Palestinians Are Euphoric as Israel Cedes Territory

Firing assault rifles into the air, Palestinian police marched into towns and villages in the West Bank on Friday as Israel gave up land it has occupied for 31 years.

Israel transferred an additional 9% of the West Bank to full or partial Palestinian control, fulfilling a crucial step in a new U.S.-brokered peace agreement. The relinquished land was fragmented and desolate; still, Friday’s hand-over represented the most concrete movement in nearly two years of a stalemated peace process.

In addition, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners and approved the opening of a Palestinian airport in the Gaza Strip next week.

The steps are part of the Wye agreement signed at the White House on Oct. 23 after a hard-fought nine-day summit. The interim agreement is meant to build on the 1993 Oslo peace accords and avert renewed warfare. In it, the Palestinians agreed to fight terrorism and anti-Israel incitement.

It is the withdrawal from land, however, that is the most dramatic aspect of the accord and is exacting the highest political cost for the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinians believe that the transfer of the land, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, moves them closer to the creation of a sovereign state.

Here in Kabatiya, the largest of 28 towns and villages passing to Palestinian rule, the red, green and black Palestinian flag and pictures of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat festooned cars, bicycles and building fronts. Newly arrived police were setting up temporary headquarters in a youth center.

“Today Kabatiya, tomorrow Jerusalem,” read one of many Arabic banners. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.

As apprehension grew in nearby Jewish settlements, Palestinians celebrated.

“Land of wonders,” marveled Zaib Zakarneh, a wrinkled man in a black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh, as he watched a convoy of powder-blue trucks roll through Kabatiya carrying the first contingent of Palestinian police.

Zakarneh fled Israeli forces in the 1948 War of Independence and then had seen his daughter killed and his home demolished by Israelis during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that ended earlier this decade. “Today, Palestine is here.”

All around, crowds cheered, car horns blared and Kalashnikovs crackled. The town center became one huge traffic jam with the arrival of the police. A couple of civilians grabbed guns and fired away as part of the street party. Children scurried about picking up spent shells.

“It used to be difficult to say, ‘I am Palestinian,’ and now, today, here are our police,” said an admiring Ammar Sabaneh, 24, who added that he had feared the Israeli army, which until that moment had overseen the town.

“Now I don’t have to be so worried when my sons go out,” said his mother, Raside Sabaneh.

Palestinian security services do not have the cleanest human rights record, but the pride of self-rule, for the moment at least, obscured such concerns.

Kabatiya is renowned as a hard-line Palestinian town whose sons clashed fatally with Israeli troops throughout the intifada.

It was also known in early intifada years for gruesome killings by Palestinians of fellow Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israelis.

The area around and including Kabatiya is part of the West Bank that has had civilian Palestinian authorities for the last three years. However, the territory remained under Israeli army jurisdiction for all security matters.

After Friday, this portion of the West Bank is off-limits to the Israeli army.

“We consider today to be a step toward the final solution . . . the liberation of all our land,” Kabatiya Mayor Mohammed Rub said.

The euphoria of the Palestinians contrasted sharply with the sadness and bitterness of many Israelis.

“I am sure that for every Jew and Israeli, the cutting up of the land of our fathers is a difficult, painful step,” Israel’s dovish defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, who helped negotiate the Wye agreement, wrote in Friday’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

Aharon Domb, a leader of the Jewish settlers council, wrote in the same paper: “Today is one of the worst days . . . in the inspiring history of Zionism and the settlement of the land of Israel.”

As part of the Wye deal, Israeli authorities Friday also released 250 Palestinian prisoners out of a total of 750 they have agreed to eventually free.

Palestinians were furious, however, because about 150 of those released Friday were common criminals instead of “political prisoners.” They agreed to go along only when Israel freed five Palestinian police officers to sweeten the deal, Israeli radio reported.

One group of 64 inmates was placed on buses and taken to Gaza, where mothers, fathers and other relatives waited. Most families were disappointed, however, because only 16 of the group were the political detainees whose freedom is an emotional cause championed by many Palestinians during frequent demonstrations.

Mahmoud Obeed, a camera operator for an Arabic television station, was recording the scene when he spotted his brother, Ahmed, among those being released. He dropped his camera and ran to embrace Ahmed.

“I was like the other journalists, waiting for mainly criminals, and I never expected him,” Mahmoud Obeed said through tears.

Ahmed Obeed had been serving a life sentence for his role in an armed clash with Israeli forces and said he learned only a few hours before his release that he was going home.

Ahmed Obeed spent the last 11 years in prison.

“I have a mixture between happiness and pain,” he said. “Pain because there are thousands who are still in prison.”

Israel will not release inmates who were implicated in deaths of Israelis.

Israeli officials say they had to pad the release roster with common criminals to meet the agreed quota of 250, having already freed thousands of people they regard as terrorists in the five years since Oslo.

Israel’s withdrawal Friday is the first phase of a three-stage territorial hand-over to take place over the next three months.

The hand-over was delayed when the Palestinians accused the Israelis of changing the maps at the last minute to retain supervision of key roads.

Israeli Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the central army commander, and Ismail Jabr, the Palestinian general security chief, brought the maps by helicopter to Arafat, who agreed to the arrangement on a temporary basis, clearing the way for Israeli troops to place concrete markers designating new boundaries and signs warning Israelis that they are approaching Palestinian territory.

Large red billboards tell Israeli motorists that Palestinian police are not authorized to arrest them, that they should “avoid confrontations with the Palestinian police” and that they should “report anything unusual” to the Israeli army.

* SETTLERS LIVE ON THE EDGE: Future is uncertain for those bordered by Palestinian-controlled areas on three sides. A5