When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared confidently in Washington on Monday that he would not be forced into returning home early because of worsening security in Israel, he remarked: “The solution to the terror is ultimately a political settlement.”
Since he was in Washington precisely to talk with President Clinton, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and others about getting the peace process back on track, Rabin said he was not about to curtail the trip in order to put out fires in Israel.
But a day later, the prime minister announced he would cut short his U.S. trip to handle a growing crisis over Palestinian violence that has also led to political attacks on his Labor-led government.
A rising tide of violence and unrest in the administered territories continued Tuesday, with Israeli troops shooting dead two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and wounding dozens in one of the bloodiest days of clashes in months.
On Monday, an Arab driver hit and killed two young West Bank settlers who were waiting for a bus along a road near Nablus. The circumstances are still unclear, but settlers have assumed the killings were a deliberate act of terrorism carried out by Palestinian extremists.
The same day, some 20 miles away, a young American immigrant was knifed in the back and moderately injured by a Palestinian in a bus station in the town of Afula.
The hit-and-run incident was the latest in a string of fatal attacks against Israelis.
Last Friday, the army found the body of a kidnapped soldier apparently killed by terrorists. On the same day, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip brutally hacked to death a Gush Katif settler.
There have been four other killings this month.
With Rabin off in America, the government has lost credibility in the wake of these attacks and is struggling to fend off accusations that it is weak on security and the Palestinians.
STEPPED-UP SECURITY MEASURES
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, acting as prime minister in Rabin’s absence, said he was stepping up security measures by the army, the police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.
On Sunday, police around the country went on high alert. All leave was canceled and personnel were placed on 12-hour shifts. Both the national police force and the army set up roadblocks at entrances to many towns and cities, and increased patrols in the administered territories.
The army also instructed female soldiers not to hitchhike at night unless accompanied by a male soldier.
In a highly controversial move, Police Inspector General Ya’acov Terner asked all civilians with gun permits to carry their weapons at all times. Peres later supported Terner’s call to arms.
But Israelis were not so convinced that the latest security measures would solve any problems or end the state of near-panic that has gripped the country.
Settlers from throughout the West Bank converged Monday night on Jerusalem, where they held a rowdy demonstration near the prime minister’s home, timed to coincide with Rabin’s session at the White House.
Even within his own camp, Rabin, who also serves as defense minister, has come under increasing pressure. Labor Party colleagues have publicly urged him to give up the defense portfolio and appoint a “full-time” minister instead.
At the same time, doves in Labor and its left-wing ally, the Meretz bloc, fear that the ugly atmosphere of near-hysteria now threatening to engulf the country will make it politically impossible for Rabin to offer far-reaching concessions when the Middle East peace talks resume.
In Washington, Rabin made a special point of emphasizing Israel’s need for security against wanton Palestinian attacks on civilians. “They are hitting at our Achilles’ heel,” he said of the Palestinian attackers.
The nervousness of the Israeli public, Rabin told his traveling press corps, had been demonstrated when Iraq launched Scud missile attacks against Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Similarly, he said, Palestinian terrorists are now trying to derail the peace process by directing blows indiscriminately at Israeli men, women and children.
A DOMESTIC POLITICAL COST
But the violence has not only a potential diplomatic cost but a domestic political one for Rabin as well, as the prime minister faces mounting public criticism for the deteriorating security situation.
The right-wing opposition has railed against his “weak and appeasing peace policy,” charging that his declared readiness to make concessions has had the effect of encouraging acts of terrorism.
The doves fear, too, that the wave of violence will spawn new Jewish vigilantism, particularly, but not solely, among settlers in the territories.
In an incident Monday night, six settlers in a pickup truck stoned passing Arab traffic and crashed an army roadblock in the West Bank.
Another outcome of the escalating violence has been a renewed debate among politicians and pundits about the merits, feasibility and desirability of relinquishing the Gaza Strip in a unilateral, unnegotiated act.
Environment Minister Yossi Sarid of Meretz proposed Sunday that Israel call on the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership in Tunis to take over the Gaza Strip.
Such a call by any mainstream political figure would have been unthinkable a year ago. Even today it is unpracticable, since the PLO has indicated it would not agree to take over Gaza while leaving the West Bank under Israeli administration.
Moreover, the proposal was seen by some here as a weakening of political will at a time when Israelis and Arabs are poised, once again, to make a push for peace.
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