A handful of Israeli and Arab zealots can wreck a chance for peace
by David Makovsky, Todd Shields, Khaled Abu Toameh, Jihan El-Tahri, Louise Lief, Emily Bazelon, Richard Z. Chesnoff
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A lone killer with a rifle in a corner of the occupied West Bank was enough to send Israel and the Palestinians to the brink of the abyss, and to remind Arabs and Jews alike that the small bands of murderous zealots in both their camps can destroy the best chance in decades for Middle East peace.
In Israel, Baruch Goldstein's killing spree in a Hebron mosque, where he murdered 30 to 40 Palestinians as they knelt in prayer, brought across-the board condemnation, deep soul-searching and fears of grisly reprisals from Palestinian extremists. In the occupied territories, Palestinians heaped scorn on Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yassir Arafat. In Tunis, Arafat found himself facing an open revolt from members of the PLO executive committee and his own Fatah movement. In Amman, Jordan, 115 members of the Palestine National Council demanded a halt to peace talks between the PLO and Israel.
Israeli and PLO leaders are groping for a way to resume the peace talks and clinch an overdue agreement to begin Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. But the mass murder in the mosque is forcing both sides toward a moment of truth.
The massacre has prompted Israelis to consider both their commitment to the 130,000 or so Jewish settlers in the occupied territories and the future of the small number of hard-core militants in their midst -- deeply emotional issues that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other officials had hoped to avoid until the peace process had borne some fruit.
Hard targets. But while Rabin condemned Goldstein as "an errant weed" and was preparing to crack down on militant settlers, Arafat has condemned only one of 33 recent murders of Israelis committed by terrorists in his camp. And if moderate Israeli and Arab leaders do not rally their followers against the radical minorities, a new cycle of violence and terror may sweep all of them aside.
Defeating the extremists, however, is not easy. Islamic and Jewish radicals have tapped both the deep fears and prejudices within their respective communities and the pocketbooks of supporters far beyond their battleground.
Law enforcement officials in the United States and Israel say violent Jewish extremists get money, arms and recruits from militant Jewish groups in the United States (story, Page 36). Syria, Libya and Iran support radical Palestinian terrorist groups, and U.S. and Israeli officials believe Hamas, the militant Islamic fundamentalist group, is bankrolled mostly by Saudi Arabia and Iran and also has an American support network.
For example, Israeli officials claim testimony from an Arab-American arrested for funneling funds to Hamas activists in the West Bank indicates that the Islamic Association for Palestine in Dallas and the Springfield, Va.-based United Association for Studies and Research have ties to Hamas. One member of the UASR's board, Musa Abu Marzuk, left the institute to help establish a Hamas office in Tehran. Both groups vehemently deny the charge; the UASR says it is a think tank devoted to the Islamic revival.
Going to Hamas. Baruch Goldstein and his Galil assault rifle, however, may prove to be the best recruiters and fund-raisers Hamas ever had. In the heart of Hebron, in a modest house below the mosque, attack survivor and vegetable vendor Ahmed Mohammed Abu Shaban, his gray jeans still bloodstained, says: "People are ashamed to say they support Fatah and Arafat. They all say they're going to Hamas."
In the normally sleepy oasis town of Jericho, the proposed seat of Palestinian self-rule, troops fired at rock-throwing demonstrators, killing one Arab youth and wounding more than a dozen. At the house of the slain youth, women keened and ululated in grief while male relatives and neighbors sullenly paced about the veranda. "I will shoot Arafat," spat one man. A few miles away, the courtyard of Jericho's main hospital was a scene of milling crowds, cries of grief and chaos as ambulances bearing the wounded sped in, bringing with them acrid whiffs of clinging tear gas. "We feel the peace process is finished," said Yusuf Farrah, 33, a secondary-school teacher who was among those waiting for word of wounded friends and relatives.
The rage coursing through the Palestinian community leaves the PLO chairman in a bind. "Here in Tunis, we realize that we cannot withdraw from the peace process, nor can we go ahead with its implementation on the existing terms," says Mamdouh Noufal, a PLO Central Council member. "If we do, it will be political suicide for the PLO."
What Arafat wants in order to move forward is what Israel is most reluctant to give: concessions on the future of the Jewish settlers in the occupied territories, including the dismantlement of militant settlements, the disarming of all settlers and an international peacekeeping force in the territories. The Israelis moved up a planned release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and pledged to disarm a handful of the most militant settlers, gestures Arafat dismissed as inadequate.
U.S. officials, who are seeking more visible Israeli concessions in order to boost Arafat's sagging stock and revive the negotiations, believe Rabin has made a basic decision to move against the most radical settlers, outlawing and banning some groups and severely curtailing others. But they say he is being slowed by legal obstacles. "The situation will not cool down until there is more evidence of a crackdown on Jewish militants," says a senior U.S. official.
Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair is searching for legal means to ban the extremist Kach party, which is based in the settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron and encourages the killing of Arab innocents as revenge for attacks on Jews. But while banning Kach would enjoy public support in Israel, measures such as evacuating or disarming some or all the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza are much more controversial.
Thirty percent of the settlers are ready to leave their homes now in exchange for compensation, according to recent polls. But polls last week found that 76 percent of Israelis believe no Jewish settler should be forced to move. Moreover, half the Israeli public believes that even the controversial Jewish presence in Hebron -- a 42-family enclave surrounded by 50,000 Arabs -- has a right to remain.
Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a Rabin ally and former military governor of the territories, told U.S. News last week that he would support an evacuation of the Hebron settlers only for security reasons. "There is a danger of pogroms for those staying in the heart of Hebron," he said. "Otherwise, a whole brigade is needed to protect them, which over time is an impossible proposition."
Settlers' voice. "They are ready to throw away the whole city because of one crazy resident," responds Shai Bazak, spokesman for the Council for Judea and Samaria, a settlers' group. "No one talks about the Arab massacre of Jews in 1929 or the killings that continue to happen. But the Jews they're ready to run out."
Some experts believe a partial solution to the settler tangle lies in redrawing Israel's borders to include the ring of Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Joseph Alpher, the director of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, suggests that Rabin should begin planning now to annex 70 percent of the settlements by retaining less than 15 percent of the occupied territories, instead of waiting two years to discuss these issues, the timetable laid out in the Israeli-PLO peace accords.
Alpher and others are seeking to minimize what could be the greatest trauma in Zionist history: uprooting tens of thousands of unwilling settlers, most of whom moved to the occupied territories not for religious or political reasons but simply in search of affordab
