Speed Up the Peace Process

After the Hebron massacre of February 25, Palestinians were enraged. Israel's cabinet moved to outlaw the Jewish ultra-right Kach and Kahane Chai organizations. Israel arrested individual radical settlers and released 800 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Israel also appointed a commission of inquiry into the massacre.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, however, called these actions "empty, hollow, gestures," and claimed that "a gang of settlers did the shooting...and Israeli soldiers later opened fire on the worshippers" (an unfounded claim since disproven by the commission of inquiry). Arafat then led a Palestinian withdrawal from the peace process.

After almost five weeks of negotiations the Rabin government agreed to allow 160 international observers into the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to "explore a possible expansion of scope" of the self-rule negotiations beyond areas already agreed upon. These concessions prompted the Palestinians to resume talks. Rabin's reluctant acquiescence to the international observers, in the face of heated opposition in Israel, allowed the first non-Israeli deployment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The deployment crossed a symbolic barrier, as Israel has never before allowed outside forces to tamper with its internal security.

Upon the dissipation of the immediate tension from the Hebron massacre, the peace process was dealt another possible blow on April 6 and 7. In two separate Palestinian terrorist acts in the Israeli cities of Afula and Ashdod, eight Israelis were killed and 48 injured-bringing the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians since last September 13 to 38. The Palestinian fundamentalist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the Afula attack, and declared that four more attacks would be forthcoming, including one tomorrow, on Israel's Independence Day, that would "turn your independence day into hell."

The day after the attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that Israel "will do whatever [it] can to continue the peace momentum." Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat passed on a chance to publicly condemn the attacks, and under extreme pressure, more than two days after the Afula incident, the PLO simply stated that it "expresses its regrets for the incident which took place in Afula and which cost the life of a number of citizens." After the massacre, Yitzhak Rabin had a very different reaction: "As a Jew, as an Israeli, I am shamed by the disgrace imposed upon us by a degenerate murderer....To him and those like him we say: You are not part of the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out....You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism."

And lest one think that this contrast is rare, consider the words of the New Republic staff editorial written following the Hebron massacre, which recently rang too true: "When, one needs to ask, did a Middle Eastern government or a Palestinian leader, or even a group of Arab intellectuals utter a word of contrition--to say nothing of words like Rabin's--about any of the scores of incidents in which Jewish innocents were cut down no less brutally than the men at prayer in Hebron, and cut down on orders from some official high command at that? The answer is: never."

The Middle East, However, is not a place where evenhandedness can be expected. The resolve of Rabin and Peres to continue the peace process was not shaken by these most recent terrorist acts, because they realize that now, the only hope to end the violence is the current process. Negotiations to replace the current Israeli civil authorities with Palestinians in Jencho and the Gaza Strip are in their final stages, and this is the first step in the interim period of Palestinian self-rule. It is crucial to this fragile process that the parties stick to the Declaration of Principles signed last September 13, which outline an interim five year Palestinian self-rule and leave seemingly insoluble issues, like the fate of Jerusalem and the settlements, to be negotiated after the interim period. The only way compromise can eventually be reached in these areas is if peaceful co-existence builds trust and an increasing sense for each side that too much is at stake to let the process falter.

This balancing act is not helped by statements such as the ones made last Saturday by PLO Executive Committee member Yasser Abed-Rabbo, who said that "the deal is dying and the diplomatic process is reaching total impasse" in arguing for immediate negotiations on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Notwithstanding the terrible timing of this statement, coming so soon after Afula, Abed-Rabbo, and the PLO should realize that, at this time, the chances for success in negotiations over the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are nil. What should be pressed for instead is an accelerated implementation of the Palestinian self-rule agreed upon in the Declaration of Principles.

Rabin has championed this acceleration-most persuasively after the recent spate of terrorist acts that aimed to stop the peace process. This acceleration will allow for the requisite conditions for an irreversible peace to be put in place, unable to be derailed by terrorism. Only by small, sure, increments can a peace be reached between two enemies that have little history of humane, let alone good, relations.

Mayer Bick an editor of the Crimson and co-chair of Harvard Students for Israel.