Beneath the Surface in Israel

...The stepped-up Arab violence is attributed to the new PLO-intifada relationship...

...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...He also said that "every Israeli [peace] initiative must take into account...

...Equally indicative of the winds of change was Shamir's decision last month to invite newsmen and TV cameras to accompany him on a tour of Army reserve units called up for West Bank policing duties...

...Meridor, for example, has appointed a civil rights advocate to the post of state attorney...

...In part this is a result of the Palestinian enthusiasm over the political successes of the PLO.(" U. S. recognition, " lamented Shamir, "gave a new lease on life to the moribund intifada...

...Some observers see politics playing a role in those expressions of concern: Likud, hoping to take Labor's place on the political spectrum, has embarked on a campaign to shed its Right-wing image and establish itself in the public mind as "the party of the center...

...The strain has also been showing in the far Right-wing camp...

...Fed up with the situation, not to mention with criticism from the Right (for not ordering the Army to smash the intifada at all costs) and from the Left (for ordering disproportionately harsh steps), Defense Minister Rabin has surprised both Likud and Labor by proferring a three-step political solution of his own to the Palestinians: First, there would be a three- to six-month cessation of all violence...

...Although most of the underground cells of the "Leadership of the Uprising" have been smashed by Israel's security apparatus, there has been an increase in the level of violence of the clashes andinthenumber of casualties...

...this would be followed by free elections in the territories and a broad autonomy for an interim period...

...The youngsters are more easily incited by PLO harangues on Arab radio, have no influence over the PLO leadership and launch their attacks spontaneously, without much underground preparation...

...In the West Bank itself, meanwhile, extremists started a campaign of erecting memorials to Jews killed by terrorists in the vicinity of Arab villages, presumably to instigate clashes with the Arabs, and the Army, on Rabin's orders, forcibly removed the stone monuments...

...And Shamir, paraphrasing the late Golda Meir's memorable statement, declared that "We hate the intifada leaders because they make us kill Arab children...

...Certainly a press release by the Army spokesman stating that 26 people were killed and 492 were wounded in Palestinian violence between mid-December and mid-January, shook many Israelis —including a number who clearly cannot be called "soft" on the Arabs...

...Olmert has said that since force cannot put down the intifada, maybe other ways should be sought...

...Still, the rift between Shamir and superhawk Industry and Trade Minister Ariel Sharon has deepened...

...How deep all this runs, what direction it will ultimately take, and whether the Palestinians on their part will move substantially closer to positions acceptable to Israel remain open questions...

...a Likud Cabinet minister remonstrated to journalists...

...But the stone throwing and firebombing have gone up dramatically...

...Thus the Israeli security services have had less chance to gain advance knowledge of these outbreaks and to take measures that previously had helped reduce casualties...

...The adult Arab population, the rioters and the soldiers have even arrived at a modus vivendi of sorts: The shopkeepers obey the call for a partial strike issued by the " National Leadership, " the soldiers don't try to force them to keep their businesses open during the "forbidden" hours, and the young rioters don't throw stones or petrol bombs on business streets during the "open" hours so as not to create conditions that would hurt trade...

...Now, overwhelmingly, the violence comes from schoolchildren who have learned how to make firebombs and are more reckless than the older youth were...

...On the other hand, the Secretary General of the far Right Emuna movement was forced to resign after publishing an article that suggested examining the idea of Palestinian autonomy (under Israeli rule, of course...

...as well the aspirations of the Palestinians who reside in Judea, Samaria and Gaza...

...Arab mass demonstrations have virtually stopped, and the numberof roadblocks and tire burnings has gone down drastically...

...Several factors have contributed to this development: the intifada entering its 14th month, the U.S...

...What do you think, being sorry when Arab children get hurt is reserved for Leftwing politicians...

...when the Labor Party Secretary General resigns in protest against the inflexibility of his party's foreign and security policies, and Labor Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin publicly proposes a new plan for West Bank confederation with either Jordan or Israel—then something may be brewing beneath the surface of the seemingly intransigent main body of Israeli politics...

...At the same time, the adult Arab population has become less directly involved in the fighting, while to the Israeli soldiers who are back for their second and third tour of duty in the territories suppressing the intifada has become amore routine affair...

...The new situation has produced several parallel, and frustrating, developments...

...He knew he would hear some harsh criticism from these troops about the tough measures being used to repress the intifada, and he got more than an earful...

...But it seems a safe bet that events on the Israeli side will soon acquire a momentum that could induce some flexibility even among the nonextremist majority of the Right...

...It is perhaps in the nature of the dialectics of the present events that while there have been signs of at least verbal moderation on the part of Likud, the clashes between the Israeli Army and intifada youth have escalated...

...Simultaneously, the Army has adopted a tougher posture, with commanders (not soldiers) permitted to open fire with plastic and rubber bullets even if their lives are not in direct danger...

...All of these men are much more realistic and pragmatic than the older generation...

...they declared their allegiance to the PLO leadership abroad, yet actually often forced its hand...

...In part, too, the intensified confrontations reflect the manifold changes that have taken place both in the conduct of the uprising and the Israeli soldiers' attitude toward it...

...But an actual solution to the intifada is still far off: Neither the Likud nor the PLO have given any indication that they would agree to such a compromise...

...is supporting the intifada because Washington wants to get a foothold in the PLO...

...willingness to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the growing number of casualties among young Palestinians in the uprising, and—last but hardly least —the fact that Israelis have not become insensitive to human suffering or lost their sense of reality to the extent feared by many here and abroad...

...With more petrol bomb victims among the Israelis and more casualties among the Arab youngsters, the hatred between the two peoples has deepened...

...In the past, the local clandestine cells were actually in command on the scene...

...It may well be, too, that the mounting criticism by Israel's friends in the West, and the incessant refrain by Rabin and Army Chief of Staff General Dan Shomron to the effect that the intifada cannot be ended by military means alone, have finally begun to be absorbed by Shamir and his associates...

...Indeed, when Shamir later faced a noisy crowd of West Bank demonstrators in Jerusalem he did not have to audibly remark, "lunatics,' for them to sense that they were losing their grip on the Likud...

...The more established settler leadership had set up a "protest camp" of hunger strikers (no solid food) on the lawn across from the Prime Minister's office, but Shamir refused to receive them after they declined to go home...

...On the one hand, a leader of Gush Emunim solemnly told a TV interviewer that the U.S...

...Yet the soldiers' remarks were beamed to every home on the main evening TV news broadcast and reported in the next morning's papers...

...SIGNS OF MOVEMENT Beneath the Surface in Israel By Eliahu Salpeter Tel Aviv When a hawk like Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir is booed down by West Bank settlers as a "traitor, " and a newly appointed Likud minister invokes Jewish morality while expressing concern about the growing number of Arab casualties in the intifada...

...then the elected representatives of the Palestinians would negotiate with Israel about the final step—some kind of confederation either with Jordan or with Israel...

...Even the new Foreign Minister (and former Ambassador to Washington) Moshe Arens, who 10 years ago as a Knesset member refused to vote for the peace treaty with Egypt, has now told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee that "Israel ought not to cleave to all of its former positions on the Middle East dispute...

...Today the Prime Minister tends to listen increasingly to the younger Likud members— like Minister Without Portfolio Ehud Olmert, Minister of Justice Dan Meridor, who recently joined the Cabinet, and Menachem Begin's geologist son Benjamin, newly elected to the Knesset...