The World: Th
The Wyes Of Terror
Murder and protest
greeted Binyamin
Netanyahu and Yassir
Arafat shortly after they
returned home.
LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent
Jerusalem
t the White House last Friday,
President Clinton noted that
Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and Palestinian
leader Yassir Arafat "are quite well
aware that the enemies of peace will try
to extract a price from both sides."
The attempts weren't long in corn-
ing, and they were successful. On
Monday, Danny Vargas, a Kiryat Arba
settler, was shot to death. The
Palestinian police arrested Mr. Vargas'
two Palestinian killers the next day in
Hebron. Also on Monday, Mohammed
Zalmout, a Palestinian, was found beat-
en to death near a West Bank settle-
ment. The main suspect in this killing
is an unidentified Israeli terrorist —
not a settler — with a record of attacks
on Palestinians, and Israeli police are
looking for him.
The Wye River accord was intended
to give the Palestinians land in the
West Bank, and the Israelis security
from terror. Yet the accord also refers to
the danger of anti-Arab violence by
Israelis. •
The'Wye River Memorandum reads
C... the Palestinian side agreed to take
all measures necessary in order to pre-
vent acts of terrorism, crime and hostil-
ities directed against the Israeli side,
against individuals falling under the
Israeli side's authority and against their
property, just as the Israeli side agreed
to take all measures necessary in order
to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and
hostilities against their property."
Israeli security officials have warned
repeatedly that Jewish extremists may
try to mount an attack on Arabs in an
especially sensitive spot — like
Jerusalem's Temple Mount or Hebron
— to enflame Arabs and bring down
the peace process.
But while Jewish terror is a perilous
threat — Baruch Goldstein's shooting
spree in Hebron in 1994 killed 29
Arabs and also set off a wave of Hamas
bus bombings — the threat of
Palestinian terror is greater. Hamas is a
large, organized terror organization that
acts continually, and has considerable
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support among Palestinians. Jewish ter- qi-
r o r, by contrast, is at most loosely orga-
nized, sporadic and rejected by all but a
tiny (if virulent) minority of Israelis.
Much depends on public opinion
among the 2.5 million Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas tends
to act when it believes the Palestinian
"street" will applaud --when
Palestinians feel they are not achieving
their goals through negotiation, or
when they feel badly done by Israel.
"Palestinian frustration has been
very high over the last two years, partly
because of the freeze in the peace nego-
tiations, but also because of the demoli-
tion of Palestinian homes, expropria-
tions of land, and expansion of settle-
ments," said Dr. Menachem Klein, an
expert on Palestinian affairs at Israel's
Bar-Ilan University.
Dr. Klein sensed that the Wye River
Memorandum had brought favorable
Palestinian response, which could dis-
courage any Hamas terror attack that
might threaten Palestinian gains.
But Dr. Ghassan el-Khatib, director
of the Jerusalem Media and
Communications Center, is less opti-
mistic.
"For the Palestinians, this is just
another agreement on paper, and they
have seen that such agreements usually
are not carried out," Dr. el-Khatib said.
Hamas has failed to carry out its threats
of a colossal attack, as Israeli and
Palestinian security forces have arrested
a number of terrorists and raided a
secret explosives laboratory in Hebron. %
If the peace process goes ahead, the
Palestinians can for the first time travel
freely between the West Bank and
Gaza, and have an airport, a seaport
and industrial park. In addition, fewer
Israeli soldiers will be around them. All
this should make the Palestinian public
more optimistic, more of a mind that
they have something to lose, and thus
more opposed to Hamas terror.
The one thing above all that could
sour the Palestinians decisively on the
Wye agreement, and in turn give
Hamas a boost, would be the expan-
sion of West Bank settlements, said
Dr. el-Khatib. "To Palestinians, the
peace process means ending the occu-
pation, and the building of settle-
ments means consolidating the occu-
pation," he said.
Expansion of settlements is what the
Clinton administration calls a "unilater-
al act," which, along with a declaration
of a Palestinian state by Mr. Arafat, is
something the agreement frowns upon.
Altogether there are enough forces
working to move the peace forward,
but also enough forces to blow it up. Eli