From the Editorial of the
July-August 1997 issue of
THE OTHER ISRAEL
Deadly deadlock
The Har Homa crisis has been going on for four months now, and there is no
sign of its ending any time soon. Netanyahu has not been able to force the
Palestinians "back to normal" while the bulldozers continue the work at Har
Homa, nor did Arafat make much headway in stopping those bulldozers -- and in
the meantime anger and despair mount among the Palestinians, Hamas is again
growing stronger and among the Palestinian policemen themselves underground
cells have reportedly been formed to resume the armed struggle against the
settlers.
And still, the all-out clash which everybody has been discussing in detail
did not yet come about. It could happen in September, the time when Netanyahu is
supposed to announce the second "redeployment" of military forces. By offering
to withdraw from a significant part of the West Bank, Netanyahu would still be
able to reverse the drift to war -- but such a concession is out of the question
with the kind of government he heads. It is far more likely that he will try
once more to offer the Palestinians only an insulting pittance, as he did in
March, and that may well prove the last straw.
If and when that war does break out, it might well get the name "The Har Homa
War." But in fact, at stake is far more than a single hill south-east of
Jerusalem, a once green hill whose beauty has already been irrevocably damaged
by the industrious bulldozers. Political circumstances have made that hill into
the symbol and focus of all the fundamental issues: a Jewish-only Jerusalem, or
a city shared between two peoples; unrestricted land grabbing and settlement
construction, or a respect for the land and its inhabitants; a series of
truncated enclaves, or a viable Palestinian state with a continuous territory;
Israeli domination and oppression stretching on into the next decade, together
with the inevitably sharpening conflict -- or an arrangement at least resembling
parity between two states and two peoples.
The Editors
THE OTHER ISRAEL
is the newsletter of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace
P.O.Box 2542
58125 Holon
Israel.
Phone/Fax: (03) 5565804
Editor: Adam Keller
Coeditor: Beate Zilversmidt
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