy but, under the conditions prevailing in Israel, they were soon pushed aside by the deepening crisis in relations with the Palestinians and the entire Arab World.

Promises and Provocations

NETANYAHU'S POLICIES ON THIS VITAL ISSUE WERE FORMULATED UNDER THE IMPACT of the 1992 elections, in which Yitzhak Shamir -- Netanyahu's patron during his early career -- went down to defeat. As Prime Minister and party leader, Shamir had been inflexible. A staunch adherent of the Greater Israel ideology, he had pursued settlement construction on the West Bank to the point of direct confrontation with the U.S., placing in jeopardy Israel's lifeline of American financial support. He also rejected out of hand the idea, raised by some Likud leaders, of declaring unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In Shamir's view, Gaza, overcrowded refugee camps and all, was part of sacrosanct Eretz Yisrael, ancestral heritage of the Jewish people. Giving it up was too high a price to pay for winning the elections.

Shamir's inflexibility alienated traditional Likud voters at the political center, who went over to Rabin; the Likud went down to a crushing defeat. Binyamin Netanyahu, the young, ambitious politician who took over the divided, decrepit Likud soon after drew a clear lesson from Shamir's failure. During his three years as opposition leader, he repeatedly shifted his views to win over divergent constituencies. He made utterly demagogic speeches at the scenes of terrorist attacks and, in order to destabilize the Rabin government, allied himself with wild and violent settlers.

Yet, in the aftermath of the Rabin murder, Netanyahu chose to pose as "the respectable statesman." A few months before the elections, he announced his acceptance of the accomplished facts of Oslo, and made rather ambiguous promises to continue the peace process if elected. To further buttress a "peacemaker" image, Netanyahu held a highly-publicized visit to Jordan and a meeting with Crown Prince Hassan.

All in all, his efforts were successful. He regained the stratum of voters alienated by Shamir four years earlier: people who wanted peace but harbored a deep distrust of Arabs. In the aftermath of the Hamas suicide bombings, followed by Peres' disastrous Lebanese adventure, Netanyahu's slogan -- "a secure peace" -- struck a deep chord among this section of the Israeli electorate. Actually, for the settlers and the extreme right who mobilized massively for Netanyahu, the "secure peace" slogan was little more than a convenient weapon with which to topple the Labor government. The most honest among them admitted as much. Thus, Netanyahu succeeded in putting together an electoral alliance with two essentially incompatible elements -- those who wanted to move ahead with the Oslo process, albeit "slowly" and "cautiously" -- and others who sought to roll back the process, or at least freeze it at the point where the Labor government left off.

This division between "pragmatists" and "hard-liners" was apparent at all levels of the Likud Party, from voters and grassroots activists to the top leadership. One of Netanyahu's main achievements in the electoral campaign was to keep his various followers together, without the discrepancies becoming obvious until election day. This was possible primarily because the hard-liners were willing to restrain themselves until the elections were won.

Once Netanyahu won power, however, the question was immediately posed: would the new government go beyond recognizing the facts created by its Labor predecessor and move further along the Oslo road?

During the first months of his term, Netanyahu made every effort to avoid a clear answer to that question, constantly declaring himself bound by the previous government's international treaty obligations, yet he always came up with new excuses for delaying active implementation of any of them. He kept friends and opponents alike guessing about whether he was a pragmatist or a hard-liner. But such tactics can be maintained only for a limited time, and gradually it became apparent that virtually all of Netanyahu's moderate gestures were verbal or symbolic, while his government's policy on the ground was increasingly aggressive and provocative. Of the many issues outstanding between Israelis and Palestinians, one soon came to the foreground: Hebron, the only major Palestinian city still under direct Israeli occupation, and with some 450 armed, fanatical settlers in a well-fortified enclave in the midst of its 160,000 Palestinian inhabitants. Under the provisions of the Oslo-2 Agreement, redeployment of Israeli forces from most parts of Hebron was due to take place in March. The Peres government failed to carry out this redeployment, due largely to the campaign waged by Netanyahu, then leader of the right-wing opposition. Netanyahu and his settler allies had managed to gain the support of key religious leaders; Peres put off the Hebron redeployment in the vain hope of winning at least some points among the rabbis -- and their flocks.

After his electoral defeat, Peres seemed to enjoy some vindictive glee at handing Netanyahu the Hebron hot potato. For the settlers, Hebron was the rallying point for stemming the Oslo tide, the city's Biblical holy graves holding a powerful emotional attraction to the nationalist-religious camp. At the same time, the evacuation of Hebron -- where occupation lingered on in its most brutal form -- also became a priority for the Palestinians, and for the entire Israeli peace camp. The numerous international mediators and intermediaries -- American, European and Arab -- therefore, found Hebron on the top of their agenda, the litmus test of Netanyahu's adherence, in practice, to Oslo.

Prime Minister Netanyahu started his career with an ample reservoir of goodwill, both inside Israel and internationally. In his victory speech, he went out of his way to appear a generous victor, and to calm the defeated parties, initially, with considerable success. Similar efforts were directed at the Europeans, the Americans, the Palestinians and the Arab states.

At the Cairo summit, where Arab leaders gathered in alarm about the new Israeli government's rejectionist "guidelines," Netanyahu had one clear friend: King Hussein of Jordan, smug at having been the only one to notice and cultivate the new Israeli leader before the elections. The summit host, President Mubarak of Egypt, fended off Syrian proposals for an immediate boycott of Netanyahu's Israel, preferring to give the new government a period of grace, despite its declared extremism.

On his visit to Washington, Netanyahu was give a standing ovation on Capitol Hill, especially from Republicans, whose catch phrases of "privatization," "deregulation" and "cutting down government" Netanyahu repeated in his impeccable American English. Netanyahu's hosts were also enthusiastic about his declared willingness "to begin the process" of phasing out American aid to Israel. (The Ministry of Finance in Jerusalem, which was not consulted in advance, was not so eager, and the Prime Minister had to beat a hasty retreat.)

Netanyahu's visit to the White House was a bit more antagonistic, especially when the issue of settlement expansion came up. However, both Netanyahu and Clinton had an interest in smoothing over their differences, and Netanyahu did make a clear promise "not to behave like Shamir" and "not to surprise the U.S." with such actions as settlement construction.

Within a single week at the end of July, the Netanyahu government embarked on a series of goodwill gestures. Foreign Minister Levy held a cordial meeting with Yasser Arafat in Gaza -- the first ministerial-level contact with the PLO by the Likud; a Netanyahu-Arafat meeting was declared to be due soon." Meanwhile, Netanyahu met with President Mubarak of Egypt, informing him that the Palestinian women prisoners would be released (a clause in Oslo-2 which, despite repeated promises at the highest levels, the old and the new Israeli governments simply failed to keep). After being closeted with Netanyahu for an hour, Egyptian President Mubarak emerged, smiling broadly, and told the numerous Israeli journalists present: "You know, your new Prime Minister is not as bad a guy as everyone said. After what I heard from him, I have good reason to feel that things will start moving soon." Similar assurances were also given a few days later to King Hussein of Jordan.

