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September 28, 2001/Tishri 11, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 3
Year of Israeli-Palestinian violence has no victors
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - One year after the start of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel, relations between the two sides cannot be much worse.
Despite Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's repeated renunciations of terrorism - even as far back as 1988, at the height of the first uprising - Palestinian acts of terror have become almost a daily fact of life for Israelis.
In response to those attacks, Israel this week took the first step toward the creation of a buffer zone between it and the West Bank.
This came exactly eight years to the month after then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn and embarked on a peace process in which there was supposed to be no need for buffer zones.
Now, in the absence of a negotiated settlement between the two parties, Israel is embarking on a course toward unilateral separation from the Palestinians.
When the Israeli army set up a closed military zone in the northern West Bank this week, Israeli officials said the 20-mile-long buffer was meant to stop suicide bombers from infiltrating Israel.
Arafat led the chorus of protests from Palestinian officials, calling the move a "serious escalation."
According to the rationale behind the Oslo peace process, the two sides would adopt a series of confidence-building measures that would ultimately lead to a full peace accord.
But after the past year of violence - a year filled also with a virtually unending series of accusations and counter-charges - the two erstwhile peace partners now have virtually no confidence in the other.
Even the most diehard Israeli doves no longer believe that reconciliation between the two peoples is possible in the foreseeable future.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a peace negotiator who also served as foreign minister in the government of Ehud Barak, recently told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz that Arafat is too much a captive to his own image as a freedom fighter to take the necessary steps for reaching a historic compromise with Israel.
The Palestinians, for their part, are just as suspicious of Israelis.
Their belief that Israel wants to perpetuate its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and retain all its settlements there provided the fuel that ignited the latest intifada - and kept it aflame throughout the past year.
For their part, Israelis currently see little reason to trade land for peace - a move, as they see it, that will only provide the Palestinians with more territory from which to launch attacks on Israel.
As the deadlock continues, and the death toll mounts, which side is doing better?
Not the Palestinians.
A year after the outbreak of their intifada, they have scored neither territorial nor political gains. They have more than 600 dead and thousands wounded.
The Israel Defense Force encircles their cities and villages, and blocks their major traffic arteries. Car travel from Nablus to Hebron, a distance of some 50 miles, now takes some six hours by roundabout routes.
Unemployment is at an all-time high, and the standard of living at an all-time low. Hotels have shut down. Places like Bethlehem that used to thrive on tourism are empty.
Israelis, however, are not faring much better. Some 171 Israelis have been killed. There have been nearly daily drive-by shootings on West Bank roads that were once relatively safe.
A series of ruthless terrorist attacks within Israel have created widespread feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. Israelis have to undergo security checks almost everywhere they go - at supermarkets, buses, schools, cinemas.
The economy is facing its worst slowdown in more than 30 years, with unemployment at close to 10 percent. True, the slowdown began before the intifada, but the subsequent start of Palestinian violence made the situation worse.
Foreign investors began shying away from the Israeli markets, and the tourism industry has all but collapsed. National resources are once again directed more at security than in developing a sound infrastructure.
Perhaps most menacing of all is the fragile relationship between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority within Israel.
Just the same, despite their best attempts, the Palestinians have failed to break the spirit of Israelis.
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