For Hebron’s Bitter Arabs and Jews, Israeli Vote Is Crossroads

From the rooftop terrace of his centuries-old house, among the potted plants and clotheslines, Palestinian businessman Abu Samir Sharbati looks down at the courtyard of a newly built apartment block where children of Jewish settlers play merrily on tricycles.

“I do not believe I will ever look out my window and see that they are gone,” he says. “Those people are there out of a deep belief that this is where they must be.”

It is a sentiment shared by David Wilder, assistant director of the Jewish Community of Hebron. A native of Bergen County, N. J., he says that he and other settlers have come back to one of the most important Jewish centers of the Bible--the city of Abraham, Isaac and David--and will stay.

Wilder and Sharbati have two visions but one city.

As Israelis go to the polls today in a vote seen as a referendum on the very future of their nation, perhaps nowhere are the stakes higher than in Hebron, where 415 Jewish settlers defiantly exist in a sea of hostility from their 120,000 Palestinian neighbors.

If Labor Party candidate Shimon Peres wins reelection as prime minister, he has promised to turn the city over to the Palestinian police of Yasser Arafat, except for the immediate neighborhood of the Jewish settlement, where Israeli soldiers will continue to patrol.

The opposition hopeful, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, promises to stop Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and renew the government’s support for the settler movement, whose aim is to reintroduce a Jewish population in the former biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, now peopled mainly by Arabs.

The settlers regard the election as the most important one since the founding of Israel. The Palestinians say that although neither candidate would be good for them, Peres is the slightly lesser evil.

Hebron encapsulates some of the larger questions facing voters.

Should Israelis in Hebron and elsewhere in the West Bank leave the lands gained in the 1967 Middle East War, in exchange for a durable peace? Or should they remain for the sake of security, the roots they have grown during the past 29 years and what they believe is their biblical birthright to this place?

If they stay, will Palestinians and Israel’s other Arab neighbors grow resigned and make peace, or will they always be silently awaiting the chance to strike back, leaving Israel in a perpetual state of insecurity?

Most Israelis indicate a willingness to give up at least part of the West Bank in exchange for peace, but for the settlers and their sympathizers--often members of ultra-religious groups--this election is a chance to halt, or at least slow, that peace process.

“Everybody here understands that the situation is very, very serious. We’re at a crossroads,” Wilder said.

Among Palestinians, the preelection mood was unremittingly gloomy, particularly because of the ongoing closure of West Bank towns for security reasons, which prevents Palestinians from earning money in Israel.

The Palestinians say they are unhappy with Peres’ recent performance, including the April military campaign in Lebanon, and fear that he will break his promise to pull Israeli troops out of Hebron. But they believe Netanyahu would never give up the city to Palestinian rule, and therefore that Israelis would remain indefinitely.

“Basically, it’s going to be another bad period, no matter who wins,” said Ismael Hadad, an unemployed carpenter.

There are no signs on either side that the communities in Hebron would consider a third way--trying to become friends. The mutual dislike is almost palpable.

Emblematic of the overlapping claims to Hebron is the massive temple built by King Herod 2,000 years ago astride the sacred cave believed to be the tomb of Abraham.

In the Byzantine and Crusader eras, the Jewish temple was converted by conquerors into a Christian church. Then, from the 13th century until 1967, it was a mosque that the town’s Jews were barred from entering. Today it is strictly partitioned to avoid clashes: Arabs pray downstairs, Jews upstairs.

Settlers have frequently been attacked, and sometimes killed, since venturing to Hebron in the late 1970s. Their distrust of their Arab neighbors also is fueled by the recollection of 1929, when Muslims ran riot in the Jewish quarter and massacred 67 people.

Palestinians point to the killings in 1994 by Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a prominent Jewish settler who opened fire on Muslims praying inside the mosque and killed at least 29 people.

With such a bloody history, it is hard to see how things in Hebron can change, no matter who wins today, said an Arab building-supplies salesman. “If we are going to continue to not trust each other and be afraid of each other, then this peace cannot work.”