In days that followed, the press was full of "unofficial but reliable" reports, according to which Defense Minister Mordechai had formulated a plan for the Hebron redeployment, requiring only "cosmetic changes" in the Oslo-2 format. Mordechai was due to meet with Arafat and present that plan.

The impression that things were moving was reinforced by the conclusion of two drawn out M.I.A. tragedies which had haunted the Israeli public for years. As a result of imprisoned Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's help, security forces were able to locate and recover the body of Ilan Sa'adun, an Israeli soldier kidnapped and killed by a Hamas squad nearly a decade ago. The Security Services made no secret of their opinion that the seriously ill Sheikh Yassin should be released, both for the positive effect his humane views could have on other Hamas leaders, and because his death in prison might trigger riots, if not terrorist attacks.

On the Lebanese front an exchange was effected between Israel and Hezbollah, with German mediation. The Lebanese militia returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, as well as releasing dozens of Lebanese mercenaries who had fought on the Israeli side; in exchange, Israel returned living Hezbollah fighters and the bodies of dead ones. The deal occupied the front pages for days, and there was a good deal of speculation that it might be the first move in a bold Netanyahu plan to end the perennial guerrilla war in South Lebanon. But within weeks, all the hopes aroused at the end of July were dashed. No Palestinian prisoners were released -- neither the women, nor Sheikh Yassin or anybody else; the public mood of the Egyptian president and his officials clearly indicated that Netanyahu's more confidential promises were not honored, either. The Mordechai plan for Hebron encountered strong opposition from arch hard-liner Ariel Sharon and the ministers of the National Religious Party. Neither Netanyahu nor Mordechai followed Levy's lead in meeting Arafat; for his part, Levy complained in public of being shut out of the negotiations process and threatened to resign. At the same time, the settlers put strong pressure on Netanyahu to honor the promises he made to them before the elections. After weeks of avoiding them, Netanyahu did meet with the assembled settler leaders. Afterward, the settlers' spokesman, Pinhas Wallerstein, told the press: "This is a great day in the history of Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. At last we have a Prime Minister who is one of us, in the full sense of the word."

A few days later, the cabinet formally repealed "the settlement freeze" decreed -- but not strictly observed -- by the Rabin government. The "settlement de-freeze" resolution drew angry protests from around the world. Inside the country, Peace Now published data collected by its Settlement Watch Team on the cost of the intended settlement extension and engaged in sharp, highly-publicized media debates with settlers. In an effort to appease the Americans, the Europeans and the Arabs, Netanyahu sent them special messages, pointing out a rider to the "de-freeze" resolution: though settlement extension was now permitted in principle, each construction plan required the personal approval of Defense Minister Mordechai. But this system failed to keep the pressure off of Netanyahu: the settlers became more and more disgruntled after every extension plan vetoed by Mordechai. At the same time, any ministerial approval for a settlement extension made headlines and aroused fresh wave of condemnation inside and outside the country. By mid-August, the Netanyahu government was increasingly alienating its international and Arab contacts, as well as both ends of the Israeli political spectrum.

Mounting Frustrations

FOR THE PALESTINIANS, THE ELECTION OF NETANYAHU CAME IN THE MIDST of an extremely difficult period. The Hamas bombings in late February had resulted in extremely harsh Israeli retaliation in the Palestinian Territories, in particular, the imposition by Prime Minister Peres of a total, prolonged closure depriving tens of thousands of Palestinian workers of their jobs in Israel and completely dislocating the Palestinian economy. Arafat had been counting on Peres' promise that after the elections, which he was supposed to win, he would remove the closure, withdraw the army from Hebron and release the prisoners. The shock of Peres' defeat left Arafat out on a limb, desperate to regain his balance and establish contact with the new Israeli regime. At the beginning, such contact was meager: Netanyahu adviser Dore Gold repeatedly appeared at Arafat's headquarters, bearing peremptory messages from his master but with no mandate to discuss any substantial issue. Nor did the visit of Foreign Minister Levy, though more cordial, produce any practical result.

At the time, senior members of the Likud, as well as astute settler leaders, toyed with the dramatic idea of Israel's unilaterally proclaiming lifting of the closure -- while putting a hold on any implementation of Oslo, such as the Hebron redeployment. They argued that the mass of impoverished Palestinian workers cared for their jobs more than for anything else, and that such a move might undercut Arafat's base of support. After all, lifting the closure and allowing free circulation between Israel and the Palestinian Territories accorded well with the formal Likud ideology, by which both are part of the same (Jewish-dominated) entity. Netanyahu, however, cared little for such abstract considerations: he decided against a dramatic lifting of the closure, because of the possibility that it could be followed by a terrorist attack for which he would then be blamed (just as he had blamed the Labor government in the past). The best he would allow, following the security chief's advice, was a gradual and partial easing of the closure, occasionally giving the Palestinians a few thousand more work permits as a "reward for good behavior." Tragically, many Palestinians who got such a miserly hand-out found their jobs already taken by workers from the Third World and Eastern Europe, brought to Israel in the tens of thousands some years earlier.¹.

Nothing whatsoever was done to address other aspects of the closure, such as strict security checks of Palestinian trucks, which slowed to a trickle the flow of Palestinian goods from the Territories into Israel and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which hitherto had sold much of their produce to each other. These checks, which the Palestinians claim are intended to protect not only security but also the interests of Israeli competitors, caused the bankruptcy of many Palestinian enterprises, and drove away most of the foreign investors who had considered investing in the Palestinian Territories.

At all points where Palestinian daily life is touched by Israeli bureaucracy, conditions became noticeably more harsh: passage through roadblocks entailed greater humiliation and intimidation by soldiers; permits to go abroad, either by land or via Ben Gurion Airport, became more difficult to obtain; human rights groups collected more and more testimony from Palestinians beaten p by Israeli police or soldiers; the military authorities embarked on a systematic campaign of demolishing houses in "area C" (70% of the West Bank) which was still under direct Israeli rule, with dozens of homes in a single village receiving demolition orders while, at the same time, plans were announced to extend a nearby Israeli settlement. It is not clear whether all these developments occurred under instructions from above, or resulted from elements in the low and middle ranks in the hierarchy who felt that now was the time to follow their inclinations -- nor does it matter.

