This week’s terrorist attack near Hebron occurred just as the Israeli government began seriously considering whether to go ahead with plans for an elaborate system for separating Israel from West Bank.
The prime minister heard a favorable report on the plan at the end of last week from a team of defense and security experts led by Police Minister Moshe Shahal.
This week, Rabin was expected to hear a less enthusiastic assessment from a separate team he commissioned to study the economic aspects of the proposed separation.
Despite the conflicting reports, political observers believe that Rabin and the majority of the Cabinet are close to approving the separation concept.
Rabin had ordered an examination of the separation idea in the wake of a series of terror attacks inside Israel, which culminated in the double suicide bombing near Netanya on Jan. 22 that claimed the lives of 21 Israelis.
With the killing of two Israelis on Sunday in an ambush by Palestinian gunmen on a busload of settlers near the West Bank town of Hebron, proponents of the separation idea are likely to gain new backing for the proposal.
Those observers who believe Rabin is close to accepting the the idea of physical separation point to a controversial statement by Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, who asserted over the weekend that a Palestinian state would effectively come into being within months.
Sarid’s remarks on Israel Television were seen as evidence that the Cabinet is indeed moving toward implementing the separation idea.
Sarid, a prominent member of the dovish Meretz bloc, said Palestinian statehood would evolve in practice, though not as a result of political agreements, after elections for the self-governing Palestinian Authority.
Sarid predicted that those elections would be held throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip within months.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are now hammering out an agreement on terms for those elections, which, along with a redeployment of Israel Defense Force troops, would comprise the next stage of self-rule.
Sarid did not directly link his statehood prediction to the proposed separation plan, but he termed the plan “a positive development that will favorably affect relations between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Although the proposed separation line was designed as a security line rather than a divide politically agreed on by the Israelis and Palestinians, it would provide “a clear initial idea” of the borders of a future Palestinian state, Sarid said.
On Sunday, Rabin distanced himself from Sarid’s remarks, but pointedly stopped short of denouncing his Cabinet minister for his obviously planned and deliberately provocative utterance.
Sarid’s views are “his own, not those of the government,” Rabin said.
Rabin’s muted reaction strengthened the pundits’ assessments that the Meretz minister was reflecting Rabin’s own resignation over the prospect of eventual Palestinian statehood.
However, the Labor Party’s Knesset faction chairman, Raanan Cohen, insisted that the party still opposes a Palestinian state.
But Sarid’s remarks set off a furor in the opposition Likud. Likud spokesmen condemned the comments and said they reflected the true thinking of Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Meanwhile, well-placed government sources, speaking after last week’s meeting between Rabin and the Shahal team, said the security elements of the proposed plan include: – A 221-mile-long security strip, ranging in width from 1 mile to several hundred feet, would be created. The strip would roughly follow the pre- 1967 borders, known as the Green Line — except in areas such as the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and Jerusalem, where it would run east of the line. – Only small sections of the strip would be protected by order fences, which would be built to cover a total length of 19 miles in the areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank towns of Kalkilya and Jenin. – The rest of the strip would be patrolled by the IDF on its eastern side and the police and border police on its western side. Patrols would include helicopters sophisticated electronic monitors designed to detect infiltrators, guard dogs trained to sniff out explosives, motorized patrols and foot patrols. – Police would guard eight to 10 official crossing points, through which and traffic would be directed.
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot reported that Shahal has assured the prime minister that the plan could be fully operational within one year.
Shahal reportedly estimated that the plan would have an initial cost of $133 million and a subsequent operational cost of less than $47 million per year.
IDF circles are said to contest these assessments, especially the relatively modest budgetary estimates.
In fact, the economic team, under the Finance Ministry’s director-general, David Brodet, is said to have arrived at a far more daunting set of figures, predicting a total outlay approaching $670 million.
The economic team, in fact, is said to be cautioning against the entire venture, both because of its cost and its longer term impact on Palestinian trade and economic growth.
At last week’s meeting in Tel Aviv, Shahal brushed aside protests from military and treasury officials regarding the cost of the separation plan.
The police, he said, were totally committed to providing the maximum possible security for Israel’s citizens.
Although it might not be possible to seal off every possible access for determined suicide-killers, the government owed it to the people to make every effort, Shahal added.
Rabin seemed to echo this view when, in response to Finance Minister Avraham Shohat’s assertion that the plan would “cost a lot of money,” the prime minister retorted: “Peace costs money.”
The separation scheme is predicated on an ongoing IDF presence inside the territories, designed to protect settlements and the roads between them.
Government sources reiterated this point Monday, after the attack in Hebron.
Rabin remains determined that no settlements be withdrawn during the interim period of Palestinian self-government. However, others in the Labor Party advocate the removal of at least the most isolated and exposed settlements as part of the separation scheme.
However, the prime minister warned somberly that once the IDF redeployed from the main West Bank Palestinian population centers in the next phase in the peace process, Israel’s ability to monitor and control terrorist activity in the West Bank would be gravely impaired, regardless of the hoped-for efficacy of the separation plan.
Sunday’s attack in Hebron notwithstanding, Rabin said there were more shooting and bombing attempts against Israeli targets in Gaza than in the West Bank.
He attributed this to the fact that because the area came under Palestinian self-rule last May, the IDF and the Shin Bet domestic security service were no longer deployed inside Gaza’s towns and refugee camps.
“We will have a cardinal problem of security after the redeployment,” Rabin said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
