Hebron: The Necessary Step

Nearly half the members of Israel’s Cabinet, including Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former general and commander on the West Bank, are now reported to be favoring the removal of all 450 Israelis living in the West Bank town of Hebron. Other government ministers indicate they too are leaning toward the politically bold--and necessary--step of ordering eviction.

Among other things, providing military protection for the settlers, especially after the Feb. 25 massacre by an Israeli of dozens of Arabs as they prayed in a mosque, forces Israel to keep 1,000 to 1,500 troops in Hebron, which has an Arab population of 65,000. More urgently, as Ben-Eliezer and other officials suggest, the presence of the activist settlers is seen as encouraging friction and conflict at a time when the government is struggling to resuscitate a peace process that is now in deep distress.

Hebron, revered as the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, resonates with religious significance for Jews and Muslims alike. That Israel’s government is even considering the eviction of 42 ultra-religious Jewish families and 100 or so seminary students indicates the importance now being given to trying to prevent the more extremist of the 130,000 Israeli settlers in the disputed territories from sabotaging the government’s peace efforts.

But to ponder a course of action isn’t the same as taking it. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, currently negotiating to bring a small right-wing party into his shaky coalition, is keeping silent for now on the Hebron settlers issue. And demands from the Palestine Liberation Organization for the removal of all settlers in and around Arab towns all but assure that Israel will do nothing that can be construed as yielding to that clamor.

Under the timetable agreed to last September by Israel and the PLO, the settlements question isn’t to reach the negotiating table until 1996. To try to force it to the top of the agenda now would mean the collapse of the peace process. But at the same time there’s nothing to prevent Israel from taking unilateral action in regard to those few hundred or few thousand who are the most extreme and troublesome among the settlers. The justification for such action wouldn’t be to appease the Palestinians. It would be to protect the Israeli government’s own peace policy from the subversion it faces.