Netanyahu and Arafat Cooperate to Avert Crisis

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat have earned high marks for their coordinated crisis management after an off-duty Jewish soldier sprayed Hebron’s Arab market with gunfire in an effort to sabotage the peace process.

The leaders worked together successfully to ensure that massive rioting would not follow Wednesday’s attack, as it did the 1994 Hebron massacre of about 30 Palestinians by a Jewish settler in the Ibrahim mosque and Netanyahu’s opening of a new door to the Hasmonean tunnel in Jerusalem’s Old City in September.

They also quickly returned to negotiations for an Israeli troop withdrawal from most of the West Bank city of Hebron.

The cooperation stands in stark contrast to September, when at least 75 people died in confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers before the two leaders could be brought together at a U.S.-sponsored summit in Washington.

The lessons of September seem to have been absorbed by both sides.

Netanyahu, who left for Europe after opening the tunnel door and hesitated to cut his trip short as clashes broke out in the streets of Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, swung into action as soon as he received word of Wednesday’s shooting.

One of the first things he did was to telephone Arafat to condemn the assault--in which five Palestinians were wounded--and ask for the Palestinian Authority president’s help in containing any response.

“This is a dramatic change on the part of Netanyahu,” said Hirsch Goodman, political and military affairs analyst and editor of the Jerusalem Report magazine. “He finally recognized after the tunnel that Arafat could turn the violence on and off. He knew that if he went to Arafat he could preempt this, but he hadn’t wanted to enhance this [power] in Arafat or to treat Arafat as an equal.”

Arafat, who is widely believed to have encouraged the September riots, if not the armed clashes between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers that ensued, also went into a different gear. Far from whipping up passions, he said mildly that the shooting was “a regrettable act” and that he was investigating.

The hasty arrival of U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross in the Gaza Strip and a telephone call from vacationing President Clinton also helped to remind Arafat that September’s violence had provided him with short-term gains and a long delay in the peace process.

Arafat sent Jibril Rajoub, his security chief, to Hebron to control the situation on the ground in the only West Bank city still under Israeli authority.

“The attack tested Arafat’s instincts, his loyalty to the peace process and especially his control of the population,” wrote political analyst Nahum Barnea in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “As of yesterday, he came out with flying colors.”

Netanyahu, meanwhile, sent Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai and intelligence chief Ami Ayalon to coordinate with Rajoub. Ayalon and Rajoub met publicly in the square where the Israeli soldier, Noam Friedman, had opened fire.

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Chief of the Central Command Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan also went to the scene to keep the city’s 450 Jewish settlers in line.

“The quiet that was restored to Hebron shows that cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis is a vital recipe,” wrote Hemi Shalev in the daily newspaper Maariv. “The army would not have succeeded on its own in calming the Palestinians in Hebron . . . just as the Palestinian police will never succeed in calming the Jewish settlers alone following an attack directed against them.”

The security coordination is a significant development in light of the distrust that developed between the two sides during September’s combat.

Israeli-Palestinian joint patrols were suspended after partners found themselves shooting at each other from opposite sides of the confrontation line. The patrols have resumed gradually.

With security officials on the case, Netanyahu issued a strong public condemnation of the shooting. His action demonstrated a commitment to keeping alive the peace process that Palestinians have suspected the Likud Party prime minister of trying to kill.

In stating that violence would not prevent a Hebron redeployment agreement, Netanyahu sounded a lot like the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promising to continue the peace process after Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein’s attack on Muslims praying at the Ibrahim mosque in Hebron. Netanyahu’s conviction also recalled that of Prime Minister Shimon Peres after a religious Jew assassinated Rabin in an attempt to kill the peace initiative.

Netanyahu had passed what Yediot Aharonot columnist Shimon Shiffer called “the second test of fire.”

But while the two sides avoided riots in the streets, tensions over the Hebron shooting have played out at the bargaining table, where Arafat’s position has toughened. The Palestinian leader is insisting that he have dates in hand for future Israeli redeployments in the West Bank--as called for in the framework Oslo peace accords--before he will sign a Hebron deal with Netanyahu.

Israel also is not budging in the U.S.-brokered talks that threaten to break down as the clock ticked toward the Jewish Sabbath at sundown and the anniversary of the death of the Hamas bomb maker Yehiya Ayash on Sunday. The mastermind of Palestinian suicide bombings was killed by an exploding mobile telephone last year, reputedly planted by Israeli agents.

* HEBRON SHOOTINGS: Israeli accused of shooting five Arabs appears in court, and a second soldier is arrested. A13