Chastened Netanyahu treads more carefully

THE Arab reaction to last night's Israeli announcement of a new Jewish housing development at Har Homah on the south east edge of Jerusalem was predictably impassioned.

Syrian state media called the Israeli move "a declaration of war on the Arabs and on peace". The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, protested at the "Judaisation" of the city where he, too, one day intends to establish his capital.

Morocco's King Hassan II, hosting Mr Arafat on a visit to Rabat, backed the Palestinian leader in calling for an urgent conference of the 14 member Jerusalem Committee that oversees Islamic and Arab interests in the city.

But behind the outraged protests there is a sense that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has learned the lessons of previous violent confrontations, and that the anger, this time, may not explode into furious and fatal confrontation.

Last September, Mr Netanyahu ignored his security advisers and opened a second entrance to an archaeological tunnel that runs alongside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. Within hours, Palestinians were demonstrating, then rioting, across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. After several days of fighting, 70 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers lay dead. And Mr Netanyahu had learned to take his advisers more seriously.

The Prime Minister has been in a difficult bind over Homah. On the one hand, the Americans and Europeans have been urging him to scrap or at least delay the project. And the security aides, again, have been highlighting the potential for an explosion of protest. But his partners in government have been signalling that they would not tolerate what, they would consider a further capitulation.

Add to that the tact that two thirds of the Har Homah area is land expropriated from Jewish owners rather than Arabs, that it is within territory defined by Israel as sovereign Jerusalem, and that much of the opposition Labour party is backing the project, and Mr Netanyahu has felt himself on pretty solid domestic ground in pushing ahead.

The difference in approach this time, as compared with the tunnel, is that the Prime Minister has both sweetened the pill and carefully selected the timing. Early next month, Israel is set to carry out the first of three new West Bank withdrawals - as provided for in the January Hebron accord.

The Palestinians had been expecting a minuscule land handover. But in quiet contacts these last few days, it now appears Mr Netanyahu has pledged to transfer some 8 per cent of the remaining occupied territory in the West Bank to Mr Arafat's control - a far more generous pull out than had been anticipated.

What's more, also next month, Mr Arafat is set to visit Washington for talks with President Clinton. The Palestinian leader, Mr Netanyahu is doubtless betting, would hardly wish to jeopardise that visit, and the deepening of ties with the Clinton administration it is likely to bring, by arriving in the midst of yet another round of ugly Middle East fighting.

Although he warned yesterday that Israel "will not tolerate violence" from the Palestinians in response to the Hnr Homah decision, most of what Mr Netanyahu had to say, at a press conference convened specially for the Arab media corps in Israel, was conciliatory.

He stressed his commitment to the peace process, claimed that Har Homah did not constitute a violation of the Oslo accords, and highlighted the simultaneous ministerial approval of building in 10 Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.

There is, of course, no way of knowing for certain whether yesterday's decision will indeed pass off with a minimum of protest on the ground. But there is no doubting the change in approach by Mr Netanyahu. And Mr Arafat may well feel inclined to reflect that the Har Homah development is still being contested in the Israeli Supreme Court. It may be weeks, possibly even months, before the bulldozers arrive - plenty of time yet for the Palestinians to make their anger felt.