Initially, much of the Palestinian anger and frustration were directed at Yasser Arafat, and the Palestinian Authority, its police and its administration, in general. Arafat was accused of having become a collaborator. Opposition members of the newly-elected Palestinian parliament became increasingly bold in exposing cases of corruption and human rights violations by senior officials. News of a young Palestinian's death by torture while in the custody of the Palestinian police in Nablus sparked large-scale riots in that city; at Tulkarm, the local Palestinian police station was stormed and dozens of prisoners set free. The deteriorating situation aroused increasing concerns in Israel -- not only in the media and opposition parties, but also among Netanyahu's own security advisers. More and more the Prime Minister was urged to hold his long-delayed personal meeting with Arafat and give the Palestinian leader some concrete gains to show his people. Netanyahu, however, stuck to his concept of "reciprocity," by which dialogue with Arafat and any discussion of substantial issues was dependent upon Palestinian rectification of their "violations of Oslo."

In his first days as Prime Minister, Netanyahu's advisers prepared a list for him of some 30 alleged Palestinian violations. (Following its publication, the Palestinians promptly published a similar number of Israeli violations.) After some consideration Netanyahu decided to focus on the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem, an issue that had figured prominently and successfully in his election campaign.

During that campaign, Netanyahu promised his voters to close the "Orient House," Palestinian headquarters in East Jerusalem, whose de-facto extra-territorial status made it a favorite target of right-wing agitation. Once in office, Netanyahu realized that the cost of closing Orient House, a place officially recognized and regularly visited by the European Foreign Ministers, would be prohibitive. Lowering his sights, Netanyahu settled on three less-known Palestinian offices located in East Jerusalem, involved with such issues as statistics, cartography and vocational training. Numerous messages, transmitted to Arafat via several intermediaries, made clear that closing the three offices -- deemed to be official extensions of the Palestinian Authority, whose presence in Jerusalem is forbidden -- was a precondition for a Netanyahu-Arafat meeting, and for any substantial discussion of Hebron or any other issue. Much against the opinion of his advisers, Arafat decided to accept these terms, and ordered that the East Jerusalem offices be closed, which they were after much grumbling by those involved. Had Netanyahu then set a time for meeting Arafat, he could have gone to that meeting as a victor. Instead, he greeted the news with marked indifference and, on the same day, authorized Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmart to demolish a large Palestinian building in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The building in question, a recreation center for youths and the handicapped, had been built over the past two years, financed with grants from the French and Canadian governments. The officials at the Jerusalem municipality's planning department proclaimed the project part of "a Palestinian conspiracy to take over the Old City" and refused to grant a building permit; the Palestinians had, nevertheless, gone ahead, which gave the municipality the legal right to issue a demolition order. After Netanyahu okayed the demolition order it was carried out at once in a military-like operation, with hundreds of police surrounding the site and cranes lifting bulldozers over the Old City Wall (since the heavy machines could not enter through the narrow medieval gates). On the same day, the Israeli authorities also declared their intention to evict the Jahalin Bedouins, whose land was deemed necessary for extending the Israeli settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, ten kilometers east of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian parliament met in Ramallah, in a unanimous mood of anger, with speaker after speaker delivering militant speeches. Arafat, who made a special trip from Gaza and whose helicopter was held up in the air for half an hour by Israeli air controllers, called on all Palestinians to say "a prayer to save Jerusalem" at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, and asked their Christian compatriots to do the same at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Arafat proclamation at once changed the atmosphere, creating a mood of enormous tension and expectation, during the 48-hour countdown to the Friday Muslim prayers. The government, rejecting out of hand proposals to allow the prayer to be held, declared its determination to enforce the closure, by which West Bank Palestinians are barred from entering East Jerusalem. Thousands of police were mobilized from all over the country to seal off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Outwardly, they were successful; attendance at the Jerusalem Mosque was even lower than usual. But this success was bought at the price of having the major international TV networks showing Israeli police blocking the way of worshippers to prayer. Thus was exposed the reality long known to Palestinians, of which the wider world was hitherto largely ignorant, that despite the claim of all Israeli governments to preserve freedom of worship in Jerusalem, the closure denies that freedom to millions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians.

The False Dawn

ONE OF THE EFFECTS OF THE CONFRONTATION WAS AN ENORMOUS INCREASE in the pressure on Netanyahu to hold his promised meeting with Arafat. Labor leader and former Prime Minister Peres held a much-publicized meeting of his own with the Palestinian leader. A few days later, Israeli President Ezer Weitzman, whose official role is purely titular, delivered an unprecedented ultimatum to Netanyahu: if the Prime Minister would not meet with Arafat, the president would do so instead. Finally, President Clinton made clear that he would not see Netanyahu, on his forthcoming visit to the U.S., unless Netanyahu first met with Arafat.

Ironically, it was Netanyahu who was now eager to meet Arafat, while the Palestinian leader was reluctant. In complicated secret negotiations, in which Netanyahu had to resort to the same Norwegian diplomats who mediated the original Oslo Agreements in 1993, the modalities of the Netanyahu-Arafat meeting were agreed upon.

Three years after Rabin and Arafat had their first meeting on the White House lawn, Israeli newspapers once more featured full-page color photos of the Prime Minister shaking hands with Yasser Arafat with the news that now, at last, the Likud's taboo was also broken. For two brief days, Netanyahu enjoyed the support of the opposition and the peace movement, while the hard-liners in his own party were furious. In a temporarily successful effort to appease them, Netanyahu declared his total and absolute opposition to a Palestinian state, making abundant use of rejectionist-style demagogy.

It soon turned out that the long-awaited meeting had produced no tangible result other than photographs, and that Netanyahu had never intended it to be otherwise. In fact, he started using having met with Arafat as an alibi for not making any political progress. Netanyahu's second visit to the U.S., was noticeably cooler than the first, the televised meeting with Clinton was Netanyahu's only evidence of "progress on the Palestinian track." Clinton, however, confronted him with another increasingly difficult problem, that of Syria.

The North Heats Up

UNLIKE THE PALESTINIANS, THE LABOR GOVERNMENT HAD NOT REACHED any official agreement with the Syrians which would have been binding upon its successor. The four years of negotiations, broken off in March 1996 in the wake of the Hamas bombings, had produced only an unofficial agreement ("non-paper" in diplomatic jargon) stating the two sides' acceptance of the principle of Land for Peace, in this case, return of the occupied Golan Heights in exchange for genuine peace between Israel and Syria. In what turned out to be a colossal mistake, Syrian President Assad had refused to transform this "non-paper" into an officially binding agreement without a detailed agreement on all the complicated subordinate issues, the exact delineation of the border, the demilitarized zones and security arrangements, the water sources, etc.

Prime Minister Netanyahu made no secret of his intention to ditch the "non-paper" and re-start negotiations, with an Israeli claim to the whole of the Golan. And Syria was, of all Arab states, the one to greet Netanyahu's election victory with the strongest and most unmitigated hostility, which was amply reciprocated. Netanyahu's first plan was to open a major propaganda campaign depicting Syria as "a terrorist state," with the aim of instigating international sanctions and forcing Syria to the status of a "pariah state" like Iran and Iraq; the removal of sanctions would have been dependent on Syria's accepting Israeli possession of the Golan.

