Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 7-8, 42

Special Report

As Netanyahu Suspends Further Implementation of Wye Withdrawls, Palestinians Renew Intifada

By Maureen Meehan

There is a strange and dangerous mix of events occurring in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. On the surface, these events are not much different from what has been happening here for the past decade, or two or three for that matter: violence, repression, land confiscation, shootings, arrests, Israeli governmental instability, peace accords signed, peace accords ignored, more violence, more land confiscation, etc.

What, one might ask, makes this past month's almost breathtaking escalation of violence and vitriol so different from similar outbreaks that have preceded it? Not much, at first glance. In fact, the Dec. 9 commemoration of the 11th anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada looked very much like the original intifada itself, with a new generation of Palestinians throwing stones and a new generation of Israeli soldiers shooting the stone-throwers.

The number of dead and injured on Dec. 9 alone, however, almost matched some of the most infamous intifada days: 2 dead from gunshots and at least 300 injured by rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and beatings. Dozens were arrested, especially in East Jerusalem where Israeli undercover agents wearing ski masks mixed in with and often incited protesters, then arrested them. Shocking film footage showed Israelis dragging people by the hair and kicking and pistol whipping them.

Earlier in the week, a Palestinian street cleaner was stabbed to death near his home in Jerusalem. It was the sixth such random stabbing of Palestinians in six months. The knife, found near the scene of the attack, had the word "revenge" written on it in Hebrew.

Anyone who had assumed that the solemn signing of yet another peace accord in the presence of President Clinton had resulted in something resembling peace might be puzzled by all that is going on here. However, most Palestinians, and a growing number of Israelis, no longer make that assumption, if they ever did.

Although the Wye Plantation accord was not much more than a re-working of the original, dysfunctional Oslo agreement, several elements were emphasized during the marathon talks in Maryland: release of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli security, three Israeli redeployments in stages in the West Bank, and the opening of the Gaza International Airport.

In fact the airport opened just in the nick of time to receive President Bill Clinton, a first small redeployment was carried out in the West Bank from 42 square kilometers comprising 28 villages, and Israeli security concerns were, at least psychologically, assuaged by officially bringing in the CIA to keep score on whether the Palestinians were complying with their commitment.

Then came the shocker: the release of 150 car thieves, shoplifters and other petty criminals in lieu of Palestinian political prisoners whose background and current political status indicate that they accept the peace accords. What the Palestinian National Authority thought it had bargained for at Wye was the release of 250 political prisoners who would include prominent Fatah members serv- ing long terms for pre-Oslo accord activities still considered heroic by Palestinians.

The Fatah movement is President Yasser Arafat's mainstream political faction and power base. The Palestinian Prisoners Club, which initiated the December demonstrations, is readily identified with Fatah. These are a couple of reasons why the clashes have taken on such a serious tone. Fatah still has the power to get people out onto the street, whether the upper echelons of the PNA approve or not.

There has been no rational explanation from the Israeli political establishment as to why only 100 political prisoners were included among the 250 Palestinians released. Although Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the political prisoners he was holding had "Jewish blood on their hands," that was no excuse in view of the fact that what was negotiated at Wye was supposed to be an interim peace agreement.

Palestinians concluded that because Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would have preferred to see the entire peace process disappear long ago, he pulled the prisoner switch as a bit of nastiness and arrogance in the hope that it might appease his government coalition partners and push the Palestinians to do something equally nasty back.

It might be assuming too much to conclude that he hoped the prisoner issue would bring down Wye. But when it is added to other bits of post-Wye arrogance, it might be the issue to break the already tired camel's back.

If that happens, it might save Netanyahu from the political trouble he is in with his ultra-right, fundamentalist coalition members and supporters. After all, they put Netanyahu in office because they thought he would rip up the Oslo accords in one fell swoop as soon as possible. And now all this handshaking and paper-signing has put the Israeli right-wingers on the warpath, and Bibi on the run.

