Once again a slaughter of the innocents was a senseless outburst, given focus by the tensions and hatreds that still divide Arabs and Israelis. Occasionally these atrocities do some unintended good: when a disturbed Israeli soldier opened fire on a crowded Arab marketplace last New Year’s Day, he unwittingly helped prod his country into a long-delayed agreement to withdraw from most of Hebron. This time, tragedy may have no therapeutic effect. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat complained that the peace process had been stopped cold by ““the most serious crisis’’ since the 1993 Oslo accord. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet refused to back down on a principal cause of the crisis, voting to break ground this week on Har Homa, a controversial Jewish housing project in Arab East Jerusalem. Said Netanyahu: ““I am building Har Homa, and nothing is going to stop me.''
Certainly not the strong but cautiously qualified opposition of Bill Clinton. The U.S. administration regards the Har Homa project as an illegal obstacle to peace. But when the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution condemning Israel in almost precisely those terms, Washington vetoed it. Later, when a similar resolution was presented to the General Assembly, where no one has a veto, the United States and Israel found themselves on the painfully short end of a 130-2 vote. ““We did the right thing from the point of view of the United States in the United Nations,’’ Clinton said. ““But that should not be interpreted as an approval of the decision that was made by the Israeli government.''
It has long been U.S. policy to keep Israel from getting mugged in the Security Council. Washington sent a mixed message on the Har Homa issue because ““sometimes that’s the right message,’’ said a senior State Department official. ““The message to the Israelis is that the United States is determined not to let the world gang up on Israel. Because to the extent that the Israelis are ganged up on, it’s much harder to get them to compromise.''
Israel’s neighbors were less tolerant. Before the massacre along the border, Jordan’s King Hussein sent a letter to Netanyahu complaining that he could not ““work with you as a partner and true friend . . . when I sense an intent to destroy all I worked to build between our peoples and states.’’ Israel had just offered to hand over about 9 percent of the West Bank to full or partial Palestinian rule–less than Arafat had said he expected, but as much as Israel’s hard-liners could stomach. Arafat, who refused to accept phone calls from Netanyahu, responded to the offer by organizing a peace conference in Gaza, inviting American, European and Japanese diplomats but pointedly excluding Israel. Washington accepted the invitation, ordering Edward Abington, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, to sit in. The decision angered the Israelis and drew fire from American Jewish leaders. ““It’s definitely going to be a bash-Israel fest,’’ said Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. In Gaza, Abington said soothingly that Washington did not regard the meeting as a ““new mechanism’’ to replace or even supplement bilateral negotiations.
On a visit to Moscow, ““Bibi’’ Netanyahu lashed out at his foreign critics. ““I’m frankly fed up with the idea that everything we do is a violation of the [Oslo] agreement and everything the Palestinians say is in compliance,’’ he grumbled. Then the massacre on the border bought him a little time. Arafat and Hussein expressed their condolences; the king said he felt ““a deep sense of shame and anger.’’ And while Israel shouldered its grief, Netanyahu’s domestic opponents postponed until next week a parliamentary vote of no confidence.
Given the deep insecurity that many Israelis feel after a long string of violent incidents, the hard-line Netanyahu may be the only Israeli leader who can make a deal with the Palestinians at present. He campaigned for office promising ““peace with security,’’ which seemed at the time to mean no further territorial concessions. Then he learned, in a series of bloody clashes over an archeological tunnel beneath an Arab neighborhood last fall, that he has no choice but to continue the peace process, which is supported by about 75 percent of Israelis, according to polls. Washington’s job is to be the ““steward of the peace process,’’ as a White House official puts it. Netanyahu is not Clinton’s chosen vessel; the president openly favored his rival, Shimon Peres, in the election last year. But as long as he is in office, Washington will keep trying to push Netanyahu down a road he never intended to travel: toward a final peace agreement based on the Oslo accord.
