BY HILDA CUZCO
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestine Authority leader Yasir Arafat agreed January 15 to a plan for the withdrawal of Tel Aviv's forces from 80 percent of the city of Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They also approved a "note of agreement" on other issues, including further Israeli troop redeployments in the West Bank. The agreement was announced by U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross at a 2:45 a.m. press conference; neither Netanyahu nor Arafat spoke.

Under previous accords, Tel Aviv was supposed to have pulled out of Hebron by March 1996. The Israeli regime didn't comply, however.

Negotiations on this and other unfulfilled aspects of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian accords resumed three months ago, following an explosion of Palestinian resistance to the occupation force. For three days last September, Palestinian security forces fired back at Israeli soldiers who were attacking protesters, for the first time ever.

The new accord is a shift for Netanyahu, of the right- wing Likud party. He waged his election campaign against former Labor prime minister Shimon Peres last year on a platform of opposition to any agreement with Palestinians or withdrawal from the occupied territories.

Hebron is a city of some 130,000 Palestinians and fewer than 500 Israeli settlers. Under the new agreement, the city will be divided into two sections, one to be patrolled by Palestinian police and the other by Israeli forces. "Joint mobile units" are to patrol the "commanding heights" overlooking the city, a neighborhood called Abu Sneineh. The Israeli soldiers in these units will be armed with M-16 rifles, while the Palestinian Authority officers will have Mini-Ingram submachine guns, which are less accurate and have a shorter range. The joint units may be deployed anywhere in the city by a joint District Coordination Office.

The 400 Palestinian police allowed under the agreement will be required to keep their rifles locked in their stations, to be used by special police units only after notifying Israeli officials. In addition, Palestinians are not to carry weapons in a "buffer zone" around the Israeli- controlled area without Israeli permission and are mandated to set up checkpoints to control Arabs entering the area, where some 30,000 Palestinians reside.

Many issues still not resolved
The "declaration of principles" reached in Oslo between Arafat and the former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 established stages for Palestinians to take control over occupied lands of Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The first was control over Gaza and Jericho; the second, which began in September 1995, called for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns in the West Bank, followed by the election of a Palestinian Legislative Council. A three-stage withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank over 18 months was to be completed by September 1997. A final round of talks over the status of Jerusalem, the Jewish settlements, and borders, was to finish the process by May 1999. Under that agreement, by that time there should be 85 percent Palestinian control over the West Bank. As of now, the Palestinian Authority has direct control over 7 percent of the area, and administrative control in other settlements of about 25 percent.

The "note of agreement" accompanying the new accord on Hebron lists the outstanding issues that were to have been addressed by the Oslo accord. Among other things, it states Tel Aviv will complete three troop withdrawals from the West Bank by mid-1998, though the Israeli regime says it will unilaterally decide the extent and location of the redeployments.

Washington brokered the new accord, with the aid of the Jordanian regime. U.S. envoy Ross, who headed the negotiations, had threatened to quit the talks when it reached a deadlock after Netanyahu refused to set a final deadline for withdrawal of the troops.

Palestinian leaders had initially rejected Washington's proposals stating that it breaks the Oslo interim accords of 1995. "Israel has proposed to end the last stage of further redeployments from the rest of the West Bank in 1999," Tayeb Abdel-Rahim, general secretary of the Palestinian presidency, told the Reuters news agency. "We rejected that, so to break the deadlock in the talks, Ross proposed as a compromise in mid-1998, and we rejected this as well." The Palestinians also demanded dates for the release of Palestinian prisoners, the right to open an airport in the Gaza strip, and a road allowing free passage between Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal days before reaching the accord, Netanyahu reiterated his intention to prevent Palestinians from having full sovereignty in their state. "The Palestinians should have self-government absent those powers normally associated with sovereignty that could threaten the state of Israel, such as control of airspace or control of underground water resources or the ability to make military pacts with regimes like Iran or Iraq," said the prime minister.

Though it is not legally required, Netanyahu is submitting the new accord to his 18-member cabinet for approval. Seven members of that body indicated they would vote against it, and five others stated they were undecided.

Struggle continues on the ground
Other right wing leaders have expressed their resistance to accept the agreements. Yisrael Harel, one of the founders of the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea and Samaria said, "I must tell you that the founding fathers of the Council have reached a point that it is better to bring down the government than let this government bring down our dreams and our beliefs," he told the New York Times. Leaders of the Zionist settlers met January 14 in Jerusalem to plan a protest campaign against the government over the accords.

Palestinians in Hebron have already started preparing for the withdrawal of the Zionist troops by painting over political graffiti on the storefront shutters in the downtown Bab Izawiya area of Hebron. Izzedine Sharabati, one of the Palestinians living in the area that will remain under Israeli control told reporters, "There will be no peace between us and the settlers. The only solution is to get them out of Hebron" altogether.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops bulldozed three metal shacks January 14 that were home to a Bedouin family as part of expanding a Jewish settlement. Some 45 families from the Jahalin Bedouin tribe have lived in the territory near Jerusalem for decades. The Jahalin, who have been ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court to leave in August, had been offered land near Abus Dis, a West Bank village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. They rejected the rocky area, as it is too close to a garbage dump. Around 2,000 Jahalin live in the Maale Adumim area, the largest West Bank settlement. Tens of thousands of other Jahalin live in Israeli- controlled areas.  
 
 
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