Israel knows the story all too well. The blast was “a kind of terrorism we didn’t face two or three years ago – only in Lebanon,” Rabin said afterward, recalling the devastating attacks of the mid-’80s that slowly turned Israel’s invasion of its northern neighbor into a defeat. Last week’s blast at a bus depot near Netanya was the sixth major suicide bombing in the Israeli heartland since April. It brought home a bitter truth: shutting down Palestinian fundamentalists now takes precedence overcementing peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization. “Eight months ago, when we left Gaza, the concept was one of integration, marriage,” says Joseph Alpher, author of a study on Israeli-Palestinian border options. “Now it is of divorce.”
First comes “separation.” Israel is building a fence around the teeming Gaza enclave. But will it help? Parts have already been stolen. One in the West Bank, says sociologist Meron Benvenisti, would merely “create a safe psychological turf” for Israelis. But in a televised speech last week, Rabin proposed to draw a line somewhere through the West Bank – east of the pre-1967 border recognized by the United Nations. East Jerusalem, whichthe PLO hopes to make its capital, would remain entirely Israeli, “united forever,” Rabin vowed. Israel even contemplates building another 200-mile, $230 million fence along the next separation line.
Rabin’s proposal sounds a lot like what many Israeli liberals have pushed for years: drawing new, secure borders and giving what’s left to the Palestinians. That approach fell before objections by Israeli conservatives, who believe that God gave Judea and Samaria – the West Bank – to the Jews. Suicide bombings may have breathed new life into the old line. “It’s more palatable to talkof separation as a self-defense measure than as a basis for a political settlement,” says Mark Heller of Tel Aviv’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. In moves suggesting future borders, Rabin has allowed the expansionof Israeli settlement on occupied land near Jerusalem and in positions deemed strategically important. Last week the cabinet approved the construction of more than 3,000 new homes in existing settlements.
Many Palestinians want autonomy and, eventually, a separate state. But they fear that by the time “final status” talks on borders roll around, there won’t be much left to talk about. As long as Palestinians depend on working in Israel, the Gaza economy will collapse from a permanent closure, and the West Bank’s would be severely weakened. As it is, Palestinian jobs increasingly go to foreign workers from such places as Asia and Eastern Europe. They account for more than half the non-Israeli labor in Israel. “We hoped that with the peace things would get better,” said Daoud Zayed, a notary public in the West Bank village of Beit Iksa. “Our chief Yasir Arafat cannotdo anything.”
Arafat’s security men looked on nonchalantly last week as Islamic Jihad held wakes for the Netanya bombers in Gaza. His supporters say he’s trying to avert a civil war with the fundamentalists by dealing with them politically. But Israelis increasingly see the result as what Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu calls “the establishment of a terror headquarters in Gaza.” Unless Arafat can get the upper hand in the area he nominally controls, support in Israel for such stern measures as “separation” can only grow.
