Netanyahu Is Not the Demon

JERUSALEM —  On Dec, 11, Etta Tzur and her 12-year-old son Ephraim were murdered by Palestinian terrorists as they were driving to their West Bank home near Jerusalem.

Perhaps because they were “settlers” rather than a mother and child, international outrage was muted. Perhaps for that same reason, world opinion accepted as self-evident the announcement by Yasser Arafat’s aides that the terrorists, who had escaped to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, wouldn’t be extradited to Israel, in violation of the 1993 Oslo accords. Instead, indignation was reserved for the perceived villain: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who responded to the terrorist attack by announcing plans to augment the settlements--an act that the accords do not forbid.

Netanyahu did indeed blunder by diverting world attention from the extradition issue and the wider problem of Palestinian violations of Oslo to the largely bogus settlements issue. Despite Netanyahu’s repeated pronouncements of support for the settlers, almost no building is actually underway in the settlements. In fact, far more building occurred during the previous Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, when perhaps a third of the current 150,000 settlers moved to the territories. The future of the West Bank will hardly be determined by increasing the size of the settlements, most of which are already thriving villages and towns whose permanence even Palestinian negotiators have had to concede.

But the future of the peace process does depend on both sides fulfilling their signed commitments. Instead of foolishly flaunting the settlements issue, Netanyahu should have linked further Israeli concessions to Palestinian compliance with the Oslo accords, such as extraditing 27 wanted terrorists, at least six of whom are serving in the Palestinian security apparatus. Had Netanyahu been less clumsy, he could have focused world attention on the fact that members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed credit for the murder of Etta and Ephraim Tzur, have since been allowed to parade unimpeded in West Bank cities under Arafat’s rule.

The justification now being offered for Palestinian noncompliance is Netanyahu’s failure so far to remove Israeli troops from Hebron, the only West Bank city still under Israeli control. In fact, noncompliance has been Palestinian policy since the Oslo process began. Arafat committed himself to changing the psychological attitudes of Palestinians toward Israel and to controlling terrorism. He has done precisely the opposite, constantly inciting his people to holy war and allowing terrorist groups to maintain their infrastructures, while occasionally arresting (and later releasing) terrorists in response to outside pressure. A case in point is the farcical two-hour trial and sentencing of the three terrorists arrested for the murder of the Tzurs; the case was dispensed with quickly in order to preempt an Israeli extradition demand. The terrorists, one suspects, will soon be back on the streets.

Netanyahu was elected because Arafat managed to convince a majority of Israelis that he views the Oslo accords not as a mutual peace process but solely as an Israeli withdrawal process. Netanyahu’s election wasn’t the cause of the breakdown of trust between Israelis and Palestinians but its result.

As for Hebron, Netanyahu’s intentions are best measured by the reaction of Israel’s radical right, whose street posters routinely vilify the prime minister as a traitor. Though Netanyahu has accepted most Palestinian demands on Hebron, even yielding the army’s right to hot pursuit of terrorists into Arab areas of the city, Arafat has deliberately delayed a deal, preferring to maintain world pressure on the Israeli leader by denying him credit as a peacemaker.

Netanyahu’s mandate from Israeli voters was to continue the Oslo process, but from a tougher negotiating stance than Labor, and that is precisely what he has done. Yet from the day of his election, the Arab world has responded with ceaseless threats of war. Incredibly, that warmongering campaign has been accepted by the international community as legitimate. Even after Arafat’s troops fired on Israeli soldiers last September, following the opening of a historic tunnel in Jerusalem, the man blamed for the violence was Netanyahu.

Israel’s prime minister makes no secret of his opposition to a Palestinian state. Instead, he is offering Palestinians a status somewhere between limited autonomy and full sovereignty. Ending the occupation was morally urgent; and thanks to Oslo, most Palestinians no longer live under Israeli occupation but Arafat’s authority.

While all peoples have the right to be free of occupation, not every people or ethnic subgroup earns an independent state. Judging by results so far, an independent Palestine would only become one more unstable and hostile Arab state--but this one bordering Israel’s population centers. Rather than demonizing Netanyahu, the international community should be asking why so many Israelis feel less willing than ever before to trust the other side.