Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 2, 1994 TAG: 9403040026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MILTON VIORST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin initiated the program, reversing the policy of the preceding Labor government under Yitzhak Rabin, which had limited settlement in order to preserve the option of trading the occupied territories for peace. As the architect of a ``Greater Israel,'' Begin calculated that once he had enough Jews implanted in these lands, no government could possibly give them back. The current Israeli-PLO negotiating deadlock illustrates how effective he was.
Whatever his reservations about the settlements, Rabin, when he signed on to the peace agreement last September, was compelled by the political power of the settlers to preserve the status quo. The Oslo agreement requires Israel to end the rule of the Israeli army in the territories. Yet the settlers are totally dependent on the army. Clearly, Israel's pledge to the settlers is incompatible with the pledges made to the Palestinians as part of an Arab-Israeli peace.
The contradiction is the natural consequence of the rejection by the settlers of the principle of Palestine's partition, which was the basis of the U.N. vote in 1947 that created Israel. Partition prevailed until 1967, when Israel occupied all of Palestine in the Six-Day War. The Oslo agreement proposes to restore it. The settlers, however, proclaim that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews and say they will resist any Palestinian authority in the territories. A Knesset member who supports them has even asserted the right to shoot an Arab policeman who stops him for a traffic violation.
The gunman at Hebron, though obviously a madman, emerges from this body of super-nationalist ideology. Among the settlers, he was an extremist, a fanatic - but ideologically, he was not an anomaly.
To have a settler community living at peace under Palestinian rule is not in itself unimaginable. But as long as the 130,000 living in the territories remain sworn enemies of Arab rule, they will be an insuperable obstacle to a Palestinian authority attempting to govern there.
The massacre in Hebron was not the first attempt by the settlers to wreck the transition to Palestinian rule by violence. They are the mirror image of the Palestinian extremists who are also committed to destroying the Oslo accord. Israel and the PLO have both accepted an obligation to suppress violence out of concern for the security of all the residents of the territories. But controlling the settlers may be more difficult than protecting them. It appears to be a burden the Oslo accord cannot support.
Surrounded by 2 million hostile Arabs, the settlements can only survive with the support of the army. The settlements themselves are safe enough - encircled by barbed wire, guarded by watch towers, patrolled by sentries. But the settlers must leave their homes to go to work or to market, and their children must travel by car or bus to school. The army patrols the roads and has covered them with checkpoints. It has built a network of new roads to bypass the Arab population. Yet the roads remain an invitation to Arab extremists.
Increasingly since 1987, when the intifada began, the army has defended the settlers with aggressive tactics largely rooted in intelligence acquired from Arab agents, often ``recruited'' by torture or extortion. Harsh collective punishment - round-the-clock curfews, undercover killings, home demolition, imprisonment without trial - has become routine. Army raids on Arab towns and refugee camps have kept Arab society in disarray.
A few weeks ago, Gen. Ehud Barah, Israel's chief of staff, admitted that the army would find it hard to safeguard the settlers if it had to adopt gentler tactics. As for safeguarding the Arabs, it has never had serious tactics at all. Yet, what the Palestinians want more than anything else from the Oslo agreement is to get the army out of their lives. They want the restoration of tranquillity, of ``normality,'' in the territories. The presence of hostile settlers makes this goal unattainable. It dooms the prospect of real peace.
The settlers, if they had their choice, would expel the Palestinians from the territories completely. Failing that, they would preserve army rule forever. The violent nature of their move contains a threat of civil war, intimidating Israelis. It gives them political power far in excess of their numbers.
In recent months, Israelis have begun to acknowledge that they cannot have both the settlements and peace. The tragedy at Hebron emphasizes the point. In the Israeli press and the Knesset, there is growing talk of incentives - if not coercion - to entice the settlers home. But Rabin and his government have been unwilling to take the settlers on, leaving the problem unresolved.
Most Israelis now agree that Menachem Begin's vision of a ``Greater Israel'' was a terrible mistake. But until the settlements are dismantled, peace remains its hostage.
\ Milton Viorst, a Washington writer, is author of ``Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World.''
\ The Washington Post
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