Street Project in West Bank Runs Into Roadblocks

As part of a complex, U.S.-mediated accord to keep the Mideast peace process moving, Israel and the Palestinians agreed in January that Shuhada Street, a central artery of this city, shut since 1994, would be reopened. The United States sweetened the deal, offering to finance and supervise a $1.2-million project to rebuild the closed section. Both sides agreed.

But Hebron’s militant Jewish settlers did not. Their actions, aimed at delaying or even preventing the project’s completion, illustrate that reaching a political agreement--even one as tortuously negotiated as this one--is often easier than implementing it.

Now nearly complete, the project is months overdue. The final cost to U.S. taxpayers may reach double the amount originally estimated.

And the American contractor, in an account largely supported by U.S. officials and confirmed in part by Israeli police and soldiers, asserts that the Jewish settlers are mainly to blame.

“It’s an obscene abuse of U.S. taxpayer money,” said David Muirhead, the construction manager and an employee of the Connecticut-based Morganty Group. “I’ve worked on a lot of projects in a lot of difficult situations, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

U.S. Embassy officials were more circumspect about the problems of the project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It has “definitely been a challenge for these people,” one official said as he watched the street being paved. “We’ll all be very glad to get it done.”

Muirhead said settlers, who live in heavily guarded compounds on the disputed street, harass and even attack his Palestinian workers, damage their equipment and wreck their work. He said settlers are responsible for 75% of the delays that have pushed the work behind schedule by about 10 weeks, with Palestinian rioting to blame for the rest.

Several weeks of construction time were lost in June and July, when crowds of Palestinians gathered on the street almost daily to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at the Jewish enclaves and at Israeli soldiers.

But the actions of the Palestinians, who want the street reopened, have not appeared to be aimed at disrupting the work, Muirhead and U.S. officials said.

The settlers, on the other hand, oppose the reopening of the street, closed in 1994 after a Jewish extremist shot and killed about 30 Muslims at prayer in Ibrahim mosque.

Since January, when months of negotiations ended in the agreement between Israel and Palestinians to withdraw Israeli troops from most of Hebron, the settlers have said their lives will be endangered if Palestinians can drive on the street outside their homes.

“This is the only street where we can exist in Hebron,” said Noam Arnon, a spokesman for Hebron’s Jewish community. “Now they want to allow people who define themselves as our enemies into this street.”

Arnon said he does not believe that settlers have taken part in serious incidents of violence or vandalism. He speculated that the Palestinian workers may be responsible.

But Muirhead said this is not so. He said settlers--residents of the Hebron community and outsiders--have been responsible for more than 30 incidents.

In the most serious case, a Palestinian driving a front-end loader was hit in the head by pellets from an air gun and was hospitalized, the contractor said. Other workers have been pushed into ditches by settlers and hit by rocks, he said.

Windows of construction vehicles have been shot out eight times, materials have been damaged or stolen and newly installed curbstones have been destroyed. Often, Muirhead said, settlers try to delay work by parking in areas where construction is to occur.

Muirhead himself was briefly held in September on suspicion of interfering with police work. He said he was trying to prevent a worker from being arrested unfairly. The man was later released.

Linda Menuhin, an Israeli police spokeswoman, confirmed that settlers have caused most problems reported to authorities, saying: “They are the ones unhappy about the street opening, and they are making the problems.”

The work is to be completed Oct. 10, with an opening a few weeks later, Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natsche said.

“Maybe now life will return to our city,” he said.

But others fear that the street, a tiny stage where each new twist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be played out, will never be at peace.

“The Arabs and the Jewish, we are too close here,” said Idris Zahadi, a Palestinian who works as a night construction watchman. “Shuhada will never have peace.”