Settlers, Palestinians Met Secretly on Coexistence

Right-wing Jewish settlers and Palestinian officials have held a series of secret talks in an effort to build trust among hostile West Bank residents and to look for ways to avert political violence, some participants confirmed Sunday.

The fact that several outspoken opponents of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord participated in the talks, which began in June 1994 and continued until being suspended for the Palestinian elections in January, suggests increasing settler acceptance of coexistence with the Palestinians--or at least more than has been publicly apparent.

But the small-scale meetings, reported Sunday by the daily newspaper Haaretz, also drew immediate fire from angry settler leaders who had been kept in the dark.

Although Yisrael Harel, the honorary chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza--an umbrella organization known in Israel as Yesha--reportedly participated in the sessions, the council’s secretary-general, Uri Ariel, denounced the talks as “contrary” to the interests of settlers.

“My friends should not attempt to do what they do not know,” Ariel said. “They may have wanted to do good, but they only caused damage.”

News of the talks sent shock waves through Jewish communities in the West Bank that are home to more than 120,000 settlers, most of whom reject the 1993 accord and subsequent agreements as near-treason because they give Palestinians control over West Bank land that the settlers view as their birthright.

Under the peace accords, Israel has already withdrawn its troops from the Gaza Strip, six West Bank cities and hundreds of Arab villages. The final phase of negotiations is scheduled to begin May 4 over the issues of Jewish settlements, control of Jerusalem and the status of the Palestinian-rule area.

The Palestinian negotiating position is that the Israelis must evacuate all of the approximately 140 Gaza and West Bank settlements. Many of the settlers say they will never leave.

In the disputed West Bank city of Hebron on Sunday, thousands of flag-waving Israelis rallied to assert their claim to the ancient city, where 450 settlers live in the midst of more than 100,000 Palestinians.

“This place is ours. To give it away is ludicrous,” Associated Press quoted Marla Braun, who moved to Jerusalem from Chicago six months ago with her husband and their new baby, as saying. Hebron is the only Palestinian city in the West Bank that remains under Israeli control.

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The secret talks between settlers and Palestinian officials were held under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee. Joseph Alpher, director of the organization’s Israel/Middle East office, said they began in June 1994 and that about 10 sessions were held in Israel and Britain before they were suspended for the January elections. A wave of suicide bombings engineered by the militant Islamic group Hamas began Feb. 25, and the talks have not resumed.

The purpose of the talks was not to change the political view of either side, Alpher said in an interview, but to open the lines of communication.

“There was never a goal of finding political solutions between the two sides. The distance is too great, and there was no authorization for that,” Alpher said. He added that Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated Nov. 4, were informed of the private talks.

About six people from each side participated in the talks at various times. Each side apparently wanted to hear the other’s views on a final settlement in the West Bank and to reach some understandings about daily life in the region. One of the ideas discussed at the meetings was the establishment of a hotline between the two sides to deal with emergencies.

“We wanted people to get to know each other. We were looking for ways to prevent bloodshed,” Alpher said.

He said the meetings included long introductions, family stories and meals together to try to break down stereotypes each side had of the other. He said the Palestinians tended to view the settlers as colonialists, without recognizing their religious and ideological commitment to the land, while the settlers failed to differentiate between Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and the Islamic extremists in Hamas.

Alpher would not name the Jewish participants, but Haaretz said they included Harel of Yesha; Ori Elitzur, editor of the settler magazine Nekuda; and Rabbi Eliezer Waldman of the Kiryat Arba settlement outside Hebron.

None of the reported Israeli participants could be reached for comment. The disclosure appeared to be a political embarrassment for them, and Alpher said he feared that publicizing the talks would bring the discussions to an end.

On the Palestinian side, the group included Sufian abu Zaydeh, head of the Israel desk for the Palestinian Authority; Hassan Asfour, a member of the newly elected Palestinian Legislative Council; and Mohammad Dahlan of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in Gaza.

Abu Zaydeh said in an interview that Arafat knew about the talks but that they were “not official negotiations.” He told Israel Army Radio, however, that in the discussions some settlers had expressed a willingness to live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank.

Asfour said that none of the Palestinians suggested that settlers should remain in the West Bank.