Acrimony over Hebron gives victory to Arafat

IF and when the Israelis and the Palestinians finally get around to signing their farcically delayed deal on Hebron, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, will doubtless trumpet the accord as a towering achievement - a vast improvement on the original version of the agreement signed in September 1995 by the late, much missed prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

He will attempt to highlight the differences between his deal and Mr Rabin's the buffer zones" he has ensured will be designated between Jewish settler buildings in the city and their Palestinian neighbours, the restrictions on the height of Palestinian homes overlooking those settler enclaves, the limitations on the weapons to be carried by the Palestinian policemen replacing Israeli troops in four fifths of the city.

It is equally certain that he will skate over the stark and all consuming flaw in the new accord - that, unlike the Rabin Arafat original, this deal was hammered out only under intense US pressure, based not on mutual trust and goodwill but on grudging, reluctant compromise.

Mr Netanyahu will tell the world that he has been vindicated, that his insistence on renegotiating the deal has ensured better security for Hebron's 500 Jews, has ensured too that the Palestinians know who's boss, that his government unlike its moderate Labour predecessor drives a hard bargain, doesn't capitulate at the first hint of opposition.

BUT for all the Israeli Prime Minister's impressive rhetorical skills, it is hard to envisage many people believing him. Among the backers of the peace process on both sides there is only a sense of regret - at the months lost in pointless bickering, and at the collapse of confidence in the field, never seen more clearly than in the vicious Israeli Palestinian street battles that erupted throughout the occupied territories last September, after Mr Netanyahu opened a new entrance at the infamous archaeological tunnel alongside Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City.

Curiously, among the leaders of the West Bank Jewish settlement movement a not dissimilar sense of regret is privately expressed. Settler leaders feel Mr Netanyahu has betrayed them by following a peace process he had always opposed. But if he was going to pursue it, they acknowledge, it would probably have been in their interests to do so on a more friendly, less adversarial basis with the Palestinians.

Whatever Mr Netanyahu may claim, the redrawn Hebron deal is essentially the same as the previous version. And if anyone can claim any kind of victory from the months of snail paced renegotiation, it is the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat. Had Mr Netanyahu merely implemented the deal he inherited last June, and pulled Israel's troops out in grim faced acceptance of his obligation to honour the accord, the settlers could hardly have complained. And more significantly, the Prime Minister could have cheerfully continued the Rabin era tradition of missing every other future deadline governing the next phases of the peace process.

In reopening the accords, however, Mr Netanyahu gave Mr Arafat an opportunity - which he seized with alacrity. The new deal now covers not only Hebron, but three further Israeli West Bank redeployments. And Mr Arafat has apparently persuaded the Clinton administration to give its own guarantees that these redeployments will be completed by the middle of next year.

The Oslo peace framework is vague about these redeployments, but few would argue that by the time they are completed, Mr Arafat will be in control of most of the West Bank - and well on the way to the independent Palestinian statehood he has always sought and Mr Netanyahu has always pledged to oppose.

In the Israeli media, which have followed the ins and outs of the negotiations obsessively, Mr Netanyahu's handling of the Hebron talks is routinely castigated as inept. In fact, almost his every move since coming to power has attracted furious press criticism - a remarkable phenomenon given the previously fairly objective stance of the local tabloids in particular.

The Prime Minister's domestic life has been ridiculed, the chaotic running of his office mocked, a string of unfortunate appointments lambasted. Just this week, while most eyes were fixed on the "will they sign / won't they sign Hebron?" saga, Mr Netanyahu tried to force through the appointment of a patently unsuitable candidate as Attorney General, the government's top legal adviser. Within 12 hours of taking up the post the hapless appointee - a Likud party activist and reportedly a high-stakes gambler - was forced to resign.

THE significance of this unstinting criticism, and especially of the latest affair of the Attorney General, is that it has helped to destroy support for Mr Netanyahu within his own cabinet and coalition. Far from being feared or respected, he is laughed at, semi openly, by his own party Knesset members. And some of his ministers, who voted their approval for the new Attorney General on the Prime Minister's personal assurance, are now feeling angry and humiliated as well.

All of which brings us to the final flaw in Mr Netanyahu's Hebron renegotiation thinking. So long have the talks dragged on, so effective has been the settler lobby, and so disillusioned have some of his ministers become with his leadership, that he can no longer guarantee overwhelming cabinet backing for the accord.

He almost certainly will secure a narrow majority, but it will require considerable arm twisting and cajoling. And so, while Mr Arafat will be able to tell his people the new accord clears the way to Palestinian statehood, Mr Netanyahu will emerge from these unnecessary months of diplomatic hardball under fire from some of his own bedrock supporters, and heading a divided ministerial team - hardly the result he anticipated when he dragged Mr Arafat back to the negotiating table.