On his first visit to Washington, Netanyahu took with him a fat dossier on terrorist organizations based in Damascus and on Syria's long-standing alliance with Iran but he made no use of it. In talking with President Clinton and other decision-makers in Washington, Netanyahu got a clear message: the U.S., which in 1990 invested great efforts to get Syrian troops to fight at its side against Iraq, was not about to sacrifice that achievement. It was difficult enough to maintain the "double containment" of Iran and Iraq; there was not the slightest desire for a third.

With this tack blocked, Netanyahu decided on an approach which became known as "Lebanon first." He offered to withdraw Israeli forces from South Lebanon, in return for Syria's tacit agreement to defer discussion of the Golan to an indefinite future. Such a move would have been very popular among Israelis who are increasingly fed up with the futile bloodletting in South Lebanon; it would have obtained the support of the Labor and left opposition, and not been seriously opposed even from the annexationist right. But unfortunately for Netanyahu, there was no reason for the Syrians to accept the proposal and let Israel extricate itself from the Lebanese predicament, thus losing its own main lever for applying pressure on Israel. The "Lebanon first" proposal was rejected out of hand by the Syrian and Lebanese governments, which insisted that South Lebanon and the Golan are two interlinked, inseparable issues.

In theory, Netanyahu had the option of pulling Israeli forces out of Lebanon unilaterally, without any agreement In that case, however, he would have risked Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel from the evacuated area (though, after an Israeli withdrawal, he could have hoped for wide international acceptance of Israeli retaliatory action). But a unilateral withdrawal would also have meant abandoning members of the Israel-backed "South Lebanon Army" to the mercy of the Syrian and Lebanese governments, which would, to say the least, have deterred other Arabs from future acts of collaboration with Israel.

Netanyahu chose to shelve the "Lebanon first" idea and let the guerrilla war meander along its bloody course. With no more brilliant proposals for Syria, Netanyahu fell back upon an official call for "renewing the peace talks with no preconditions," at the same time promising new government investments to the Golan settlers, with the aim of expanding their population. The Syrians indignantly responded that they would only resume negotiations at the point where the Labor government had broken them off in March. At that point, Israelis and Syrians started to trade accusations and insults daily, gradually descending into threats. A Syrian military redeployment in Lebanon became the subject of speculation and apprehension. Troops which had garrisoned Beirut during the past decade were moved eastward, officially because the internal situation in Lebanon had stabilized, and stationed at a location where they could block an Israeli outflanking attack on Damascus via East Lebanon. And, as Israeli experts were quick to point out: the new Syrian positions could also serve as a springboard for a surprise attack on the strategic Mount Hermon, the highest point of the Golan, and the site of savage battles during the 1973 war.

The verbal exhibition of mutual hostility reached a crescendo as Israeli Minister of Agriculture Rafael Eitan, a former general of Lebanon War notoriety, declared: "If war comes, we will just wipe Syria off the map."

Meanwhile international TV crews were invited to the Golan, to take footage of galloping tank squadrons; tongue in cheek, Israeli generals reiterated that these were "no more than routine maneuvers."

THE DETERIORATION OF ISRAELI-SYRIAN RELATIONS WAS MATCHED by relations with Egypt, the first of Israel's neighbors to have signed a peace treaty. The Egyptians supported Palestinian and Syrian grievances. The Egyptian press resorted to vitriolic language, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amer Musa warned that without significant motion in the peace process Egypt might reconsider holding the November Middle East Economic Conference. Netanyahu's reaction to this threat caused a diplomatic incident. Insisting that the Egyptians themselves very much needed that conference, he added, "Musa is cutting off his nose to spite his face!"

Given Netanyahu's record of the previous months, Israeli diplomats had a hard job trying to convince the furious Egyptians that "it was a quite common English expression whose translation into Arabic made it sound more insulting." Cartoons appeared in the Egyptian press suggesting "modifications" to Netanyahu's anatomy, and the Egyptian army carried out "routine maneuvers" in which journalists noticed that several Egyptian divisions were practicing the rapid crossing of a canal, which would be the first step in any military confrontation with Israel.

A great American effort was needed to calm things down. The Egyptians were induced to give the economic conference another chance. For the Syrians, Clinton got Netanyahu's agreement to the formula that Israeli-Syrian negotiations would reopen with the new Israeli government "acknowledging" the positions of its predecessor but not committing itself to them. Though the Syrians rejected this as insufficient, Damascus' tone became a bit less belligerent, with Assad reportedly agreeing to wait until after the U.S. presidential elections.

While the spotlight was turned on Syria, the Palestinian situation continued to deteriorate. An inconclusive meeting between Defense Minister Mordechai and Arafat was followed by the demolition of several Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and other houses taken over by settlers. South of Jerusalem the first "Jews-only" road was opened, with soldiers at the junction ordered to turn away all Palestinians, including those at the expense of whose fields and orchards the road had been built.

Diggers

EVER SINCE THE YOM KIPPUR WAR OF OCTOBER 1973, ISRAELIS have been apprehensive about the approach of Judaism's holiest day, a day of fast and silence, on which there is neither traffic nor radio or TV broadcasts. That was the day on which the Egyptians and Syrians launched their surprise attack on Israel. In other years, this fear had seemed rather irrational. Still, in spite of the existing tensions, the fast of 1996 passed quietly enough. It was Netanyahu who, the following night in Jerusalem, committed his supreme provocation, setting alight the Palestinian powder keg.

No spot among the many disputed between Israelis and Palestinians is as sensitive and emotionally loaded as the Old City of Jerusalem; the place known to Jews as Har Habait (The Temple Mount) and to Muslims as Haram-a-Sharif (The Noble Shrine). For Jews, it is the site of two successive Jewish temples, both destroyed in war, revered by many persecuted Jews as the symbols of a lost Golden Age. The 1,300-year old Mosques which now stand upon the site are Islam's third holiest place, after the shrines of Mecca and Medina. In Muslim tradition, it is the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. During the 20th century, the place already steeped in religious symbolism assumed a potent nationalist significance as well. The emotional appeal of the former Jerusalem Temple was a recurrent theme of the Zionist movement from Herzl on and the Mosques have become a powerful symbol of the Palestinian national identity, their pictures found at nearly every Palestinian home (including those of Christians).

Fortunately, for the sake of stability on this sensitive spot, farsighted Jewish sages many hundreds of years ago strictly forbade Jews to make any effort to rebuild the Temple, or even to set foot on that mountain, until the coming of the Messiah. Instead, Jewish tradition sanctified the Wailing Wall, the outer wall of the Temple Mount/Haram a-Sharif Compound, and the only existent relic of the original Jewish Temple. The age-old Jewish tradition fitted well with Israeli government policies, established in 1967 by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and retained essentially unchanged up to the present. Dayan had established firm Israeli control over the Wailing Wall and its environs, even to the extent of razing a whole Palestinian neighborhood to provide a wide plaza for Jewish worshippers at the Wall. He carefully refrained from any attempt to wrest control of the Temple Mount Compound from the Muslim authorities.

