Palestinians Hard Pressed to Control Ire Amid ‘Deceit Operation’

On a craggy hillside overlooking the slope in southeastern Jerusalem where Israel plans to build a new Jewish neighborhood, Palestinian leaders Friday called on more than 1,000 demonstrators to pray and protest peacefully.

Palestinian youths, in turn, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a jackass” and urged the crowd to break through a line of Israeli soldiers to take the hill that Jews call Har Homa and Palestinians know as Jabal Abu Ghneim.

“Calm down! Get back!” Palestinian security agents shouted as they moved between the press of youths and heavily armed Israeli soldiers.

“This is a peaceful demonstration,” Palestinian Legislative Council member Saleh Tamari yelled at the young men. “When you joined, you accepted the condition that it would be peaceful.”

The throng grumbled and dispersed, ending the noon demonstration without violence. This time.

Although smaller than expected, the protest illustrated the rising anger among Palestinians over the direction the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is taking--and the difficulty Palestinian leaders could face in trying to contain the ire.

Meanwhile in New York, the United States on Friday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Israel to abandon its plans for the Har Homa housing project.

Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the Israeli plans but said the council was “not an appropriate forum for debating the issues now under negotiation between the parties.”

Palestinian officials organized Friday’s demonstration against recent Israeli decisions to build 6,500 apartments at Har Homa; to close four Palestinian offices in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem; and to carry out a limited troop redeployment in the West Bank.

The Israeli Cabinet voted early Friday to pull back troops from 9% of the West Bank, but only 2% is land now under exclusive Israeli control; 7% is already under Palestinian civil responsibility but patrolled by Israeli troops.

After the redeployment, expected to take place next week, nearly 29% of the West Bank will be under full or partial Palestinian control.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat condemned the unilateral Israeli withdrawal after returning to the Gaza Strip from a trip to the United States.

“This is a big deceit operation. It came from one party, without consultation with us,” Arafat told reporters.

The withdrawal was far less than the Palestinians had expected.

The United States backs Israel’s contention that it did not have to negotiate the scope of the pullback.

The Israeli Cabinet’s 10-7 vote followed a seven-hour debate between Netanyahu and hard-line lawmakers who oppose giving up more land to the Palestinians before final-status negotiations, which are to begin March 15 and end in May 1999.

Afterward, Netanyahu told his critics that he had relinquished “the necessary minimum” of land to keep the peace process on track. Netanyahu told Israel Radio that the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements required him to hand over more land.

“This is not too large a territory in any respect. . . . We have in fact handed over territories in which we have no security or residential interest and, in the map of the permanent status arrangement, is not vital for us,” Netanyahu said.

But he faced continued attacks from Jewish settler leaders and rightists in his own coalition government who threatened to join an opposition vote of no confidence.

In theory, the eight members of parliament who have now threatened to jump ship would be enough to bring down the government.

In practice, they are unlikely to do so because this would result in a more liberal coalition government led by the center-left Labor Party.

Palestinians protesting on the border between the West Bank town of Beit Sahur and Jerusalem seemed uninterested in Netanyahu’s internal political problems.

They agreed with his assessment that he had turned over “the minimum” amount of land and wondered whether this would indeed be enough to keep peace on track when bulldozers move in to break ground on the new Jewish neighborhood in an area they consider to be Palestinian.

They waved Palestinian flags and banners stating “Abu Ghneim is ours now and forever,” a slogan copied from Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, in which 450 settlers live among 100,000 Palestinians.

“Shame and disgrace on the Israeli government!” they chanted. Their posters read: “Jerusalem, Capital of Two States.”

Palestinians want East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent Palestine. Israel says it will never cede ground in the city it “reunited” in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“The present government is not really serious about reaching a kind of peace that will be accepted in the end,” said Sari Nusseibeh, dean of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.

“It is a question of trying to pacify us,” Nusseibeh said, surveying the rocky landscape and rising level of frustration around him. “Eventually, it will come to an end.”

* FOREIGN WORKERS: The rising number of immigrants in their midst is giving some Israelis pause. A16