Israelis, Arabs Fear Peace Is Fading

Just two months into Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as Israel’s prime minister, Israelis and Arabs alike say they fear that the deadlocked Middle East peace process may collapse.

After Israel and Syria traded angry accusations this week, with each side blaming the other for heightened tensions, Israeli politicians and columnists--for the first time in years--are speaking openly about the possibility of renewed war with Syria.

At the same time, the chill between Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinians grew deeper Thursday after a diplomatic tiff over a meeting between former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. The crisis was resolved in hours, but prominent Palestinians said it was just the latest frustration in recent Palestinian efforts to deal with Israel.

“What we are feeling now is fear, because this government’s intention is not a peaceful one,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian Cabinet minister recently appointed to lead peace talks with Israel. “We feel that peace is slipping through our fingers like sand.”

In the past two days, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have downplayed tensions, issuing assurances that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. On Wednesday, Israel asked the United States to tell Syria that the Israelis are committed to peace and hope to resume talks without conditions.

But Damascus, via its official media, and Palestinian leaders have dismissed the Israeli overtures, saying they are unsupported. “No one in the world takes the Israeli government’s talk of resuming peace negotiations seriously,” the official Syrian radio said in a commentary Thursday.

Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a professor who is Arafat’s minister of higher education, was equally scornful, saying: “I think Netanyahu has replaced policy with public relations. He is constantly repeating that he is committed to peace, but . . . he refuses to implement agreements and violates the agreements that already exist.”

Increasing the jitters for many Israelis is a growing perception that Netanyahu is unwilling or unable to make the tough decisions ahead, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “We seem to be seeing an absence of any real leadership on his part,” Ezrahi said. “Instead, there is often a kind of zigzag that indicates a lot of hesitancy, and that is making people nervous.”

In an editorial Thursday, the influential Haaretz newspaper issued a plea for “a calm atmosphere, devoid of threats and actions” and chastised Netanyahu and Syrian leaders for “creating a sense of being on the brink of war.”

Throughout his campaign and since his election in May, Netanyahu has said he opposes returning the strategic Golan Heights to Syria, asserting Israel should trade peace--not land--for peace. On the Palestinian front, he has delayed a promised troop withdrawal from Hebron, the last major Palestinian city under Israeli occupation.

He also has refused to meet with Arafat, a rebuff underlined Thursday by a friendly reunion between the Palestinian president and Peres, Netanyahu’s predecessor as prime minister. Peres was an architect--with Arafat and assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin--of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Peres and Arafat were to meet Thursday in the West Bank town of Ramallah. But Netanyahu’s government barred Arafat from flying over Israeli airspace from his headquarters in the Gaza Strip to the meeting; permission was granted hours later, but Arafat refused it and instead met with Peres in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians were outraged by what they saw as an attempt to humiliate their leader. “This attitude is highhanded and patronizing, a return to the attitude of the occupiers,” Ashrawi said. “It’s an affront to the Palestinian leadership, to the peace process and to the Palestinian people as a whole.”

She and others linked Thursday’s actions to Netanyahu’s open displeasure with Peres over the Arafat meeting and the former prime minister’s plans to meet other foreign leaders, including Morocco’s King Hassan II.

But David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu’s spokesman, blamed “technical problems”--coordination woes between Israeli military and political officials--for the initial denial of Arafat’s request. He said the episode was unconnected to Netanyahu’s criticism of Peres. Still, Bar-Illan castigated Peres for talking to Arafat, saying: “The danger is that Arafat will think that what Peres suggests to him has the backing of the government.”

He also dismissed concerns about the government’s cool relations with the Palestinian leadership, asserting, “We have contacts on every level.”

Erekat, meanwhile, said the Palestinians plan to ask the United States and other nations to help jump-start the stalled peace negotiations. “On the West Bank and Gaza, we are facing a pressure-cooker situation,” he said. “We have nonimplementation of the agreement signed with Israel, and we don’t have a peace process.”

Israel’s partial closure of the territories also has created growing economic hardship there, he said, adding, “If you put all this together, it’s only a matter of time before something will explode.”

A senior Israeli politician also has warned that Netanyahu’s unwillingness to consider returning the Golan to Syria might provoke a war. Hagai Merom, a Labor Party member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and former chairman of its Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Israeli intelligence fears Damascus may opt for war to break the diplomatic deadlock.

Merom called for an urgent special session of the Knesset to discuss the “worrisome” situation with Syria. And he sounded an even more ominous note, reminding Israelis of the surprise attacks that led to the outbreak of the 1973 Middle East war on a Jewish holy day, saying: “We must not wake up one morning to a new Yom Kippur.”

Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.