Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 7, 1993 TAG: 9309070117
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAROL MORELLO KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Long
And that element of complete, stunning surprise, as keenly calculated as a lightning-strike military maneuver, is why the peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization just may have a chance.
In a blood feud that led to five wars and tens of thousands of dead since Israel was founded 45 years ago, the speed with which sacred taboos have shattered was as sudden and exhilarating as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Opponents and neighboring Arab states were caught off-balance. For when months of secret negotiations were revealed to the public last week, the plan approved by the Israeli Cabinet Monday was already a fait accompli. Within days, Israel and the PLO are expected to definitively recognize each other and sign the agreement.
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat brought his campaign to sell the peace agreement to Egypt on Monday, after picking up an endorsement for it from the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation group lead by Saudi Arabia.
Arafat met 6 1/2 hours in Syria with President Hafez Assad, who asked to study the plan more fully. The PLO took Assad's request as an expression of support, with reservations, a PLO official said in Cairo.
If Assad's backing materializes, it could help Arafat secure approval for the plan from the PLO's ruling Executive Committee. Hard-line PLO factions based in Damascus are represented in the ruling body, and Assad has influence over them.
Monday night, Israeli and PLO officials were working intensely on a formula for mutual recognition by next Monday, when the White House has tentatively planned a signing ceremony on the landmark Palestinian self-rule deal.
Israeli officials said the PLO was ready to denounce terrorism but not to halt the intifada, the nearly 6-year-old uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Palestinians regard as legitimate resistance to occupation.
The officials said Israel considered it vital that the PLO promise to end all violence and convert itself fully into a political rather than a guerrilla organization.
Though the plan remains officially a secret, leaks published in Israel last week show an agreement as sweeping as it is swift. A Palestinian self-governing council would eventually cover all the West Bank, not only Gaza and Jericho. Palestinians living in Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its unified capital, would be permitted to vote for the Palestinian council. More military withdrawals from the West Bank would happen a year after the plan takes effect, and 200,000 or more Palestinians who were displaced after the 1967 war may be allowed to return.
Now, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is preparing his people for attitudinal changes. The PLO, he said last week, is not an "existential threat" to the state of Israel. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has said it might be possible for Arafat to move to Jericho.
Whew!
Only last year, Israeli forces were busy erasing PLO graffiti and arresting Palestinians who supported the PLO, an organization that was never mentioned without the term "terrorist" automatically attached. Now opponents of the plan - the Israeli right, the Palestinian left and Islamic fundamentalists - are in shock.
Israeli settlers vow massive civil disobedience, but have been unable to organize anything more than a few thousand protesters, more than half of whom were their children.
Palestinian leftists and fundamentalist rejectionists plan to capitalize on what they gloomily predict will be the plan's eventual failure. But for their every move so far, there have been countermoves by those who desperately want to escape from the psychological prison each side has held the other in for decades - Israelis tired of fearing Arab attacks and sending their sons to war, and Palestinians tired of Israeli soldiers breathing down their necks.
Compromise, so elusive for decades, is the new watchword.
"There are no sweet compromises," wrote novelist and peace activist Amos Oz last week. "Each compromise entails renouncing certain dreams and longings, limiting some appetites, giving up the fulfillment of certain aspirations. But only a fanatic finds compromise more bitter than death.
"The Torah says: `You shall choose life.' Let us choose life."
A slender majority of Israelis apparently agree. Newspaper polls published last week show 53 percent supporting the plan, and 45 percent against it; only 2 percent had no opinion.
Arabic newspaper polls report 70 percent of the Palestinians living in the occupied territories support it. Just two weeks ago, an equal percentage were opposed to the Washington peace talks.
Still, the peace proposal remains a fragile one.
Extremists on both sides could scuttle it, playing to old fears with a series of attacks on Israelis by the Palestinian fringe or by Israeli settlers provoking an incident.
The greatest risk of this groundbreaking pact is that if the naysayers are ultimately proved right, their views will earn more entrenched support than ever. But after so many decades of bloodletting, the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians are gambling that their people are fed up and willing to accept less than their dreams. If they are right, it will be less a dream come true than awakening from a nightmare.
Some information in this report was contributed by The Associated Press and The Boston Globe.
by CNB