ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 2, 1996 TAG: 9610020058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JERUSALEM
TYPE: ANALYSIS
SOURCE: MARJORIE MILLER LOS ANGELES TIMES
NOTE: Below
THE 1993 PEACE ACCORD raised Palestinian expectations that Israel's leaders have not fulfilled as scheduled.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boarded a jet bound for the summit that started Tuesday with President Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, some members of the Israeli leader's Likud Party admonished him to stand firm in Washington: ``Be strong,'' their banners said. ``Don't make concessions.''
But if Netanyahu looked at the Israeli newspapers on his plane, he would have found attacks on the right wing's iron-fisted approach to the Palestinians, including a cartoon of his own inflated muscle exploding like a volcano. Netanyahu may not like Israel's bilateral peace accords with the Palestinians, an editorial in the liberal Haaretz newspaper said, but ``the alternative is chaos.''
Indeed, this is the difficult choice facing Netanyahu: To embrace a peace process that he and his supporters fundamentally reject - and make concessions - or to risk further combat between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinian police and face the consequences.
Last week, four days of such fighting left more than 70 dead and 1,000 wounded.
Critical of Netanyahu's handling of the crisis, Israelis from both sides of this political divide are looking for him to exercise leadership at the summit and give a clear indication of his direction.
Some political observers say Netanyahu tried to have it both ways in his first 100 days in office, pursuing the form of peacemaking without the substance. He met with Arafat while authorizing the expansion of West Bank Jewish settlements; he increased the number of work permits for Palestinians while rejecting negotiations over the basic issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian statehood.
This approach blew apart when Netanyahu agreed to discuss withdrawing Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron but then excavated an archeological tunnel near the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The middle-of-the-night move prompted Arafat to call protest marches that ignited into riots and, ultimately, armed combat.
``It seems now that he has exhausted his freedom of maneuver,'' political analyst Aluf Ben wrote of Netanyahu.
The peace accords signed by Arafat and Israel's previous Labor government three years ago gave Palestinians self-rule in six West Bank cities and held out the promise of more. Israel was supposed to give over increasing parts of West Bank land it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and to negotiate the issues of Jewish settlement, Palestinian statehood and control of eastern Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a capital.
The Palestinians saw this autonomy agreement as a step toward the independent state they have fought for for decades. The Labor Party in Israel had dropped its opposition to statehood, and the last Israeli government apparently was prepared to give Arab neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians as their capital.
But all of this came to a halt with Netanyahu's election in May. Netanyahu campaigned as a harsh critic of the land-for-peace agreements in a country deeply divided by these issues. He promised ``peace with security,'' won by a narrow margin, and, upon taking office with a right-religious coalition, reluctantly agreed to honor the internationally backed Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.
But Netanyahu still called them ``bad.'' His heart was not in them, and his political coalition was not behind them, either. His right wing believes the accords gave Jewish land to Palestinians without receiving peace in return - and last week's violence was their proof.
They say they believe the only way to deal with Arabs is through force and that the worst thing Netanyahu can do in Washington is to reward Palestinian violence. This faction argues that Israel must hold on to most of the West Bank, through the Jordan Valley, for security reasons as well as on Jewish religious grounds.
Thus, they oppose withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron.
If it were difficult for Netanyahu to go against his party and coalition before last week's gunbattles, now he finds it even tougher, for his hard-line supporters argue that, if Palestinian police fired on Israeli soldiers, the Arafat force could massacre Jewish civilians in Hebron. To give back Hebron now, they say, is to reward Palestinian gunfire with more land and renewed hope for statehood. They cannot fathom giving Palestinians their own state, with the chance to form an army and coalitions with hostile Arab governments.
Arafat insists the Washington summit must produce a date for Israeli troops to leave Hebron, the only West Bank city still under Israeli occupation. Under the schedule laid out in the signed accords, Hebron was to have gone to the Palestinians in March.
But Shimon Peres, who served as Israeli prime minister after the assassination of predecessor Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish law student, suspended the redeployment after a wave of Hamas suicide bombings left more than 60 dead.
Arafat also wants: more of the West Bank, which was to begin changing hands in early September; a lifting of the Israeli military ``siege'' in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; and a timetable for resolving the central issues of Palestinian statehood and Jerusalem.
If Netanyahu chooses not to make any substantial concessions, he faces the option of a war that both sides know would be far graver than the seven-year Palestinian uprising that led to the present peace agreements. And as Israelis learned last week, this time the Palestinians have an armed force - the Palestinian police - on their side.
Both sides say they want to avoid this, and yet both are preparing militarily. These moves - combined with last week's violence and international pressure - underscore the choice confronting Netanyahu: negotiations for peace or further strife.
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. With prayers and bullets, relatives bury aby CNB10-year-old Palestinian boy killed during a shootout in Gaza City.
Israel has more weapons to face than in previous uprisings. color.