Israelis Protest Peace Summit

Chanting “Jerusalem is not for sale!” huge numbers of Israelis packed into Rabin Square here Sunday night to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak quit the Camp David summit and come home now before he gives away the store.

The rally was the biggest show of force thus far by Jewish settlers and right-wing opponents of Barak’s efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. It was testament to the political challenge awaiting Barak if and when he strikes a deal in the crucial peace talks with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and President Clinton.

People who were bused in from all over the country, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza Strip converged in the sticky night air under a full moon in Rabin Square and the streets beyond. The square is named for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated there in 1995 by a Jewish extremist angry at the peace process.

Sunday’s demonstration by tens of thousands of people was peaceful and well organized, with bouncers making the rounds to be sure none of the rhetoric got out of hand.

Settler Hanah Eldar was there, with her three young daughters, ages 3 to 12, who were dressed in matching yellow T-shirts.

“I pray he will not give our country away,” she said of Barak as she propped up a huge blue-and-white banner bearing a similar message. She lives in Gush Katif, a small group of settlements in the Gaza Strip that many believe Barak is prepared to cede.

Posters in Hebrew, Russian and English blanketed the plaza. One portrayed Barak as Napoleon, an allusion to his go-it-alone governing style.

Amid fears that Barak will “divide” the city by giving Palestinians control of several Arab neighborhoods, saving Jerusalem became the evening’s rallying cry. And the dominant theme, in speeches, posters and decals, was: Who is the majority? Sunday night’s crowd of Zionist and religious right-wingers who oppose further concessions to the Palestinians, or the center-left camp that backs Barak in what it sees as the best chance for lasting peace?

Polls show a divided country, with a majority generally supporting peace deals. But the numbers become softer as that position is defined. Barak insists that he has the support of the majority of Israelis, even though his coalition government collapsed on the eve of the summit at Camp David, Md., and the parliament voted no confidence in his handling of negotiations.

Demonstrators said Sunday that they do not trust Barak and that he does not have a mandate to act on the people’s behalf, especially when it comes to territorial concessions to the Palestinians who, they argued, are not willing to compromise.

“Barak does not have the moral authority to negotiate,” said Jon Whitman, a kippa-wearing professor of medieval literature at Hebrew University who stood in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. “He should be back at home trying to build a consensus. He should not be deciding matters of destiny with so little support behind him.”

Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 100,000. It was dominated by religious Jews and settlers but also included secular Israelis; members of the largest opposition party, the right-wing Likud; and a large contingent of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, whose support was key in Barak’s election victory last year. The migrants’ desertion from Barak could evolve into a serious and crippling blow.

Victor Rakmilov, vice mayor of the town of Ofrakim, immigrated to Israel from the Caucasus, near Chechnya, seven years ago. Israel is too small a country to give away parts, he said.

“I come from a place where there is war, and I know the mood of war,” said Rakmilov, 36. “If we bring their militants close to our cities, we will be endangering ourselves and risking war. I speak from my experience in a land of war.”

Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet refusenik who quit as interior minister this month in protest of the summit, said Barak risks turning a strong Israel into a protectorate surrounded by barbed wire, reliant on foreign powers for its safety.

“The strong Israel, the Israel that won the [1967] Six-Day War, united not only Jerusalem but all the people,” Sharansky said. “It broke through not only the walls of the Old City but the Iron Curtain. . . . We were united as a people, and we rejoined the people. A weak Israel will divide not only Jerusalem but the entire people.”

On a large screen above the speakers’ platform, organizers broadcast idyllic pictures of settlements: neat white houses with red-tile roofs and orchards in the middle of the desert. The biblical verse in which God gives the land to the Jews, put to music, blared from loudspeakers.

Near the end of the rally, the crowd lighted small candles and swore an oath of loyalty to Jerusalem: “If I forget thee O Jerusalem. . . .”

Haim Ramon, Barak’s minister for Jerusalem affairs, defended his boss’ handling of both the peace talks and the fate of Jerusalem, the point of contention considered the most intractable. Jews cherish the holy city as the center of their faith for thousands of years. Palestinians also cherish the city and want East Jerusalem as the capital of their eventual state.

“The prime minister has no intention of dividing Jerusalem,” Ramon told Israeli radio earlier Sunday.

Elsewhere, in the West Bank, fighting broke out for the second day between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the city of Hebron, and the Israeli army evicted a small group of teenage Israeli settlers who erected a tent near the settlement of Efrat in protest of possible land concessions. And four Israeli buses on their way to pick up settlers for Sunday’s demonstration took a wrong turn into a Palestinian refugee camp north of Jerusalem, Associated Press reported. The drivers were beaten up and robbed before they managed to escape, and the buses were burned.