Settlers and Suicide Bombers Seek to Block the Path to Peace

By Steven J. Sosebee

When two explosions at Netanya on Jan. 22 caused the deaths of 20 Israeli soldiers and one civilian, it was the culmination of a month of confrontations that has shaken the so-called peace process to its foundations. Despite the promise by Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to continue negotiations, those on both sides opposed to the Oslo accords again have demonstrated their determination to undermine land-for-peace efforts in the Middle East.

While Rabin's Labor government and Arafat's PNA have been through difficult times since the White House signing in 1993, tension between the two reached new heights in late December following the confiscation by settlers from the Jewish West Bank settlement of Efrat of land from the Arab village of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem. The settlers, accompanied by 70 soldiers, announced their intention to take 500 dunums of agricultural land and began bulldozing it on Dec. 22, ignoring documents produced by the villagers to prove their ownership.

Israeli and Palestinian peace groups responded by replanting some of the hundreds of olive trees destroyed by the settlers. On Dec. 27, 500 Israeli soldiers clashed with the pro-peace demonstrators, arresting 75 people and injuring dozens more.

In keeping with the spirit of the Oslo accords, Palestinians had expected the Israeli government to keep its earlier pledge to the U.S. government not to build new West Bank settlements or expand existing ones before the settlement issue is dealt with in final phase negotiations scheduled to begin no later than 1996. The continued expansion of settlements, therefore, has cost Arafat credibility with both his followers and his hard-line opponents who warn that the agreement contains little to reverse Israeli colonial policies in the West Bank.

Palestinian support for the peace accord was shaken further by the discovery that Israeli undercover units still are operating both in the West Bank and in the autonomous area of Gaza. The units, which killed hundreds of Palestinians—many in cold blood—during the intifada, are suspected in the car bomb assassination of Islamic Jihad activist Hani Abed last November in Gaza. In early January, Israeli undercover units killed eight Palestinians in the West Bank.

Three Palestinian National Authority soldiers also were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza in early January. Though the IDF soldiers said they were fired on first, PNA ministers claimed the soldiers were killed in their quarters as they slept.

Since the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993, 110 Israelis and 195 Palestinians have died in bloody clashes and suicide attacks. The steadily increasing bloodshed and expansion of settlements were highlighted by the bloody suicide bombing on Jan. 22.

"We confirm the Islamic Jihad's responsibility for the massive operation which was carried out today," said Fathi al-Shukaki, the secretary-general of Islamic Jihad in Damascus. "We confirm our ability to penetrate the enemy's false security lines and reach the heart of the enemy. We say to the enemy that its nuclear weapon will not help him against the attacks of our mujahideen."

Though a small fundamentalist group, Jihad has shown that it takes only a few determined persons willing to die to jeopardize the peace process from the Palestinian side, just as Dr. Baruch Goldstein's slaughter of 29 Muslim men and boys at prayer in February 1994 did from the Israeli side. An Islamic Jihad suicide attack last November in Gaza, which killed three Israeli soldiers, set the stage for the bloody showdown between PNA forces and fundamentalists outside the Palestine mosque in Gaza City.

While Jihad leaders gloated over the newest success of their suicide bombers, Rabin's ministers were forced into damage control. "I propose that we do not surrender to those who want to harm peace so as not to hand out prizes to these suicide terrorists," said Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. "Suppose we suspend the talks; how will the international community react? What kind of impression will it make abroad? People will say that we are surrendering to terrorism."

Indeed, the political careers of Rabin, Peres and Arafat all are tied to successful implementation of the Oslo accords. For the three Nobel Prize recipients, it would be difficult to turn back from the path of land-for-peace.

Nevertheless, increased Palestinian fundamentalist attacks on Israeli targets have precipitated a growing shift to the right in Israel. Although this increases pressure on the Labor government to halt negotiations with the PLO, this has not yet happened. "The political negotiations with the PLO will continue," said Tourism Minister Uzi Baram after a late-night cabinet meeting. "That was accepted by everyone." However, as Israeli ministers met, demonstrators in Jerusalem shouted "Death to Arabs" outside Rabin's home.

While fundamentalists savored their triumph and Rabin's government reeled following the Netanya attack, both Israeli and Palestinian supporters of the peace process looked to Arafat and the PNA to do something to bring the rejectionist groups under control. "Anyone with incriminating evidence of his responsibility or involvement [in the attack] will be held accountable," warned PNA minister Nabil Shaath. "This time it will not be a show for two or three days."

In Gaza, thousands of Palestinians made condolence calls on the families of two suicide bombers named by Islamic Jihad. One of them, Salah Shaker, 27, of the Rafah refugee camp, had been shot five times by Israeli soldiers during the intifada. "We take pride in the martyrdom of our son who carried out a daring operation thus becoming worthy of God's words," read a statement from his family.

It is hard even for many Palestinians to understand the depth of the hatred for the Israeli military felt by residents of Gaza refugee camps. There a whole generation of boys, like Shaker, who have grown up fighting and dying in clashes with the IDF provide ready volunteers for martyrdom. So long as the economic and political situation does not improve in Gaza, most of these intifada youths feel a growing sense of hopelessness.

With an abundance of willing martyrs, the question now is how Islamic Jihad is able to penetrate into the heart of Israel with lethal explosives. "The operation represents a qualitative step in penetrating the security and military barricades...to reach a military place and carry out the operation," said Sheikh Abdullah al-Shami, a Jihad leader in Gaza. He claimed that neither of the two Palestinian suicide bombers were carrying Israeli-issued work permits or documents necessary for crossing from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Deterrence Difficult At Best

In fact, Israeli military columnist Ze'ev Schiff wrote in Ha'aretz, most Israeli experts believe that deterring suicide bombers is difficult at best, and probably impossible. Therefore, despite Israeli demands, there is little the PNA can do to thwart such attacks by their Hamas and Islamic Jihad rivals.

The intifada proved that there is no military solution to the Palestinian issue. Now, by imperiling a political solution, rejectionist groups on both sides have put both Rabin and Arafat in a difficult position. With emotions on both sides running high to call off the talks, the only way to undermine the Islamic fundamentalists and Jewish settlers is to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements, improve economic conditions in Gaza, and continue implementing the accords.

Just as leaders of the Israeli settler movement flaunt the fear of the Labor government to halt their actions, leaders of Islamic Jihad and Hamas are claiming that the suicide attacks are a great success. In fact, however, they are acts of desperation. Their goal of a fundamentalist state established throughout the former mandate of Palestine is the reverse image of the Likud's dream of a greater Israel covering every inch of the former mandate.

The Likudniks have the potential to destroy forever Israel's hope to integrate peacefully into the Middle East, and the Islamists have the potential to destroy any hope of a Palestinian state in our lifetimes. Suicide bombers can kill scores of Israeli troops, but what ultimately will be destroyed is the ability of the Palestinians to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Steve J. Sosebee, a free-lance writer from Kent, Ohio, frequently visits Gaza.