Palestinians See Promise of Peace Fading

The way cigarette vendor Fares Shukou understood Yasser Arafat’s peace agreements with Israel, Palestinians would claim an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital at the end of long and difficult negotiations.

Now, along comes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a new, right-wing government, telling Shukou there will be no state and no capital in Jerusalem. Moreover, Netanyahu says Israel will expand Jewish settlements in West Bank lands that, to Shukou’s mind, belong to what he thinks of as Palestine.

“We don’t know if this is all talk,” Shukou said, as if speaking for the dozens of unemployed men sitting on planters across the street from him. “If Netanyahu does carry out his program, we will have the intifada [uprising] again. The revolt will resume.”

For most Palestinians, as for leader Arafat, the initial shock of Netanyahu’s razor-thin victory over Shimon Peres has turned into sinking realizations: A majority of Israelis rejected the peace accords for which Arafat has already played his biggest cards. Under Netanyahu, there is no state pot at the end of the rainbow. And the much-vaunted peace process with Israel could easily unravel in violence.

Despite what Palestinians call his policy of “Four No’s”--no Palestinian state, no Jerusalem, no return of the Golan Heights to Syria and no return of Palestinian refugees--Netanyahu insists that he will continue the internationally backed peace negotiations. Arafat put out a similar line to his political cadre before heading for a summit of Arab leaders in Cairo that begins today to analyze the prospects for peace.

Nablus Mayor Ghassan Shakah says the Palestinians stand by their “strategic decision” to end the 29-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank through peaceful means.

“Of course, with Mr. Netanyahu’s declarations, we know this will be much more difficult for us. But we don’t have any alternative. We have to keep pushing these negotiations,” Shakah said.

A portrait of Arafat hangs on the wall behind Shakah’s desk. To his right the corridors of City Hall flash on a closed-circuit television--a security measure recalling the violence of the 1980s, when Shakah’s uncle, Mayor Bassam Shakah, lost both legs to a car bomb planted by Jewish radicals.

The Palestinians’ strategy, Shakah explained, is to rally international support at the Arab summit and in Europe, Japan and the United States.

But he acknowledges that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has no strategy as yet for rallying public opinion at home and keeping frustrated, out-of-work Palestinians from taking to the streets as they did during the seven-year intifada.

“We didn’t think Netanyahu was going to win,” Shakah said sheepishly.

Arafat did everything but campaign in Hebrew for Peres, with whom he had shared a Nobel Peace Prize, and in the process angered many of his own people.

In the aftermath of four suicide bombings by Islamic extremists, Arafat launched a massive crackdown on the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, not only arresting their military and political leaders but also going into universities, social organizations and mosques to round up hundreds of suspected sympathizers.

Arafat tried to be understanding when Peres shut the doors on the Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the bombings, halting trade and keeping tens of thousands of Palestinians from going to their jobs in Israel. Then he persuaded his Palestine Liberation Organization to overturn its decades-old call for the destruction of Israel--a long-standing demand of Israel.

Peres lost anyway, and Arafat is faced with an Israeli prime minister who has not even mentioned the Palestinian leader’s name publicly since his election. As prime minister-elect, Netanyahu made courtesy telephone calls to Jordan’s King Hussein and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, with whom Israel also has peace agreements, and even to the foreign minister of Qatar. But not to Arafat.

Instead, Netanyahu dispatched his foreign policy advisor, Dore Gold, to telephone Arafat’s negotiator, Mahmoud Abbas, to say that the new government would be in touch soon. Arafat said Netanyahu was avoiding him.

In his speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, before being sworn in, Netanyahu said he would resume negotiations with the Palestinians on conditions. His aides said he will present Arafat with a list of demands that the Palestinian leader will have to fulfill before renewing talks, even though several of those requirements are to continue the security steps Arafat already has taken.

In fact, many of Netanyahu’s positions are not that different from those of Peres.

The former prime minister often presented Arafat with ultimatums and delayed Israeli compliance with the peace accords when he saw fit for security or political reasons.

But Peres had a completely different attitude toward Arafat and the Palestinians that allowed Arafat to look beyond much of this in pursuit of his broader goal: final negotiations ending on schedule in 1999 with a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu, 46, took office as “the new generation,” it was the 73-year-old Peres who had made the leap from viewing Palestinians as pariahs to accepting them as partners.

According to his book, “A Place Among the Nations,” Netanyahu holds the old view that the Arab world has not accepted Israel’s existence and that Palestinians remain a hostile force.

Netanyahu’s distrust is answered with Palestinian distrust. Palestinian leaders around Arafat view Netanyahu’s guidelines as a rejection of the fundamental principle of trading land for peace that closes options for negotiation and, therefore, for peace. And a hard line begets a hard line.

“I am surprised that some people are expressing hope that the negotiations will continue when there is nothing to support this hope,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, Palestinian minister of information and culture.

In Palestinian cities such as Nablus, there is a growing desperation about the eight-party coalition government of “generals and rabbis,” along with growing hunger from the prolonged closure.

Netanyahu’s aides suggest that, if Arafat controls security, the Israeli government will open the gates for workers, trade and investment. To some political observers, it seems he means to offer economic incentives in place of political concessions.

But Palestinians say this will not suffice.

“The people are not just mouths to feed and then they will be quiet,” said Zuhair Dubie, editor of the weekly newspaper Nablus.

A foreign diplomat with many years’ experience in the region added: “The feeling is that the goal in the distance isn’t there anymore. When you start to see doors close and give up hope, traditionally that is when violence has started in the Middle East.”