In a Flash, Hope Dims in the Mideast

The speed with which the seven-year Israeli-Palestinian peace process has come unraveled in the unsteady hands of its leaders has shocked even veterans of Middle East politics.

Two weeks ago, Israelis were gambling in the West Bank city of Jericho, and Palestinians were talking about building shopping malls to cater to secular Israelis on the Jewish Sabbath. Israeli and Palestinian security forces carried out joint patrols, and a future of peaceful coexistence seemed quite possible.

Now Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a routine of deadly street fights. Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships have been deployed to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinians have desecrated a Jewish shrine in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is warning his country to brace for prolonged conflict.

Now many Israelis are asking: Was peace an unrealistic dream, and is the country headed for war? How have events spiraled so quickly out of control?

Certainly dreams of peace that either side might have had seem to have evaporated overnight. After 11 days of riots--and the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Lebanese guerrillas--Israelis and Palestinians retreated to positions they held before the signing of their 1993 Oslo peace agreement.

Israelis adopted a siege mentality, feeling encircled by hostile Arab neighbors and existentially threatened despite peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt. Even moderates called for Barak to take offensive military action against the Palestinians.

With scores of dead on their side, Palestinians concluded that Israel was trying to impose an unjust peace settlement that it could not win at the negotiating table. They returned to their belief that violence is the only language Israelis understand. Grass-roots leaders called for a new intifada, a prolonged uprising such as they launched against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s.

The roots of the crisis can be found in pent-up Palestinian frustrations and in sensitivities on both sides about the core issue of who should control Jerusalem. A series of blunders by Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat caused the situation to escalate out of control, according to Israeli and Palestinian political analysts.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was designed to be carried out in stages so that trust between the two sides could grow. Israeli pullbacks and Palestinian security cooperation, political and military collaboration, were to be the building blocks that would eventually allow the two sides to tackle the most difficult issues of final borders, Palestinian sovereignty, the return of refugees and Jerusalem.

It didn’t work out that way. There were bombing campaigns against Israel, Israeli delays in the hand-over of land, mutual recriminations and a failure to get down to the key issues.

Joint projects in everything from business to education were welcomed by the Palestinians as long as they felt the cooperation was part of a peace process leading to a final settlement. As time dragged on, however, Palestinians began losing faith in the process.

Shimon Shiffer, a political commentator for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, believes that Barak made a mistake in putting the issue of Jerusalem on the table at the Camp David peace summit in July. Although Barak reportedly offered the Palestinians control over some eastern parts of the disputed city--more than any Israeli leader has ever offered before--both sides realized that their positions were irreconcilable. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are willing to cede control over the holy sites in Jerusalem.

The United States and Israel blamed Arafat for refusing to budge, and when he subsequently threatened to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state, Arafat found he had no international support for such a move. When he then desisted, he was not compensated politically in any way.

Isolated and increasingly unpopular at home, Arafat was a man in need of a good rumble with Israel to let off Palestinian steam and rally public support.

And Israel provided the pretext.

Surrounded by Israeli security, on Sept. 28 right-wing Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon made a visit to the most contested holy site in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al Sharif. The Palestinian riots broke out almost immediately over what was seen as a provocative act sanctioned by the Jewish state.

Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, said Barak made the mistake of responding with excessive force, leading to deaths among Palestinian protesters that fueled further confrontations each day, and then further increasing Israeli firepower with helicopter gunships.

“Now he is about to commit another error, to enter into an offensive mode and widen the contours of the conflict,” Shikaki said, alluding to Barak’s threat to use maximum force if Arafat does not manage to halt the violence by tonight.

Arafat, meanwhile, lost the ability to control the Palestinian confrontations with Israeli troops. His security forces relinquished the streets and left a power vacuum at the separation lines that was filled by young militia members. They began to use guns as well as rocks--entering an uneven battlefield on which they could not possibly win.

The Palestinians interpreted the Israeli pullback early Saturday from Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank town of Nablus as a military defeat for the Jewish state and went in to destroy the tomb. Barak responded by giving Arafat an ultimatum to end the street fighting within 48 hours or else--in effect tying Arafat’s hands. Any concessions he makes would now be seen as giving in to Israeli threats.

“A lot of wars happen as a result of these kinds of miscalculations and mistakes,” Shikaki said.

Intense efforts by the United States, Egypt and others are underway to try to halt the escalation of violence, but there is a hardening of public opinion on both sides. In Israel, the liberal columnist Nahum Barnea of Yediot Aharonot told Barak to remember the epithet from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”: “When you have to shoot, shoot--don’t talk.”

On the Palestinian side, field organizers of Arafat’s Fatah faction distributed leaflets declaring a “popular war” and calling for the “intifada” against Israel to be expanded. Fatah officials said members of the mainstream political faction did not seek Arafat’s consent before going door to door with the leaflets.

Military analyst Zeev Schiff said there are many ways short of shooting for Barak to step up pressure on the Palestinians if they do not stop the disturbances. He could halt fuel supplies and delivery of other essential materials to the Palestinian territories, prohibit Palestinian laborers from working in Israel and ban purchases of Palestinian goods.

“They are dependent on Israel,” Schiff said. “The government doesn’t have to shell them to bring them to their knees.”

But, he added, “there are strong voices that say to act against them militarily.”

Shiffer of the Yediot newspaper added a small note of optimism. Barak and Arafat are both so “bloodied” by this experience that they might be willing to talk, he said.

“The best way to negotiate is to know exactly what you stand to lose,” Shiffer said.

Both sides know that what is at stake is the peace process.