Militants Ready To Ambush Peace Agreement
The Israel-PLO accord initialed Sunday is a complex scheme for ending 28 years of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and creating the foundations for a Palestinian state.
But with Palestinian and Israeli militants eager to ambush the accord, it may be difficult to implement.
Its most serious test may come in Hebron, where 450 militant Jewish settlers live in a half-dozen buildings scattered throughout the city of 120,000 Arabs. Stone-throwing clashes erupted Sunday as soon as word of the agreement hit the streets.
The accord calls for Israeli troops to withdraw from most of Hebron by year’s end but allows some to stay on to protect settlers. Extremist settlers have warned they will shoot at any armed Palestinians and will not recognize the authority of joint Israeli-PLO patrols.
What makes autonomy more difficult in the West Bank than in the Gaza Strip is the size of the Israeli presence. There are 5,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip, most of them concentrated in one area. In the West Bank, there are 140,000 Jewish settlers living in 128 scattered settlements.
The agreement does not call for settler evacuations, nor does it require that they be disarmed as Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natsche has demanded. Instead, it tries to set up mechanisms for cooperation and avoiding friction.
That may be easier said than done.
“There is a serious potential for trouble,” said Mark Heller, a political analyst at Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. “I don’t know what will happen the first time a Palestinian policeman fires on an Israeli settler.”
Such an incident would trigger “a civil war between Jews and Arabs,” predicted Aharon Domb of the West Bank settlers’ council.
Israeli opposition leaders believe the autonomous Palestinian areas will provide Palestinian militants with hideouts after attacks in Israel.
Ariel Sharon, a leading member of the Likud Party, said any future right-wing government would take back holy sites and areas that endanger settlers.
But that may be impossible.
“It is totally irreversible,” said Menachem Klein, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University. “Even if Likud comes to power, they will not succeed in destroying this entity.”
A senior Palestinian security official said militants of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups will be more manageable because they do not have nearly the following in the West Bank that they do in Gaza.
It is not clear, however, if the suicide bomb attacks will stop. More than 130 Israelis have died in attacks launched since the Israel-PLO accord was signed in September 1993.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said the accord laid the foundation for a Palestinian state which “we now see as very close.”
Talks on a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement, in which the PLO is expected to demand full statehood, are to begin in May.