West Bank Protests End In Death
Two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank Friday during violent protests on the eve of a visit to the region by President Clinton, CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth reports.
Israeli troops opened fire Friday on hundreds of Palestinian stone-throwers, injuring dozens in a new outbreak of violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he would not budge from his demand that the Palestinians meet a list of conditions before he will carry out the West Bank troop withdrawal he promised in the Wye River agreement.
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Netanyahu suggested even Mr. Clinton would not make him change his mind.
"We do not change our opinions, our positions on account of this or that circumstance," Netanyahu said in an interview with Israeli television.
The new violence and Netanyahu's tough talk made it more likely that Mr. Clinton's three-day visit, intended to usher in the second stage of the Wye agreement, will not go smoothly and that the president will be drawn into the disputes between Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
A senior White House official said Mr. Clinton will not be deterred from making the trip.
"I do not think the president has had second thoughts for a minute about going on this trip," said National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.
President Clinton was due in Israel on Saturday. On Sunday in Jerusalem, he will meet with Netanyahu, address the Israeli people and light a candle for the first night of Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday that commemorates freedom.
The greatest potential for trouble rests in Monday's gathering of the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians' top decision-making body. The PNC is to "reaffirm" decisions by lesser bodies that void provisions in the PLO founding charter that call for Israel's destruction.
Netanyahu insists that the PNC abrogate the charter by vote, while the Palestinians say that under the Wye accord they are not required to do so. Instead, they say they will approve the charter changes by acclamation.
Netanyahu reiterated Friday that he will settle for nothing less than a vote. If Mr. Clinton validates the PNC decision despite Israeli misgivings, Netanyahu said he will not attend a three-way meeting with Arafat that the Americans are trying to arrange for immediately after the PNC session.
The Israeli leder also accused the Palestinian Authority of orchestrating West Bank riots to pressure Israel into releasing more Palestinian prisoners held for anti-Israeli activities.
Earlier this week, after the most widespread West Bank clashes in months, Netanyahu ordered troop commanders to take "a firm hand" against rioters.
Arafat's West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub, said Palestinian police would ensure there is no violence during the Clinton trip.
All week, Israelis and Palestinians have been trading rocks and bullets and charges of bad faith. Now, moderates on both sides are worried that once again hope is being hijacked by zealots.
When the peace process hits a roadblock, many blame extremists, a powerful group convinced that the dispute over this land cannot be settled by compromise.
In a Palestinian classroom on Friday, children chant, "Heaven is for Moslems and Hell is for the infidels."
Their teacher is 37-year-old Itaf Elian. Compromise is not part of her lesson plan.
There can never be co-existence, she says. The land - all of the land - must be returned to its original owners, the Palestinians.
All the land, she says, means all of Israel. Before she opened the kindergarten, Itaf spent ten years in an Israeli prison.
"I was supposed to blow myself up in a suicide attack. It was not terrorism. It's what I call defending one's own land and one's own rights," she told CBS News.
It was suicide bombings two years ago that brought the peace process to a halt. Then Netanyahu came to power on a promise to make Israel secure. However, to survive, he's had to court Israelis whose views about the land are as fundamental as that Palestinian school teacher's.
"God gave it to me!" says Eddy Dribben, a West Bank Rancher who came to Israel 45 years ago. "God gave it to the Jewish people. The land is mine."
Dribben has come to his own conclusions about co-existence.
"It's not a peace process when you give up your land, when you give up your gun and you give it to somebody who wants to kill you," Dribben says.
Danny Seidman makes his living on the middle ground: a Jewish lawyer with Arab clients, and a conviction the outcome here is clear, even if it's still no closer.
"We all know what the end result is going to be, and it's going to be an Israeli state and a Palestinian state side by side. The only question is the price," Seidman predicts.
The price may be high in bloodshed. But on the lines dividing Israelis and Palestinians, where extremists call the shots, there is no reassuring answer.