But alas, for the time being, Bibi was saved by a 19-year-old AWOL Israeli soldier, and a bunch of teen-aged Palestinians who were too angry to resist stoning a settler's car in which the soldier was riding as it came upon a protest in Ramallah. The soldier, carrying an unloaded gun, had been hitchhiking a ride home from a West Bank army base where he'd been having disciplinary problems. The driver jumped out of the car while it was moving and let the soldier take the brunt of the stoning before he was able to run away, leaving his rifle behind.

The corporal in question is now facing a court martial for traveling with an unloaded gun and thus not shooting Palestinians.

The incident came as a godsend to Netanyahu, who clearly has been waiting for an excuse to renounce his prior commitments. Calling it a "lynching," the prime minister immediately canceled all further implementation of the peace accords. He also took the opportunity to unilaterally add three conditions to the agreement: that the Palestinians (1) stop asking for the release of prisoners; (2) stop inciting violence; and (3) stop the preparation for declaring statehood next May 4.

The PNA responded by demanding the release of prisoners and advising Israel to dismantle settlements, as they will be illegal in a future Palestinian state. The Palestinian Prisoners Club echoed the sentiment of the street and renewed its call for more releases. Even U.S. State Department spokesperson James Rubin expressed American frustration with the new Israeli demands, saying they were beyond the scope of the agreement.

In the agreement, both sides had agreed not to incite violence. On Nov. 19, the PNA issued an Anti-Incitement Degree. In addition to outlawing incitement to racial and religious discrimination, the Palestinian decree also makes punishable by law "incitement to division and to breaching the agreements that have been signed with brotherly and foreign states with the PLO." But while Yasser Arafat got no credit from Netanyahu, human rights groups immediately criticized the decree, and the security arrangements in the agreement which made it necessary, as further erosion of freedom of expression within the Palestinian-controlled areas.

Despite U.S. criticism of Israel's imposition of these three new conditions, at the joint U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli anti-incitement talks the Israelis made it clear--and the Americans apparently accepted--that the issue of incitement refers exclusively to the Palestinians, exposing the imbalance in the agreement. It's just the latest of numerous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians which generally tend to deal with the internal Palestinian situation and what is wrong with it, but never make much mention of the Jewish settlement problem.

The anti-incitement that Netanyahu is insisting upon demands an end to all forms of Palestinian resistance, even vocal, while Israel has proceeded to call off the scheduled redeployments from Palestinian land.

Speaking of incitement, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon studiously ignored the clause in the Wye agreement that is meant to impede settlement activity, and which reads, "neither side shall initiate or take any steps that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." Instead Sharon called on Jewish settlers to "take over the hills of the West Bank before it is too late."

The settlers were only too quick to respond. Not that they needed any encouragement, but the land grabs by settlers in the West Bank since the Wye Memorandum was signed have been significant. It is already an established fact that Jewish settlements have increased in size by 40 percent since 1993. There currently are 150,000 settlers living in 144 settlements among 1.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank.

Sharon's call to grab land, directly after his return from Wye Plantation, was the epitome of incitement, and set off a new stage of violence and confrontation.

Since the day after his statements were broadcast, armed settlers have seized hundreds of hectares of land near Palestinian towns and villages all over the West Bank. Mobile homes, trailers, prefabricated houses and even greenhouses are springing up on hilltops, including sites already earmarked by Palestinians for building a hotel and a school, and on active Palestinian farming land.

In addition to all that, official land confiscations also have continued of lands the government described as "no-man's land" and therefore Israeli state property.

Even before Netanyahu canceled the scheduled second and third redeployments, Sharon had stated that the further redeployments agreed upon at Wye were out of the question because of Palestinian violations, which he declined to define, of the agreement. In addition to his other incendiary remarks, Sharon said if the Palestinians declare a state, Israel will annex parts of the West Bank.

And now, as one of the conditions to restart the peace process, Israel is demanding that the Palestinians abandon their central and historic goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state, albeit in the fragmented enclaves that remain for the Palestinians. It is a demand to which no Palestinian leader can accede, as the Israelis know all too well. So a new generation of teenagers, who need no incitement, again are throwing stones at Israeli military occupiers--just as their older brothers and sisters did 11 years ago--because nothing has changed.