This policy was repeatedly challenged by messianic nationalist groups, using violent provocations with the aim of destroying the Mosques. The most serious, in 1990, provoked riots in which Israeli police gunned down 18 Muslim worshippers.

Such organizations operate openly and conspicuously, and their spirit of messianism gradually seeped into more respectable religious associations operating at the Wailing Wall, under the auspices of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Unable to approach the Temple Mount Compound directly, these associations have, since the 1970s, hit on the idea of excavating the ancient tunnels running under the Old City. From the start, these operations were given a double justification -- a mundane, pragmatic explanation involving archeological research and tourism, and a highly ideological religious-nationalist reasoning of "the need to recover ancestral Jewish Jerusalem." Over the years, the Israeli penetration into the tunnels has aroused Palestinian suspicion and anger. In the 1980s, the Palestinians started digging and excavating for their own reasons, and there ensued a real subterranean battle between rival digging crews, using fists and sticks.

Following that incident, a brick underground wall was erected dividing the disputed tunnel, and the Israeli side promised to do no more tunneling directly under the Mosque Compound. The "diggers" then tried another tack, to extend the tunnel northward, under the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. At the same time, messianic settlers were moving and taking over Palestinian houses in the same quarters with the proclaimed aim of "Judaizing the Old City." By the late 1980s, the northern tunnel was ready, but for an opening on the far side which would allow Israelis to emerge in the Arab inhabited part of the Old City. An attempt to make such an opening in 1988, however, sparked widespread riots in Jerusalem and all over the West Bank, fanning the fire of the Intifada. Then Prime Minister Shamir -- for all his inflexibility on other issues -- ordered the opening closed.

The nationalist-religious "diggers" did not give up, mustering a formidable political lobby -- the Nationalist Religious Party. Their power increased with the 1993 election of Ehud Olmert as Mayor of Jerusalem, in whose municipal administration the "diggers" have many political friends. The Labor Prime Ministers, Rabin and Peres, had to deal with the issue during various discreet meetings, assenting in principle to opening the tunnel, but with the rider that "the timing must be carefully chosen." During Netanyahu's first months in office, he seemed to accept that position. During a confidential meeting, Admiral Ami Ayalon, head of the Shabak Security Services, advised opening the tunnel at the time of the redeployment in Hebron, when the satisfied Palestinians could be expected to make no more than verbal protest.

Into the Fire

WHAT MOTIVATED NETANYAHU TO IGNORE THIS ADVICE AND ADVANCE with the tunnel in a period of antagonism is still an open question. In making that decision, the only bold, clear and unambiguous step so far in his term as Prime Minister, Netanyahu acted alone. The security services and the army were informed only at the last moment; the same is true for the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs. Though Netanyahu adviser, Dore Gold, made a special visit to Amman to brief King Hussein on the eve of Yom Kippur, he did not mention the plans for the tunnel at all, and apparently knew nothing of them himself. And despite Netanyahu's promise not to "surprise" the Americans, Clinton found out only after the tunnel affair had become TV news.

One thing on which Israeli commentators and investigative journalists agree is that Netanyahu, while in opposition, had established extensive contacts with extremist groups such as the "diggers." This included at least one source of financing, the American Jewish fundamentalist and millionaire Erwin Moskovitz of Florida, who had been investing enormous sums in settlement activities in East Jerusalem and also contributed generously to Netanyahu's campaigns, both in the Likud primaries and in the general elections. Moskovitz, who happened to be in Jerusalem for the Jewish holidays, was one of the few informed, even figuring as guest of honor at the opening of the tunnel. It is also known that a year before the elections Netanyahu promised the messianists that once elected he would permit Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, a promise he found utterly impossible to fulfill. Moreover, the fanatics were furious about the Muslim authorities fitting out the subterranean space known as "Solomon's Stables" as a new Mosque (actually built by King Herod about 1,000 years after Solomon's time). The extremist groups had tried to prevent the opening of the new Mosque by an appeal to the Supreme Court, and the Shabak warned Netanyahu that they might use explosives, as well.

With this background, it appears that Netanyahu's motive was to appease these groups, and the extreme right in general; he might even have hoped that the reaction to this provocation would weaken them a bit. But though he probably anticipated Palestinian protests, it is not likely that he fully realized how much the Palestinian position would be strengthened by his precipitate action.

Late on the night of September 23, hundreds of police occupied a site at the Via Dolorosa, where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus walked with the cross. A little bit below them, under the ground, a small group was gathered, along with a single TV crew to commemorate the scene. The visiting millionaire was present, as was Mayor Ehud Olmert, another of his beneficiaries. Olmert personally took the chisel to strike the last few blows. When the sun rose over Jerusalem, the new exit of the tunnel was already a fait accompli.

Having lit the fuse, Netanyahu departed on a previously-scheduled tour of Britain, France and Germany. During the night, Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem had heard the commotion, arrived and were roughly pushed away by the police. The Muslim authorities on the mount were alerted, and in turn alerted Arafat in Gaza. In the morning, several hundred Palestinian youths gathered for a demonstration on the site, and were promptly and violently dispersed. An hour later, another demonstration broke out in the sacred compound around the Mosques, and stones were thrown at Jewish worshippers near the Wailing Wall, followed by another violent confrontation with police.

That afternoon, Arafat called for a general strike the next day throughout the Palestinian Territories, and for mass demonstrations in every town, village and refugee camp. The call was enthusiastically endorsed by all shades of the Palestinian political spectrum. On the morning of Wednesday, September 25, the Palestinian protest seemed relatively quiet, with most processions moving through the self-governing Palestinian cities where no Israeli forces are present. Gradually, reports arrived of confrontations spreading along the West Bank's roads where stone-throwing at military and settler cars had become rare since the end of the Intifada.

Sizable demonstrations in East Jerusalem were broken up by police, only to re-appear at a different location, and at Hebron, where the army slapped a curfew over the entire city, which was to last for the next ten days. At noon, some 1,500 students of Bir Zeit University, the West Bank institution which had a crucial role in earlier stages of the Palestinian struggle, set out in procession toward the Israeli military checkpoint at the southern exit of Ramallah; a checkpoint which, according to the letter of the Oslo text, should no longer have been in place. The Palestinian police were supposed to block the students' way before they approached the Israeli soldiers. Apparently, the police did not try very hard. The furious students succeeded in getting near the handful of soldiers in the outpost; the soldiers first shot rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, then switched to live bullets. Several students fell down, dead or wounded. So far, it was the classic Intifada script, enacted thousands of times on this and other spots between 1987 and 1993. The difference was that now a large armed, trained Palestinian force was present.

