As Israeli Pullout Begins, West Bank Arabs Still Wary

JANIN, Israeli-Occupied West Bank —  At 17, Palestinian union activist Mustafa Malhees picked up a gun against Zionists fighting to establish the state of Israel and lost. Nineteen years later, he raised his weapon again as Israeli soldiers advanced on Janin in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, but the city fell before he ever fired a shot.

By the time of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, the twice- defeated Malhees was too old to run in the streets and throw rocks. With six arrests for political activities under his belt, however--three under Jordanian rule and three by Israelis--he taught youths ways to resist police interrogation.

Today, as Israel officially begins its historic pullout from West Bank cities, the 65-year-old Malhees feels he is seeing the fruit of a lifetime struggle for a Palestinian homeland--albeit a semisweet, still unripened fruit.

“Despite the fact this day is coming so late, we should be happy,” Malhees said. “It does not fulfill all our aspirations, but we shall welcome the Palestinian Authority. The others were here to rule us. These people are our family. They are coming to revive us.”

The resuscitation will be gradual. In fact, only a handful of Palestinian police officials are to arrive at the outskirts of Janin today to open a liaison office with the Israeli army. They will coordinate the soldiers’ exit from the city after 28 years and the entrance of a Palestinian police force by Nov. 14, as well as organize the joint patrols composed of members of both forces for the area’s highways.

Israeli soldiers subsequently will depart from six other West Bank cities at weekly intervals under the interim peace accord signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in Washington last month. And they will leave about 400 Arab villages.

A bypass road has been completed around Janin so that Jewish settlers will not have to drive through the Palestinian-controlled town once Israeli soldiers leave.

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Preparations for the transition have been under way in Janin for weeks by Palestinian officials trying to avoid the chaos that accompanied the overnight departure of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the West bank town of Jericho more than a year ago.

The new Palestinian-appointed mayor of Janin, Walid abu Mweise, has been on the job for a week, trying to untangle the accounting books of his Israeli-appointed predecessor.

Banners hang in the city’s main intersections welcoming the sulta , Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. Palestinian flags fly along the streets and from the tops of buildings.

These ornaments of peace express a real sense of joy among some young Palestinians who have lived their entire lives under the gun of a foreign army and the eye of so-called collaborators.

“For me, for someone born and raised under the cruel occupation, seeing the soldiers leave is a feeling that is beyond words,” said 18-year-old Ahlam Ahmad, a high school student in a denim shirt and deck shoes. “I don’t know for sure, but I think things will be better for us.”

Politically in the West Bank, Janin is as easy as it gets for Arafat’s government-in-the- making, which will face elections possibly as early as January. His faction of the PLO, called Fatah, enjoys its broadest support here, with about 60% of the population in its corner.

More importantly, opposition from Islamic fundamentalists and leftists in the PLO who are against the peace accord is weak in the northernmost West Bank city. And there are fewer Jewish settlers around Janin than in other areas of the West Bank, which means less potential for clashes.

And yet, even here, there is great skepticism among many of Janin’s approximately 230,000 residents that life and the economy will improve in the city whose name means paradise in Arabic.

Israeli soldiers will retain control of most of the West Bank, Janin residents note. Under the accord, the Israelis may re-enter Arab villages in pursuit of suspected terrorists, and people in Janin wonder if troops will not just march back into town one day despite the accord.

Among students, PLO leaders and even businessmen, it is hard to find a man in Janin who has not spent at least some time in an Israeli jail. The daily rub of army vehicles and military checkpoints, identity cards and economic deterioration has left open wounds.

“It is hard to explain. A jeep passes and it’s ‘Hands up on the wall and let’s see your ID,’ ” said Marwan Habalreeh, 29, co-owner of a restaurant. “It’s not an isolated experience. It’s everyday life. The arrests were indiscriminate.”

Habalreeh spent seven months in jail in 1988, accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at soldiers. He says he does not trust Israel to keep its end of the bargain in the peace agreement.

“To go to Jericho, I will still have to go through Israeli checkpoints. This still feels like occupied territory. And overall security is in their hands. So any time they feel the need to come in and put me up against the wall again, I think they will,” he said.

Does that mean peace is not possible?

“It needs time,” Habalreeh said with a sigh. “We need to forget what they did to us, and they need to forget what we did to them.”

Samir Sabihat remembers clearly the first time he saw an Israeli soldier in Janin. He was 12 years old, hiding in a cave with his mother and younger siblings when the army moved into town at sunrise.

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Sabihat’s eldest daughter is now 12, and, he said, “I tell her, ‘Your real life is beginning now.’ I’m sure my children will have a better life than we did.”

Better, adds the former union activist Mustafa Malhees, if peace leads to a Palestinian state.

“Our goal is to live in quiet peace and stability,” Malhees said. “But if there is not true peace and a Palestinian state, I believe our children will not be satisfied and they will create new revolutions.”

* ARAFAT EJECTED: New York’s mayor ejects Yasser Arafat from concert. A10