Israel Halts Bid to Confiscate Arab-Held Land

Israel’s government froze its plans Monday to confiscate Arab-owned lands here after it became clear that Arab and right-wing parties in Parliament had the votes to bring the Israeli government down over the issue.

This was a day of high political drama that climaxed with a stunning victory for two tiny, Arab-dominated Israeli parties that between them have five seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or Parliament.

“It was a great day,” exulted Mohammed Baraka, spokesman for the three-member, Arab-dominated Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, known as Hadash. “What the Security Council could not succeed [in doing], and what the Arab League could not . . . do, we did.”

Monday’s decision appeared to have the immediate effect of defusing the crisis in Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and Arab states. They had been worsening since the United States on Friday cast a U.N. Security Council veto of a resolution condemning the confiscation.

Israeli newspapers reported Monday that Jordan’s King Hussein, who in October became the second head of an Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, sent a message to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres telling them that opposition to the treaty is growing in Jordan and that the confiscation decision had put him in a difficult political position.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat quickly issued a statement Monday welcoming the government’s decision.

The Arab League canceled a planned Saturday mini-summit on Jerusalem in Morocco. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan issued statements praising the government’s step.

But the day’s political maneuvers left Israeli political leaders from the two largest parties fuming and blaming each other for the government being forced to reverse itself.

Rabin and Peres castigated the right-wing Likud Party and the Jewish religious parties--all of which declared their willingness to vote for the Arab no-confidence motion--for leaving the government no choice but to rescind its earlier decision.

“We were ready to face the whole world, to face the protests of the Arab world,” an angry-looking Rabin told reporters. “We were ready with the help of our friend the United States to face the Security Council. The last thing I expected was that the Likud and the opposition parties will hamper the confiscation, which aimed at expanding construction in Jerusalem.”

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu retorted that the government had “capitulated” to pressure from Palestinians and the international community. He said Likud would have backed the government if Rabin had committed to confiscating more land in Jerusalem.

“Mark my word, today Rabin lost the elections,” Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, himself a Likud member of Parliament, told reporters. “A government loses power when it loses its sense of shame and its sense of self-respect. The government of Israel told the PLO today--told the whole world--there’s nothing we can withstand.”

Likud leaders pointed out that the government had already made a concession on May 14 when it promised not to confiscate any more Arab-owned land for Jewish homes in Jerusalem.

Monday’s political events began to unfold in the early afternoon, when Rabin learned that the two-member Arab Democratic Party and Hadash were determined to go through with a no-confidence motion.

Arafat himself had asked Knesset member Abdel-Wahab Darawshe to withdraw the motion when he realized Likud would back it and bring down the government. But Darawshe--with an eye toward next year’s national elections and an Arab constituency that cares passionately about confiscation of Arab lands--stuck to his guns. (Arabs make up 18% of Israel’s population.) Even after the Cabinet announced it was freezing the confiscation decision, he brought the motion before the Knesset, where it was handily defeated.

The government had said it needed to confiscate 131 acres--most of it Arab-owned and all of it outside Jerusalem’s June, 1967, borders--to build a central police station for Jerusalem and new Jewish neighborhoods.

The Palestinians said the confiscation violated Israel’s 1993 accord with the PLO, which puts off until May, 1996, negotiations on the final status of Jerusalem. The PLO said the confiscation was part of an Israeli plan to predetermine the talks’ outcome by settling thousands more Jews in East Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. The Israelis captured the city’s eastern half in the 1967 Middle East War and claim sovereignty over all of Jerusalem--an action not recognized internationally. Most nations still keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

The subject is perhaps the most sensitive of the Arab-Israeli conflict, because sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians lie within the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, which is in East Jerusalem. The city’s fate inflames passions on all sides.

Shulamit Aloni--Israel’s leftist communications minister, who advocates compromise on Jerusalem and who opposed the confiscation--was punched in the stomach in New York on Sunday by an American Jew who accused her of betraying Jews on the issue of Jerusalem. Aloni was not injured in the incident, which occurred while she was addressing a Jewish audience.

And Monday, before the Knesset drama unfolded, Faisal Husseini, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator on Jerusalem, warned again that Israel was risking the entire Arab-Israeli peace process by pursuing confiscations in Jerusalem. He told a news conference that he believed a new Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule--similar to the intifada that erupted in 1987 in the West Bank--was inevitable.

Hours later, after the government decision was announced, Nabil abu Rudaineh, an Arafat spokesman, sounded far more upbeat, telling reporters in the Gaza Strip: “It seems that the Palestinian, Arab and international efforts have paid off.”

Peres had flown to Gaza Monday morning for a hastily arranged meeting with Arafat to try to defuse the confiscation crisis.

Peres reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to proceeding to the next phase of Palestinian self-rule by July 1. He has said Israel will try to reach agreement with the Palestinians by then on redeploying Israeli troops out of Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, extending Palestinian self-rule throughout that territory and holding elections for a Palestinian self-governing council. He also told Arafat that Israel will allow another 4,000 Gazan workers to enter Israel.

The Cabinet said Monday that it is forming a ministerial committee headed by Rabin to review the confiscations. It “will consider factors other than the need to build, the land, et cetera,” Police Minister Moshe Shahal told reporters. “We’ll also consider the confiscations’ implications. It’s possible that in the end the confiscations won’t take place.”