Many hotly contested versions exist of how the Palestinian police were drawn in, and whether anybody planned it in advance. Whatever the circumstances, the relations between Israelis and Palestinians were about to change qualitatively, with profound consequences for the future. For the first time since 1948, an armed confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians developed on something like equal terms (due of course to political circumstances preventing Israel from using more than a fraction of its available strength). For the first time, armed Palestinians confronting Israel were perceived by Israelis not as "terrorists" who are illegitimate by definition, but as soldiers who are inherently equals. Sadly, many lives were to be lost in order to bring this elementary lesson home.

By mid-afternoon a full-scale infantry battle was going on at the approaches to Ramallah, and both sides were hastily bringing in reinforcements. At the end of the day, during the six o'clock news, the Israeli radio commentator declared: "This is no longer Intifada. This is war!" On the TV news Israelis were treated to detailed footage of the fighting including close-ups from both sides of the Ramallah battlefield. In the late hours of that day, Israeli and Palestinian senior commanders, who had established friendly contacts during the past year, managed to contact each other by radio and arrange a truce. Israeli and Palestinian soldiers at the Ramallah approach retreated behind makeshift barriers; between them, what had been one of the few prosperous middle class areas in the Palestinian Territories had been turned into a ruined and desolate no-man's-land. Early the following morning, Palestinian crowds approached Kfar Darom, one of the Israeli armed settlement enclaves straddling the main North-South artery of the Gaza Strip. The previous day's sequence repeated itself, except that here it was the settlers who opened fire on the Palestinians against the orders of the soldiers guarding them.

News of the battle raging around Kfar Darom spread swiftly, and dozens of similar conflagrations broke out throughout the densely-populated Gaza Strip, all around the settlement enclaves, where one-third of the Gaza Strip's land (and half of its water!) are reserved for a total of 5,000 Israelis.

In northern Gaza, thousands stormed the Erez checkpoint, potent symbol of the closure, the place where Palestinians encounter either a barred gate or a long and humiliating search on the way to a hard day's work in Israel. Here, as elsewhere, the demonstrations and stone-throwing soon gave way to a battle, conducted throughout the day with machine guns as well as rifles.

On the other side of the Gaza Strip, at Rafah, the Palestinians broke through the Israeli-held zone separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, cut the border fence and were fraternizing with the Egyptian border guards when Israeli forces arrived at the spot. In the ensuing battle, Egyptian soldiers were involved on the Palestinian side, the first case since 1974 in which Israelis and Egyptians fired on each other. (Later, the Israeli and Egyptian authorities -- aware of the danger to their already strained relations -- officially denied that this occurred, though reliable witnesses had attested to it.)

The West Bank also flared up again. At the outskirts of Ramallah, the battle resumed, and similar ones broke out near other cities. In Nablus, the small Israeli garrison in the medieval building known as Joseph's Tomb came under siege by thousands of Palestinians. A relieving force was decimated by heavy Palestinian fire from the rooftops, and the survivors, together with the original garrison, surrendered; the Palestinian Police protected them from the furious crowd, and Palestinian medics treated the wounded. On hearing the reports from Nablus, Defense Minister Mordechai ordered the evacuation of Joseph's Tomb, militarily the only sensible option. The Israeli commanders opened negotiations with their Palestinian counterparts on evacuation of the trapped soldiers. But the settlers, getting wind of this, alerted the Ministers of the National Religious Party, who used heavy pressure to prevent "abandonment of the holy grave." Late at night, after the Israeli commanders threatened an invasion of Nablus by tanks, the Palestinians agreed to let the wounded and shell-shocked soldiers be replaced by a fresh squad, which would evidently become hostages in case of renewed hostilities.

By that time, an unofficial cease-fire was in force in most places. Netanyahu, who at first exhibited a cool disdain toward "the riots," had to cut short his European tour and hasten home, making frantic phone calls to Arafat and alternating between desperate pleading and dire threats. On the morning of September 27, the focus of events appeared to be shifting to the field of politics, and it looked like a relative calm could be preserved. But there was to be one more burst of lethal violence. The Israeli police decided on a "firm attitude" at the Jerusalem Mosques, with the aim of "preventing riots," with the result that, at the end of the noon prayers, three Palestinian worshippers were shot to death. The news sparked scattered new confrontations, especially at sites untouched on the previous day, such as Jericho and Tulkarm.².

In three days, 16 Israelis perished, all of them soldiers, and 70 Palestinians, including both soldiers and civilians, many of them children. There were dozens of wounded on the Israeli side and more than a thousand among the Palestinians, many suffering from head wounds, shot from the Israeli helicopter gunships used in the later stages of the fighting. Of the Israeli casualties, nearly half were sustained at the Joseph's Tomb affair; seven fresh graves were dug to hold on to the ancient one.

DURING THE FIGHTING, THE ARMY IMPOSED A TOTAL CLOSURE on the Palestinian Territories, cutting them off from Israel. This was followed by a siege imposed on the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, cutting them off also from each other; tanks were brought in by the dozens, their cannons directed at the cities. Physically, the situation returned to what it had been in March, following the Hamas bombings. But then the Palestinians had been cowed and on the defensive; now, they were confident and assertive. International public opinion and the diplomatic world were overwhelmingly on the Palestinian side; inside Israel an enormous wave of criticism and opposition resulted in daily demonstrations, protesters numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands. In addition to the political opposition, Netanyahu was increasingly alienated from the military high command and the security chiefs who accused him of having precipitated the crisis. Israeli commentators declared Arafat and the Palestinians in general, as having emerged victorious from the crisis. The same conclusion was reached in the official report of military intelligence, leaked to the daily Ha'aretz.

For his part, Netanyahu dug in his heels. Using the podium of a Christian fundamentalist conference held in Jerusalem³ -- about the only international forum where he could still expect to be received warmly -- to declare: "The tunnel is open, and will remain open forever! We do not yield to violence!"

Intransigence Games

INTERNATIONAL MEDIATION EFFORTS CENTERED UPON ATTEMPTS TO BRING Netanyahu and Arafat together, to stabilize the still shaky situation and restart the Oslo process. Netanyahu firmly vetoed the idea of holding the meeting in Cairo under the auspices of President Mubarak. Instead, President Clinton -- who conspicuously failed to veto a U.N. resolution condemning the tunnel-opening -- hastily convened a Middle East Summit at the White House, including Netanyahu and Arafat, as well as King Hussein of Jordan. President Mubarak, also invited to attend, refused, correctly surmising that Netanyahu would make no concession.

In Washington, Netanyahu refused to budge on the tunnel, nor did he agree to set up a target date for the evacuation of Hebron. He tried to make up for having made no concrete concession by going out of his way to be warm to Arafat - repeatedly and demonstrably shaking his hand, exchanging reminiscences from the battle of Karame in 1968 where Arafat and the young Netanyahu had come close to shooting each other, and even proclaiming Arafat to be "my friend and ally" and "quite charming, indeed." Israeli journalists joked about "Netanyahu in love," but to judge from Arafat's expression during the final ceremony, this pretense of intimacy was lost on him.

