Month of Protest Leaves Palestinians With Little Faith in Peace Process

by Maureen Meehan

Israel's decision to build a new Jewish settlement near Bethlehem that effectively completes a ring of settlements around Jerusalem served to plunge the peace process into further crisis and a cycle of violence that has so far cost the lives of at least eight Palestinians and three Israelis.

Daily West Bank street protests, where the traditional Palestinian ammunition consists of stones and the occasional Molotov cocktail, were put down with the Israeli army's traditional use of rubber-coated steel bullets, live rounds and tear gas. In addition to the deaths from gunfire, dozens of Palestinians were injured, some seriously, by the rubber bullets and hundreds were treated for tear gas inhalation.

As the month's violence intensified, so too did Israel's demand that the Palestinian Authority maintain control in the West Bank and Gaza in the absence of direct Israeli rule. Following an apparent suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three Israeli women, Israel turned up the pressure while accusing PA President Yasser Arafat of having given the "green light for terror."

Insisting that Palestinian violence and not controversial Jewish settlement building in the West Bank is the cause of the current crisis, Israel has disregarded its obligations under the Oslo agreements on the grounds that the PA is not fulfilling its commitment to control the violence.

This is despite the fact that several months prior to the current crisis, a U.S. congressional committee report lauded the PA for effectively controlling violence in the areas under its control which comprise about 5 percent of the West Bank and about 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. However, when Israel came under tremendous international criticism over its settlement policy, the U.S. joined with its ally in shifting the blame for last month's crisis toward the Palestinians and away from Israel.

"Rather than abandon their aggressive expansionist policies, [Israel] decided to stage a fight in another arena. The U.S., unfortunately, joined them in this new arena without noticing that the real fight was elsewhere," writes Ghassan Khatib, director of the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center.

Palestinians, meanwhile, point out that the definition of terror and violence seems not to include acts carried out by Israelis, such as the killing of an unarmed Palestinian in Hebron by two Jewish settlers, using Uzi machine guns.

Following that incident, which set off nearly two weeks of rioting and resulted in several more shooting deaths and numerous injuries of Palestinians, the divided city's Jewish settlers claimed the two armed men were attacked by the unarmed victim, Assam Arafeh. Eyewitnesses refuted the claims, saying the shooting followed an argument. The two Jewish settlers were released from custody after two days of questioning, and no charges were filed against them.

Several other incidents were reported during the month in which male Jewish settlers, all of whom can legally carry automatic weapons, shot and wounded Palestinians throughout the West Bank. The settlers justified their actions by saying they were shooting at stone throwers. In at least one case, both Israeli and Palestinian police investigators reported otherwise.

One of the most successful aspects of the peace accords, according to Israeli standards, has indeed been the ongoing military cooperation and intelligence sharing between the Palestinian and Israeli security forces. At the height of the month-long crisis, however, those contacts broke down along with all political negotiation.

According to Israeli media reports, the lapse in military contacts between the two sides was greatly lamented by Israeli security forces, who often attest to the effectiveness of the relationship with their Palestinian counterparts as a means of "controlling terrorism." By contrast, many Palestinians regard the contacts as tantamount to signing a pact with the devil, especially given that Palestinian methods of controlling terrorism greatly resemble those of Israel and therefore invoke bitter memories.

Shortly after the rioting in the West Bank had abated by mid-April, Palestinian and Israeli officials met in Malta where an announcement was made that security cooperation between them would resume. Although Palestinian officials initially denied the report, meetings between the CIA, Israeli intelligence services and Yasser Arafat soon were held.

The apparent result of one such encounter led the Israelis to uncover what they described as a Hamas military cell in the West Bank town of Tsurif (near Hebron), home of the man whose dismembered body was found at the scene of the March 21 cafe bombing attack in Tel Aviv. Following the bombing, Tsurif's 15,000 residents were placed under a full curfew that had been in effect, with the exception of a few days, for more than a month at the time of this writing.

