Will bombings in Israel put an end to peace process?
Both sides struggle to find common ground against terrorism
March 3, 1996
Web posted at: 11:05 p.m. EST (0405 GMT)JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Sunday's suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus -- the third by the Islamic group Hamas in a week -- jolted a peace process already on shaky ground. As Israelis began -- again -- to bury the dead, the peacemakers, their supporters and their opponents were struggling to decide what the next steps would be.
In the wake of Sunday's attack, Palestinian Assembly President Yasser Arafat outlawed military organizations associated with Hamas and other fundamentalist groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
His peace partner, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, declared "total war against Hamas and other terrorist organizations," vowing to bring Hamas down "to its very foundations." Peres also announced that hundreds of soldiers will now serve as guards on buses and at bus stops and check everyone getting aboard.
But such steps may not be enough. In Jerusalem, angry Israelis jeered Peres when he visited the site of the attack. Some shouted that the prime minister -- who took over the post when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish fundamentalist -- would be "the next victim."
Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud Party and Peres' chief opponent in elections scheduled for May, said that depending on Arafat was "clearly ... not working." (102K AIFF sound or 102K WAV sound)
Netanyahu's ratings in pre-election polls took a sizable jump after two bombings a week earlier left 28 people dead. The additional 19 killed Sunday -- including a suicide bomber -- have only served to increase Israeli frustration with the Peres-Arafat peace process.
"What we need to do is kill 1,000 Arabs and then we will feel better," said one man. (102K AIFF sound or 102K WAV sound)
Peres suggested that Israelis may retaliate against the families of the bombers, and hinted that he might delay the pull-out from Hebron, the only major town in the West Bank still under Israeli control.
Asked if permanent status negotiations with the Palestinians, set to begin in May, would go on, Peres answered "If the facts remains as they are today there will be no point in doing it."
All of that plays directly into the hands of both Palestinian and Israeli hard-liners who oppose negotiating with their enemies. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called Hamas' bombings "devilishly clever, and (a) devilishly dangerous strategy." (434K AIFF sound or 434K WAV sound)
"It is designed to make Peres make demands on Arafat that Arafat cannot satisfy," he said.
The result, he said, will be that Peres looks weak to Israelis, while Arafat looks like "a stooge of the Israelis" to the Palestinians.
"That will strengthen the opposition to the peace process," he said. "It might even precipitate some retaliatory action, thereby polarizing the situation and ... destroying completely the peace process."
For Israelis committed to the process, stopping Hamas' attacks once and for all is the only sure way to save it. President Clinton is pushing hard from Washington to stay the course of peace. And leaders of Israel and the Palestinians must find a way to cooperate toward that end, or risk the region erupting in widespread bloodshed.
One Israeli official -- Counsel General Colette Avital -- called on religious leaders to come to the forefront.
"Suicide is not an act condoned by any religion," Avital said of the suicide bombings. "And I believe now that if many more religious leaders in this country and elsewhere will come to the front and condemn those acts ... this in itself could be helpful."
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