BY MAURICE WILLIAMS

After escalating protests by Palestinians in the occupied territories in August, a nervous Clinton administration and several Arab regimes pressed the new Israeli government to restart negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). On September 4, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office June 18, broke with pledges at the start of his election campaign seven months ago and met with PLO leader Yasir Arafat.

The meeting at Erez, an Israeli military camp on the northern border of the Gaza Strip, marked the formal reopening of negotiations between the Zionist regime and the PLO leadership. The talks will focus initially on Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank city of Hebron, opening a new Palestinian airport in Gaza, and allowing more Palestinian workers into Israel.

"Every minister in the government has to accept the principle of the continuation of the [peace] process," Netanyahu declared September 5, warning right-wingers in the Likud party leadership who raised a storm over the encounter with Arafat. "Otherwise they will not be ministers in the government."

At the meeting in Erez Netanyahu announced that Tel Aviv would now allow 50,000 Palestinians a day to enter Israel to work, up from 32,000 when the previous Israeli regime closed the West Bank and Gaza.

Some 65,000 Palestinians worked in Israel before Tel Aviv shut down the West Bank and Gaza borders after a series of suicide bombings by Arab militants in Israeli cities last spring.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Israeli foreign minister David Levy in London September 8, urging Tel Aviv to move more quickly to open the borders. "I'd like to see a substantial easing of the closure," said Christopher. He discussed with Levy the Israeli government's agreement to redeploy its troops from the center of Hebron as called for in the 1993 Oslo peace between Tel Aviv and the PLO.

Tensions began to escalate August 11 when Netanayahu announced a decision to lift a four-year freeze on Israeli settlements on occupied Arab land. Under the previous Labor Party government, the number of settlers in the West Bank and Gaza expanded by about 50 percent. There are 145,000 settlers living in the occupied territories now, among 2 million Palestinians.

On August 27 the regime announced approval of building a new neighborhood of 1,806 housing units at Kiryat Sefer, a settlement in the West Bank, bringing some 15,000 new Israeli settlers there.

Earlier that day, Israeli cops hoisted a bulldozer over the walls of Jerusalem's Old City and demolished a Palestinian day care center. The center was part of a project that had recently obtained a $30 million donation from the Canadian government. It included a center for the disabled and a home for the elderly.

"It [the building] was destroyed because it was built without a permit," said a spokeswoman for the Jerusalem city government. Enraged Palestinians marched in Jerusalem and organized a two- hour general strike following the demolition.

As these developments stoked Palestinian frustrations, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak threatened to cancel a Middle East economic conference set for Cairo in November. Officials from Washington, Tel Aviv, and Cairo met in Paris to ward off the cancellation.

`Declaration of war on the Palestinians'
The Zionist actions were among several that outraged many Palestinians. Infrastructure minister Ariel Sharon announced a plan to build two new roads for settlers. And the deputy housing minister Meir Porush described plans to incorporate nearby settlements into Jerusalem.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues in the Palestinian conflict. The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu declared in August "he saw no chance of reaching a negotiated agreement on Jerusalem, suggesting that Israel will lay its claim on the city."

"The continued violations and crimes committed by this new Israeli leadership means they are declaring war on the Palestinian people," said Arafat at an August 28 meeting of the elected Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, West Bank. "They are idiots to have started the Jerusalem battle. There will be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem. Netanyahu should know he is stupid to have started this battle."

Invoking the 1987-1993 intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of territory captured from Arabs, Arafat called a four-hour general strike that took place August 29. Two days later Arafat told residents at a refugee camp in Nablus, "I don't have a magic wand, but I have the children of the uprising."

Arafat's call for a general strike was "done to reinforce his credibility," noted London's Financial Times. "Few Palestinians believe the peace process is giving them anything more than two overcrowded Bantustans (one in the West Bank, the other in Gaza) under a puppet ruler."

In a warning to Netanyahu, the financial daily remarked that the prospect of a new Palestinian revolt "is not an encouraging scenario for foreign investors."  
 
 
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