New Strategy for the West Bank

By William E. Smith

Israel announces an end to military government

It was a modest success, a resumption of the Palestinian autonomy negotiations after a hiatus of 16 months. Representatives of Egypt, Israel and the U.S. assembled in Cairo last week amid the usual displays of friendship and expressions of optimism. At the close of a two-day meeting at the Mena House Hotel, near the Giza pyramids, they announced a schedule for continuing discussions concerning that most difficult of unresolved questions, the nature of the "full autonomy" promised the Palestinian Arabs of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip under the Camp David accords. The plan is for diplomats of the three countries to meet for a total of 35 days stretched over five sessions between Oct. 21 and Jan. 15. The aim: to reach an agreement between Egypt and Israel, preferably before next April 26, the day on which Israel is scheduled to complete its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula.

This step alone will be difficult enough. Egypt interprets full autonomy to mean self-determination for the Palestinians; Israel, fearful for its security, wants to grant the Palestinians only limited administrative powers. But the really awesome task facing the Camp David signatories will be to persuade the Palestinians to join the process somewhere along the way. If they continue to stay aloof, the whole elaborate negotiating process will have failed.

Trying to win the support of the Palestinians for an eventual compromise agreement, the Israeli government last week announced an important new policy for the occupied territories. The Israeli plan, as advanced by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, is to bring civilian rule to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs have lived under military jurisdiction since the Six-Day War of 1967. The short-term Israeli goal was plain enough: to create the political and social conditions under which a system of limited autonomy could conceivably be successful. The long-range goal was more significant: a West Bank whose destiny would be tightly bound to that of Israel.

Under the new plan, the military government is to be abolished. In its place will be a civilian governor responsible directly to the Prime Minister of Israel. The governor will be in charge of all administrative affairs within the occupied territories and will have both Israeli and Arab civilians working under him. The armed forces will be responsible for security in the territories; civilians will take over all other tasks. The new governor will be Menachem Milson, a native-born Israeli who is a distinguished Arabist, a professor of Arabic literature at Hebrew University and a former adviser to the military government.

The Israeli announcement drew praise from the Egyptian negotiators in Cairo, who greeted it as a "confidence-building" step. But it was immediately and vigorously attacked by the West Bank Arab press and almost all of the prominent West Bank mayors. Declaring that the plan was part of a scheme to suppress the Palestinian people, the radical mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shaka'a, described the Israeli program as a "desperate and futile attempt to undermine Palestinian unity." He added: "In the final analysis they want to annex the West Bank." Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, a Christian Arab of moderate views, observed: "I will not live to see the end of the Israeli occupation." In Beirut, headquarters of the P.L.O., a knowledgeable Palestinian pointed out that "no one is going to go along with the Israeli plan because the real power will remain with the Israelis." Besides, he observed, "if any [of the Palestinian leaders] did go along, the P.L.O. would take care of them." On the other hand, in the almost rueful words of one West Bank politician, "it will be much harder for us to attack the Israeli occupation if a civilian is in charge."

This, indeed, lay at the heart of the strategy devised by Sharon. Within days of his confirmation in August, the new Defense Minister issued a series of guidelines for Israeli military conduct on the West Bank. He abolished the checkpoints, bitterly resented by the Arabs, at which every Arab car was stopped and often searched. He ordered his soldiers on guard at key positions along the highway to stay off the road altogether and to search cars only sporadically or if there were grounds for suspicion. Military patrols are to be kept to a minimum.

The Israelis are also using a variety of techniques to transfer political strength in the West Bank from the municipalities, centers of P.L.O. support, to the countryside, where the relatively apolitical farmers are enjoying a wave of prosperity. For example, Israeli authorities have stopped the payment of Jordanian-P.L.O. funds to the West Bank municipalities, a practice that had been in effect since 1978. This in theory will reduce the political clout of the anti-Israeli municipal governments and will tend to wean them away from P.L.O. influence.

In addition, the Israelis are encouraging and financing the formation of "village associations" that do not rely on the municipalities for support. The most advanced of these new groups is in Hebron, where the leader of the association, Mustafa Dudin, 65, claims to have gained the support of some 140,000 people in 74 neighboring villages by providing them with development funds that were never available before. In 2% years, says Dudin, he has built 40 miles of roads and 24 new schools.

The Israeli strategy is based on the growing economic links between Israel and the West Bank and the benefits that have come to the occupied areas in the past 14 years. The optimistic Israeli assumption: the Palestinians will come to care less about their politics than their pocketbooks. Today 50% of the West Bank's 80,000 adult workers hold jobs in Israel, almost three times as many as in 1970. In 1980 the West Bank imported $400 million worth of goods, 80% of them from Israel, and had exports of $200 million, half of which went to Israel. Says Rafi Meron, a Bank of Israel specialist in West Bank economic affairs: "No one even dares to think that the West Bankers would want to break off from Israel.

We assume that all ties would continue, no matter what."

Does Israel really want outright annexation of the West Bank? Probably not, although the heavy Jewish migration into a region that was almost totally Arab has made Israel's intentions uncertain. Today the West Bank has 72 Jewish settlements, with a population of 24,000. Fourteen more communities are under construction. These outposts are inhabited mainly by middleclass, well-educated Israelis, who believe that the Bible gives them a timeless right to the land and who insist they will not move, come what may.

Despite these signs of colonization, the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin realizes that an Israel encompassing the West Bank and Gaza Strip would scarcely remain a Jewish state: 2 million of its 5 million inhabitants would be Arabs. In two more decades, according to current growth rates, the number of Arabs will have grown to 4 million and virtually closed the gap with the Jewish population. The result would be a "Palestinization" of Israel, as Opposition Leader Shimon Peres put it during this year's election campaign. What the Israelis would prefer is a sort of common-law marriage in which Israel and the West Bank could be united in all but a constitutional sense, and the P.L.O. vanquished by prosperity and stability.

The Israelis may be underestimating the tenacity of Palestinian nationalism.

But for the moment, the new policy was greeted enthusiastically by Israel's allies.

The U.S., determined to reach an autonomy agreement by next April, regards the Sharon plan as a major step toward easing tensions in the occupied territories.

But now the real work remains to be done. --By William E. Smith. Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem

With reporting by David Aikman/Jerusalem

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