Once word spread that a massive Israeli military operation was underway to dismantle a cell that Israel claimed was responsible for at least a dozen Israeli deaths, including an Israeli soldier missing since last September, some residents managed to escape Tsurif into the Palestinian-controlled area of Hebron where they subsequently were arrested by Palestinian police. All three family homes of the men still in Palestinian custody in connection with the alleged Hamas underground cell have been demolished.

More than three dozen people, mostly children or elderly, have been made homeless by the Israeli house demolitions. This is despite the fact that the Hamas suspects have neither been charged nor tried by Israel. Such immediate Israeli demolitions, along with the Israeli curfew on the entire town, are considered extreme even by Israeli standards on the West Bank. During the curfew, three critically ill people died when soldiers refused to allow them to be transported out of the blockaded town to hospitals. The dead included a stillborn infant, an 80-year-old woman who inhaled tear gas fired by troops during clashes and a middle-aged man with breathing difficulties.

Now in the totally empty streets that give Tsurif the look and feel of a ghost town, villagers must slip through the narrow alleyways between the ancient shuttered, stone houses to see one another, trade stories or look for badly needed supplies.

Eyewitness Accounts

Under a curfew so strict that just looking out of one's window is prohibited and can provoke a tear gassing, word of a visit by a journalist and an attorney working to stop the house demolitions brought people out to offer their eyewitness accounts of the ransacking of more than 100 homes, beatings, shooting of rubber bullets, and the destruction of more than 50 parked cars and 200 water tanks by Israeli gunfire. By the end of April, although at least 140 people had been reported injured, none were allowed to seek hospitalization.

"It is a living nightmare," said one woman whose son was beaten by soldiers when they caught him behind his house kicking a football. "They roam the streets and do whatever they want. There is no control, and no one knows what is going on here because no one has been permitted to leave or enter the village in weeks."

Conversations broke up as people routinely scattered for cover whenever army jeeps roared past. But the Abdel Rahman and Ghanimat families had nowhere to run. They stood lingering in front of their homes watching Israeli officers board up the doors and windows in preparation for demolition.

"We actually slept outdoors until we found a place to stay," said Mrs. Abdel Rahman, whose son is in Palestinian custody. "It is not easy to find lodging with eight children and an ailing husband. Did they demolish the home of the man who assassinated Rabin or the Israeli settler who killed 29 people in the mosque in Hebron?" she asked. "Where else in the world is such a thing done to the families of suspected criminals?"

Now with the peace process totally off course and Netanyahu having, so far, survived a major government scandal, Palestinians say they fear he is facing pressure from his coalition partners to freeze any implemention of the peace accords in order to avoid more criticism.

At one point during the height of Palestinian protests, Netanyahu offered the Palestinians the option of speeding up final status talks with the idea of completing them within six to nine months. Such a plan could work only under a national unity government, which would include the Labor party of Shimon Peres. This, however, is out of the question for the time being for Labor as well as the Palestinians.

Palestinians say the peace process faces gaps that are difficult if not impossible to bridge, and that bypassing them by skipping ahead in the process will not solve them. Many now conclude that regardless of Israeli implementation or lack thereof, the agreement itself is inadequate and was never designed to give Palestinians what they wanted or thought they deserved.

"In the agreement, fundamental issues of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle were left to be decided at the end, in final status talks," says Ali Jarbawi of Birzeit University.

"Yet no guarantees were provided that their final resolution would not be compromised during the transition phase by the stronger party, Israel. The transition phase therefore has become a phase in which facts on the ground are being confirmed and the outcome of negotiations is being assured even before the talks take place."

"The Palestinian leadership has continued to hold onto the flawed agreement and keep to its path, despite daily reminders that we have in fact left this path," added Jarbawa. "We have gone off the path but can't admit it, and so we remain stuck, unable to go back and unable to advance in any positive way."