Netanyahu won no more than a respite, and not a very long one, at the heavy price of offending and alienating both the President of the United States and the King of Jordan. At no previous conference in living memory did the U.S. tend to favor the Palestinians over the Israelis. Hitherto, it would have been inconceivable, especially so close to the U.S. elections, always the most auspicious time for Israeli prime ministers.

For a new round of negotiations held at Erez checkpoint, the very same place that had been a battlefield ten days earlier, Netanyahu sent his negotiating team to meet with Arafat's. The Israeli negotiators presented a list of 11 demands with regard to Hebron, each and every one in contradiction of the clear text of the Oslo Agreement.⁴ The American mediators had great difficulty preventing the Palestinians from immediately walking out.

Meanwhile the European Community declared its support for the Palestinian demands. Foreign investors canceled or suspended plans to invest in Israel, putting Netanyahu's ambitious privatization program in doubt, and the Emirate of Qatar suspended the very recent "normalization of relations" with Israel, much to the dismay of the Israeli business community, which had expected to gain a foothold in the fabulous markets of the Gulf at last.

Then King Hussein of Jordan, the Arab leader most popular among Israelis (the only one they really trust), spoke out with unusual frankness: "The present Israeli Prime Minister has nothing of the vision of peace late Yitzhak Rabin had. (...) We now stand but one step from the edge of the abyss. Soon Netanyahu may once more need the gas mask he used during the Gulf War."

Though the closure was gradually eased, Israeli and Palestinian troops continued to lay sandbags and improve fortifications along the winding and confused "confrontation lines" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli tanks were withdrawn a short distance, out of sight of the Palestinians, but military sources emphasized that they could be brought up again should the need arise. Rumors that the Palestinians had obtained anti-tank missiles were denied.

On the Golan border, both Israel and Syria prepared for yet another series of military exercises, which both states again took care to call "routine." At the same time, the Syrians started to establish a series of strategic roads, designed to facilitate the speedy transportation of troops between Syria and Lebanon.

Without an official announcement, the government seems to have halted further settlement expansion, at least for the time being. President Weitzman hosted Arafat at his residence in Caesarea and received invitations from King Hussein and President Mubarak, setting up what amounts to a parallel foreign policy. The idea of bringing the Labor Party into the government is repeatedly vetoed by the venerable Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef whose Shas Party controls ten Knesset seats. But suddenly he seems to be playing an open role in contact with the Palestinians.

Hebron and After

THOUGH IT HAS BECOME A MAJOR ISSUE, THE HEBRON REDEPLOYMENT is hardly a decisive one. (t is not even decisive for the future of the city of Hebron itself, since the settlers will still be there after the redeployment.) Nevertheless, the Middle East being what it is, the possibility cannot be discounted that Netanyahu may insist on terms unacceptable to the Palestinians and keep at it until the Middle East does plunge into the abyss predicted by King Hussein.

But more likely, after more haggling and struggling, Netanyahu will at last disengage from Hebron. He could then certainly bask for months in the glory of that achievement and tout himself as a bona fide peacemaker in an effort to win time and avoid compliance with the further unfulfilled obligations of Oslo: the prisoner release, the creation of a "safe passage" for Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the further redeployment. As part of the "further redeployment" Israel is supposed to evacuate the West Bank Palestinian villages still under its control by September 1997. Doing so would allow the present scattered Palestinian enclaves to coalesce into a single continuous territory embracing most of the West Bank, excepting only the settlements and Israeli military camps.

Netanyahu clearly does not intend to carry out any of this. His idea seems to be to skip all these intermediate negotiations and immediately start negotiations on the final-status solution. Since under the Oslo timetable these negotiations are supposed to be concluded in May 1999, Netanyahu would then be able to twiddle his thumbs for most of his four-year term. The Palestinians, however, are not likely to cooperate in that game. In fact, they have already declared their intention to insist upon strict adherence to all stages of the Oslo process, repeatedly flinging Netanyahu's code word, "reciprocity," back in his face. Under the present circumstances, the coming year is likely to be occupied by that controversy, occasionally punctuated by the Syrians chiming in with their insistence upon the Golan. A crisis of some kind, on the Palestinian, Syrian and/or Lebanese fronts, is likely sometime in the coming year. With the intensification of external crisis, the idea of a "National Unity Government" is gaining momentum. For Netanyahu, the presence of Shimon Peres in his cabinet would lend it much greater respectability, fend off internal and external pressures, and possibly make it easier for the Prime Minister to wage a very unpopular war. Netanyahu relies on the fact that his vision of the future -- a non-independent Palestinian entity, greatly circumscribed both in its authority and in its territorial extent -- is essentially shared by some prominent Laborites like Ehud Barak, Peres' self-proclaimed heir apparent.

Curiously, despite this ideological affinity, Barak prefers to keep Labor in opposition for the next four years, and as its leader, contest the elections of 2000 against Netanyahu. It is Shimon Peres, loser of the last elections, who seeks to gain entry into the Netanyahu cabinet. Peres seems to believe that only such a move could save the peace process and free Netanyahu of the veto power presently exercised by Likud hard-liners and the National Religious Party.

Options Blocked and Opened

THE THREE DAYS OF "THE TUNNEL WAR" AND ITS AFTERMATH OFFER some useful insight into the attitudes of the Israeli population. The killing of 16 Israeli soldiers by Arafat's armed forces hardly endeared the Palestinians to the general Israeli public, or made for a greater feeling of trust. The extreme right's battle cry "Who gave them guns?" struck an emotional chord among Israelis. Nevertheless, during no armed conflict in the past -- not even in the highly controversial Lebanon War -- did so many Israelis assign all or most of the blame to their own government; never before did so many show an understanding of the grievances which led the other side to shoot; never before did Israelis show so little inclination to fight a war. Low morale and lack of motivation, unashamed shirking and conscious political refusal have all reached peak levels. The result is to greatly restrict Netanyahu's military options in practice.

While in principle it should be possible for Israel to reconquer the towns given over to the Palestinian Authority, it would be a major operation, against a fully mobilized, armed and determined Palestinian population. It could cost many hundreds of Israeli lives, many more than were needed to conquer the same towns in 1967. Politically, the cost would be prohibitive to any sane government.

Following "The Tunnel War," it becomes clear that the cost of trying to freeze the present situation, which is what Netanyahu would have liked to do, is also prohibitive. Locking the Palestinians into isolated enclaves, interspersed with numerous untenable enclaves and long, completely irrational boundaries is not a long-term option.

Israel holds an overwhelming military and economic superiority over the Palestinians but the Palestinians have the advantage of motivation. The West Bank and Gaza Strip, a pitiful 18% of which is all that is left of historical Palestine, are vitally important to the Palestinians: vital enough to die for; vital enough to endure a life of untold misery, day after day and year after year (which is in many ways more difficult than a single act of self-sacrifice).

