Once again, Islamic terrorists showed their determination to block any reconciliation between Palestinian moderates and the Israeli government. And the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, furiously testified to the extremists’ success. ““This is not a peace process,’’ he raged after visiting survivors at a local hospital. ““Unless the Palestinian Authority begins to fight the terrorist organizations, we will not continue along this route.''
If Albright can save the four-year-old Oslo peace process now, she’s an even more masterful diplomat than anyone thought. Netanyahu might have officially declared it dead last week except for her impending visit. The Islamic Resistance Movement, commonly known by its Arabic acronym, Hamas, quickly claimed responsibility for the blast. But Netanyahu put the biggest share of the blame on Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat for letting the extremists run loose. The prime minister particularly upbraided Arafat for greeting a Hamas leader with a kiss at a Palestinian ““national dialogue’’ conference in Gaza last month. The prospect of more war grew even darker a few hours after the bombing, when a dozen Israeli naval commandos died in an am- bush by Shiite guerrillas in southern Lebanon. ““We are in a low-intensity conflict already,’’ says the commander of Israel’s military forces on the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan. ““We continue to improve our readiness for a long and bitter struggle.''
The subject of terrorism will dominate Albright’s tour. Before the bombing she was expected to push Netanyahu to prove Israel’s good faith by freezing construction at Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Now the pressure has shifted almost entirely to Arafat’s shoulders. The Palestinian leader insisted that the bombers had come from some other Arab country, not from his territory. All the same, the Clinton administration is demanding that Arafat launch a serious sweep against Hamas and against Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian extremist group that continues to operate with impunity on Arafat’s turf. It remains doubtful whether Arafat would be able to order such a crackdown without destroying his own standing among the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu himself has few ways of punishing the bombers. Over the Clinton administration’s strenuous objections he has already blocked the disbursement of tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues owed by Israel to the Palestinian Authority under the terms of the Oslo agreement. And he immediately sealed off the borders between Israeli-controlled land and areas of Palestinian self-rule. The gates had barely reopened after being shut for all of August in response to the suicide bombings that killed 15 people in a Jerusalem open-air market on July 30. For years many Israelis believed that economic sanctions were a valid weapon against terror. They were sure most Palestinian civilians would blame their hard times on the militants. Now some Israeli officials have begun to worry that joblessness may have lost its effectiveness as a weapon through overuse. In that case the Israeli strictures would only help Hamas.
Militarily, the prime minister has even fewer options. His aides sometimes talk about resuming the Israeli Army’s occupation of areas now under Palestinian rule. But the leaders of Israel’s armed forces vehemently oppose any such notion. They say Israel could not tolerate how much bloodshed the operation would cause–on both sides of the battle. ““Our goal is not to govern the Palestinians,’’ insists Gideon Ezra, a Knesset member from Netanyahu’s Likud bloc and a former deputy director of the Shin Bet security service. ““We are going to have to live with them. There is no choice.''
There is still at least some cause for hope. It is fear, not strength, that inspires acts of terror–in this case, the militants’ fear of the peace process. And the attack cost the militants a dauntingly high price: three young Arabs gave their lives to kill only four civilians. No terrorist group could last long by inflicting losses on itself at that rate. Despair continues to be a luxury neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians can afford. It is Albright’s urgent mission to make that message heard.
