Editorials Undermining the peace
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Undermining the peace The Israeli cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold Yasir Arafat wholly responsible for the outbreak of violence in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. It is...
...The Holy City being the toughest issue facing the peace process, its status was left to future negotiations...
...In reality, a contrary policy is being put in place...
...Prime Minister Netanyahu's election campaign advertised him as a pragmatist— a quality he has yet to demonstrate in office...
...Land confiscation continues on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem...
...The Israeli Army is now patrolling the West Bank with tanks and helicopters...
...Netanyahu and the Likud government.ment...
...The choice seems to be very clear to many Israelis and to the world that looks on in dismay—clear to almost everyone but Mr...
...Prime Minister Netanyahu has been in office now for three months, and except for a cold and formal handshake with Arafat, the Likud government, at this writing, has not made a single public gesture to assure the Palestinians that the Oslo peace agreements continue to govern Israeli policy toward Gaza and the West Bank...
...Israeli settlements on the West Bank are being expanded, and new ones are planned...
...But to the rest of the world the balance of responsibility points in the opposite direction...
...But the brief, armed response of the Palestinian police to Israeli soldiers was a surprise, and has proved to be an exceedingly dangerous gesture...
...Opening a new entrance to an ancient tunnel running near the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, two of Islam's holy sites, may seem a small matter, a means of enhancing tourism...
...The Palestinians were not mistaken in understanding the opening of the tunnel to be a reassertion of Israeli claims to sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem...
...Even so, the matter of a tunnel for tourists eventually might have been negotiable had the peace process been going anywhere...
...Since 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem, extremist Jewish groups have called for the destruction of the Islamic holy places in order to build a new temple (Washington Post, September 27...
...Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert turned the incident into a major provocation by using it to reassert claims of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem...
...It is possible they actually believe this...
...The whole area, below the Dome of the Rock, which includes the ruins of the Second Temple, has been the source of continuing disputes between Muslim officials and Israel...
...But the deed was done at night, in secret, under heavy guard...
...The price of evading the peace process is now shown to be a costly one in lives and in shattered expectations...
...more people were killed in two days than during the whole six years of the intifada...
...Netanyahu can choose to pick up with Arafat the threads of the peace accords, or he can plunge Israelis and Palestinians into a war more deadly than the one they left behind...
...The Israeli army withdrawal from Hebron scheduled for March has been delayed...
...And in small, but highly symbolic ways, Arafat has been humiliated by bureaucratic measures meant to keep him from flying between Gaza and the West Bank...
...If ever there was a moment for pragmatic calculation, this is it...
...The demonstrations and stone-throwing should have surprised no one, least of all the Israelis...
Vol. 123 • October 1996 • No. 17