For the Israelis, who already have quite a prosperous state, these territories -- despite their Biblical connotations and their connection with early Jewish history -- are not vital. They are a luxury, and a dubious one, for which only a dwindling minority of fanatics are willing to pay a real price.

Eventually, the Palestinians will have their state. It will come about either through an orderly negotiations process, or -- a possibility which now seems more likely -- through a unilateral declaration of independence, a declaration which most of the world will recognize, which the Israeli people will have no desire to crush by force, and which Netanyahu or any other Prime Minister will eventually have to recognize. The Palestinians will have their state, and the Israelis will have peace. Eventually. But until then, both peoples will still have to endure years of pain and struggle.

Postscript

WHEN THE ABOVE WAS WRITTEN, THE ISRAELI AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA confidently predicted that a deal on Hebron would be reached and implemented within days, based on leaks by Israeli officials who claimed that "only a few minor details need to be worked out." The Israeli settlers in the heart of Hebron took this quite seriously, straining themselves for a last-ditch struggle against the Netanyahu government which they helped bring to power. For weeks on end, Hebron was the focus of feverish political and media activity on which hundreds of journalists and TV crews from all over the world converged, as did diplomats, foreign visitors and thousands of politically-active Israelis, Right and Left, the former to help the settlers, the latter to express solidarity with the Hebron Palestinians. The press was full of predictions of widespread violence in Hebron on the expected day of redeployment. Some violent outbreaks did occur during the tense waiting period: a settler emptied a glass of scalding tea on the face of dovish Knesset Member Yael Dayan; a joint demonstration by Hebron Palestinians and Israelis from Hadash was forcibly broken up by the army; two Israeli soldiers suffered medium burns from a Molotov Cocktail thrown at their patrol jeep in the middle of the not-yet-evacuated city.

As the days of tense waiting lengthened into weeks and months, the Israeli officials' confident predictions of a soon-to-be-signed agreement sounded more and more hollow, and were gradually replaced by accusations that Arafat, for some mysterious reason, was "holding up the negotiations and refusing to let them be concluded." It took several weeks for the mystery to become clear to the general public: one of the "minor details" which Netanyahu had left to the end was a demand for "the right of hot pursuit." In the Prime Minister's opinion, this implied that even after the redeployment, the Israeli Army would have the right to reenter the evacuated part of Hebron, not only in order "to chase Palestinian terrorists who might escape into the Arab neighborhoods," but also "to carry out preemptive entry and detention of intended terrorists." Arafat had no intention of accepting such terms which would have made a mockery of the redeployment and effectively left Hebron as much under occupation as ever.

Tensions also grew in other parts of the Palestinian territories, especially around the Israeli settlements. Near the settlement of Kiryat Sefer, soldiers shot at a protest demonstration of Palestinian villagers, killing one of them who fell down, still clutching the documents proving his ownership of the latest piece of land grabbed by the settlers. In the Gaza Strip, a major clash was narrowly averted, as Palestinians blocked the entry to the road leading to the Israeli settlement of Netzarim, south of Gaza City, a major road which, for the past two years, has been blocked to the area's 300,000 Palestinian inhabitants by the army and reserved for the sole use of less than a 100 settlers. Tensions abounded also in Israel's relations with the rest of the Arab world: military incidents in Lebanon, repeated exchanges of threats with Syria, the much-publicized detention of an Israeli in Cairo on charges of espionage, on the very opening day of the much-debated Middle East Economic Conference.

At the end of November, Netanyahu reportedly gave up the demand for "hot pursuit"; new speculations of an agreement "within days" were greeted with understandable skepticism, especially since once again "some details" still needed to be worked out.

With all due caution, it still seems likely that the Hebron redeployment will take place at some date in the near future -- but it is unlikely to bring in its wake any appreciable lightening of tensions. For the Palestinians, the Hebron redeployment should be followed by implementation of the other unfulfilled elements of Oslo; for Netanyahu, it is likely to be followed by a settlement expansion drive, to compensate the settlers for the loss of Hebron -- two clearly and explosively incompatible scenarios. Meanwhile, Netanyahu seems bent upon opening a second confrontation inside Israeli society, proclaiming himself the apostle of "the Israeli Thatcherite Revolution, which will make Israel one of the richest countries in the world." (Ha'aretz, 11/22/96). Many prominent members of Netanyahu's own party fail to be captivated by this promise, accusing the Prime Minister of betraying his voters -- most of whom belong to the poorer half of Israeli society -- and threatening to bring down the government should Netanyahu persist in his intention to deeply slash the welfare, education and health budgets. For its part, the army high command stridently demands an enormous increase in the military budget, now that Netanyahu's policies have made the possibility of war much more imminent, while his neo-liberal economic advisers predict economic doom unless the budget is immediately and deeply cut... The challenge for the Israeli left: to fight Netanyahu on two fronts.

December 1, 1996

NOTES

1. Some 100,000 workers, from such diverse countries as Rumania, Thailand, Nigeria, the Philippines and many others work legally in Israel, under conditions of extreme exploitation. In addition, a number variously estimated at between 100,000 and 300,000 are working illegally in Israel, forming the majority of the population in some Tel-Aviv neighborhoods. Since the formation of the Netanyahu government, an informal coalition made up of some purporting to be concerned about the Palestinians, while others openly voice racist views, has been agitating for "firm steps" against the migrant workers. A plan to "streamline" deportation procedures and set up a detention center near Ben Gurion Airport was blocked by employers and human rights organizations. English-language information can be obtained from: Workers' Hotline, POB 2319, Tel-Aviv 61022. return

2. Tensions were also exacerbated among Israel's Arab citizens, who were engaged in a general solidarity strike. The main street of Nazareth, the largest Arab city in Israel, erupted into hours of rioting and stone-throwing, and when the news from Jerusalem came to Umm-el-Fahm, youths burst out shouting "Death to the Jews!" return

3. The organization in question, the so-called "International Christian Embassy," with a center in Jerusalem and numerous branches in various countries, gives total, enthusiastic support to the Israeli extreme right. According to the organization's messianic ideology, the destruction of the Muslim Mosques and the erection of a Jewish Temple in their places would bring about Armageddon, to be followed by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. return

4. Among other things they insisted that in Hebron the Palestinian police be armed with pistols only, since "they have shown they could not be trusted with guns." A similar demand was made about the Palestinian policemen stationed at the border crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The debate had been going on for days, preventing the entry of food into Gaza, until the General of the Southern Command agreed on October 1 to overcome the problems of mutual distrust on the basis of reciprocity: both the Israeli Border Guards and the Palestinian Police were only carrying pistols. However, this decision was heavily criticized by the Israeli government.return

Contents of No. 22