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November 12, 1999/3 Kislev 5760, Vol. 52, No.11
Final-status talks begin amid conflict over settlements
Naomi Segal
and Mitchell Danow
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Even as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators launched talks this week aimed at achieving a final
peace agreement, events in Israel hinted at renewed internal conflicts down the road.
The final-status talks, which began Nov. 8 nearly four years later than originally envisioned in
the 1993 Oslo accord took place amid the all-too-familiar landscape of a terror attack that occurred a
day earlier.
Meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah, chief Israeli negotiator Oded Eran and his
Palestinian counterpart, Yasser Abed Rabbo, shook hands for the cameras before sitting down to discuss
mostly procedural issues facing them as they try to reach a framework for a final accord by February.
The meeting lasted less than two hours, but negotiators later said they planned to meet again Nov. 11
and hold several sessions each week to meet the February deadline.
The start of final-status talks was followed by a scene reminiscent of the settler demonstrations
that took place in 1995, when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was withdrawing from portions of
the West Bank under the terms of the Interim Agreement signed that year. On Wednesday, Nov. 10,
some 300 settlers were forcibly removed by Israeli troops from an illegal hilltop outpost.
There had originally been only four families at Havat Maon, or Maon Farm, but the numbers grew
in recent weeks as settlers arrived at the barren hilltop and prepared for a confrontation with the
troops. Their numbers were nowhere as strong as the thousands who turned out in 1995 to block roads
across Israel, but just the same, the images of the Maon standoff may create sympathy for their cause
sympathy that may translate into wider demonstrations as Prime Minister Ehud Barak attempts
to advance the Oslo peace process with the Palestinian Authority.
Just hours after the standoff, Barak secured his Cabinet's approval of the next step in that
process when his ministers, by a vote of 17-1, gave the go-ahead to an Israeli withdrawal from another 5
percent of the West Bank.
The Nov. 10 standoff provided its share of disturbing images: settlers clinging to rooftops before
being taken away; the cries of "Shame," "Arafat Is Proud of You" and "Refuse Orders" directed at the
troops; eggs and paint being thrown at the approximately 1,000 security forces; a settler removing a
Torah scroll from a makeshift wooden synagogue under a police escort.
Hours later, during the Cabinet meeting, Barak applauded the restraint shown by the troops, who
he said combined "sense and determination in order to impose the
government's will on its citizens."
"What happened at the Maon Farm is a difficult test for democracy and a red light on the road to
anarchy," Barak added. But if he felt any sense of triumph, there were warnings that further confrontations were still
to come.
"If this is the kind of struggle that is put up over an outpost, imagine what it will be like over
a settlement," said settler leader Benny Katzover.
The incident at Maon also drew condemnation from others. "This is ethnic cleansing of Jews by
Jews and we are ashamed of our government," said Nadia Matar of the Women in Green movement,
which opposes any Israeli hand-overs of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
There were opening ceremonies for the peace talks in 1996 as well as some six weeks ago, but the
Nov. 8 session represented the first time the two sides had actually gotten down to formal business.
Along with creating an outline for an agreement within little more than 100 days, the two sides have
also committed themselves to signing a final agreement by September.
Outside the Ramallah hotel where Monday's talks were held, a small group of Jewish protesters
held signs that read, "Don't Abandon 200,000 Israeli Citizens," referring to Jewish settlers in the
West Bank. At a news conference after the meeting, Abed Rabbo described "settlement activities" as the
main obstacle to achieving a final peace.
The Nov. 8 meeting came one day after more than 30 Israelis were wounded, most of them lightly,
in three pipe-bomb explosions in the coastal city of Netanya. Israeli Public Security Minister Shlomo
Ben-Ami said investigators were examining the possibility the attack was linked to the anniversary of
the October 1995 assassination in Malta of Fathi Shakaki, the leader of Islamic Jihad, which opposes
the Oslo peace process.
No group claimed responsibility for the three pipe bombs that exploded Nov. 7. A fourth pipe bomb
did not detonate. Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed the attack on Islamic militants seeking
to derail the peace process.
According to witnesses and police, the explosions occurred at about 10:30 a.m in the heart
of Netanya's business district. They added that the bombs had been planted near a garbage bin not
far from a bank.
"I was at the corner, waiting at a red light, when I heard an explosion behind us, three
explosions," said an Israel Radio reporter who was at the scene. "There was heavy smoke and fire. I looked
behind and saw fire in a pile of garbage and saw six or seven people lying on the sidewalk. Police arrived
in a few minutes."
Prime Minister Ehud Barak soon issued a statement saying the government was determined
to eliminate terrorism and that it expected the Palestinian Authority to do likewise.
The Palestinian Authority also spoke out against the attack. Tayeb Abdel Rahim, secretary of
the Palestinian Authority, said there was a clear link between the attack and Monday's start of the
final-status talks. He said the Palestinian Authority had arrested some 25 Islamic Jihad activists
and members of the Hamas military wing in recent weeks who were allegedly planning terrorist attacks.
The bombing followed last week's summit in Oslo, where Barak and Palestinian Authority
Chairman Yasser Arafat vowed to press ahead with the final stretch of the peace process.
Naomi Segal writes from Jerusalem, and Mitchell Danow writes from New York.
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