Netanyahu Goes on Defensive for Peace Deal

Returning to a region where Israelis were clashing with Israelis, and Palestinians with Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched an urgent campaign Sunday to defend his signing of the new U.S.-brokered Mideast peace plan.

The Israeli leader arrived from Washington to a chilly political reception, with at least two of his Cabinet ministers boycotting a red-carpet ceremony at the airport outside Tel Aviv and a host of protesters demanding his removal from office.

Speaking in Hebrew, Netanyahu used a speech and then a news conference to appeal to Israel’s unhappy right wing and to settlers, explaining the interim peace deal as “the best that could be achieved” under difficult circumstances.

He said that it was “painful” to give up “even a centimeter” of West Bank land to Palestinian control but that he had succeeded in linking every piece of territory to specific actions by the Palestinians, including the confiscation of illegal weapons and the jailing of terrorists.

Netanyahu’s vigorous defense of the deal he struck at Maryland’s Wye Plantation foreshadowed the arguments he will make in the days ahead in attempting to sell the plan to his right-wing supporters, many of whom are rapidly abandoning him, and to his Cabinet and the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. And it was widely seen as the opening salvo of a reelection campaign.

While Netanyahu attempts to win back the right, however, a new poll in Israel’s largest Hebrew-language newspaper Sunday showed huge popular support for the land-for-security interim agreement negotiated and signed last week by Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat under the guiding hand of President Clinton.

Nearly three-quarters of Israelis polled approved of the deal, Yediot Aharonot reported.

By contrast, several hundred Jewish settlers early Sunday blocked about 30 road crossings in the occupied West Bank to condemn an agreement that they said sacrifices their homeland. Israeli police pulled them kicking and screaming from their stakeout. At least 27 were arrested, authorities said, and the settlers said more than a dozen were injured. Two officers also were hurt, police said.

On Sunday night, a more radical group of Jewish settlers managed to block the main highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem until they were ejected by police. The protest was timed to coincide roughly with Netanyahu’s arrival.

In the Palestinian-controlled city of Ramallah, meanwhile, Palestinian security forces raided overnight the headquarters of Arafat’s Fatah political movement. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are under enormous pressure from the U.S. and Israelis to carry out the security measures agreed to in the interim deal.

The security forces confiscated documents and illegal weapons and arrested five men, who were beaten and then released, Fatah official Marwan Barghouti said. When Fatah complained later Sunday, violent clashes broke out and spread through Ramallah. Gunfire erupted, along with fistfights and stone-throwing. Several people were injured, and one Fatah member was killed.

Angry Fatah activists rampaged through Ramallah, overturning dumpsters, burning tires and shutting stores until authorities restored order. Fatah called a general strike for today.

Arafat’s security forces also arrested a leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Hamed Bitawi, about half an hour after he gave a television interview in which he criticized the Wye Plantation agreement. Bitawi is a frequent critic of Arafat and is known for fiery sermons at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque.

It was the second attempt in as many days by the Palestinian leadership to quiet opposition. Eleven reporters were arrested over the weekend at the home of the spiritual founder of the militant Islamic organization Hamas, which opposes peace with Israel. Their film and tapes were confiscated.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service, meanwhile, is stepping up protection for the three Israeli Cabinet ministers who joined Netanyahu in negotiating the land-for-security agreement, Israeli radio reported.

The three--Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai and Trade and Industry Minister Natan Sharansky--are seen as potential targets for Jewish extremists, the radio said. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an architect of the original Oslo peace accords, was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist, and some of the rhetoric attacking the new deal is reminiscent of that period.

Israeli police also were reported on alert for possible attacks by Palestinian extremists.

Netanyahu has clearly decided to find support within the right for his agreement by contrasting it with what he contends were the overly generous concessions that his predecessors in the late Rabin’s Labor Party were making.

“We had to fight hard for the last two years to reduce [Palestinian] expectations . . . created by Labor . . . and bring them down to reality,” Netanyahu said. “We received a very bad agreement [from Labor]. We’ve worked to plug the holes in it. . . . We have closed the holes of the Swiss cheese created by Oslo.

“After Oslo, the Palestinians got land and we got terrorism, because the Palestinian Authority did not do what it was supposed to do,” he said. “Now we have created a system with concrete and practical assurances.”

Netanyahu’s comments were aimed at drawing a sharp distinction between his Likud Party and the Labor Party, with a view toward a possible early election. Labor and members of the National Religious Party, which until now has supported Netanyahu, are both speaking increasingly of forcing an early election to unseat the prime minister.

On Sunday, the Yesha Council, the influential leadership of the settlement community, formally jettisoned Netanyahu as its political patron and said it would search for someone new. The action is significant because Yesha will probably influence the National Religious Party, which would cast the swing vote in forcing a new election.