World

Traitor Or Peacemaker?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 16, 2000 / 1:37 PM EDT / CBS

In Tel Aviv, about 100,000 right-wing protesters delivered Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak a warning: They won't give up Jewish land on the West Bank without a fight, reports CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins.

The message isn't just loud, it's clear: "Don't give an inch."

The demonstrators don't believe the Camp David talks will ever bring peace. They consider the concession of any territory to the Palestinians as surrender or treason.

Israeli settler David Rotem says, "The problem is he hasn't got a majority and he's going against the nation's will."

To make the point, a handful of defiant Jewish settlers illegally took over a West Bank hilltop Sunday, until they were dragged away by Israeli police. And for the second day, there were fistfights between Orthodox Jews and Palestinians in Hebron, the scene of many bloody clashes in the past.

Barak isn't the only one with problems back home. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has his own militant hardliners opposed to any compromise. On Sunday, north of Jerusalem, Palestinian youths set fire to four empty buses picking up settlers for the Tel Aviv rally.

While most Israelis and Palestinians hope for the best, some are preparing for the worst.

If the peace talks fail, Arafat says he'll unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on September 13, an act sure to spark an Israeli crackdown, and a new round of violence. Time and Palestinian patience are running out.

The "We Can't Give Up The State" rally coincided with intense talks between Barak, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington.

"This time I feel like it's the end, I feel like it's decisive...Someone has to say to Barak, 'Stop and think a minute,'" said Avraham Lahiani, 40, an insurance broker from the coastal town of Acre.

Right-leaning Israelis packed Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, where a rightwing Jew killed then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 for agreeing to trade land for an end to decades of conflict with the Palestinians.

They said that Barak, Rabin's self-styled disciple, is giving up too much in his quest for peace with the Palestinians.

A left-wing counter-protest is planned for next Saturday evening.

The crowd of mostly religious Jews, who believe that a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians will scuttle their biblical birthright, held banners reading, "Barak's not bringing peace," and "Dismantling settlements tears apart the nation."

"I call on Ehud Barak, the prime minister of the state of Israel, to come home immediately...You don't have a mandate," one speaker said.

Security was tight, with 1,500 police keeping order.

"We came here to deliver a straight message to Barak...that there's not going to be peace...because there's no such thing as peace with the Arabs...They only want to get all of Israel," said Yuval Levy, 31, from te city of Ramat Gan in central Israel.

Earlier in the day, Israeli police removed about 50 young Jewish settlers, many of them struggling angrily, from a hilltop on Sunday where they had erected a tent in protest at Prime Minister Ehud Barak's peace summit.

On a barren hilltop near the West Bank settlement of Efrat, police dragged away the settlers, most of them teenagers, who moved boulders and wrapped leather prayer bands around their heads and arms to pray at the site of the tent and tower.

The settlers clung to each other and kicked out at the police who eventually dragged them all from the site.

"We're afraid of what Barak is signing all the time," said one settler, speaking for the group. "What Barak is doing is just giving it all away."

Reuters

A young right-wing Jewish settler is forcibly removed from a protest on a hilltop near Efrat on the West Bank.

He said they hoped their action would encourage others to grab as much land as possible and start building.

"We came here to show that we won't give up so easily. We came here to protect our land, especially with what is happening in Washington," said Lavi, another 17-year-old settler who would only give his first name.

Barak and Arafat ended the first week of the summit to work toward a final peace deal resolving key issues in their conflict -- borders, Jerusalem's status, and what to do about Jewish settlements and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Some 170,000 Jews live in settlements scattered among the more than three million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Lavi, who was born in New York City, said he and his friends were trying to set an example for other settlers to "try to grab as much land as possible."

Both Barak and Arafat have pledged to put to a public referendum any deal that emerges from their negotiations.

Palestinians demonstrating Sunday in Nablus.

In the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, about 400 marchers marked the Camp David summit, which started under President Clinton's sponsorship last Tuesday.

They shouted slogans calling fr a sovereign Palestinian state, for Israel to evacuate all territories it occupied in 1967, and for the right of Palestinian refugees to return -- all of them demands of Palestinian negotiators.

Among the demonstrators were members of various Palestinian factions including supporters of the radical group Hamas, who shouted slogans calling for resistance and jihad [holy struggle] "as the only option to liberate Palestine."

Jamal Selim, a local Hamas leader, said: "We are worried the Palestinian leadership will concede too much at Camp David.

"We came here because we know that the Palestinian side is under pressure at Camp David, and we want to say that any concession by the Palestinian side does not represent us and we will reject it," he added.