October 27, 2001

`THERE ARE NO TOURISTS IN JERUSALEM'

Caption: The intifada has turned Jerusalem's Old City, normally bustling with huge crowds of tourists and locals, into a veritable ghost town. By Linda Seebach / News Staff

ONE THING CLEAR: PALESTINIANS' ONGOING INTIFADA HAS BEEN DISASTROUS FOR THEM

The taxicab driver who took me back to my Jerusalem hotel last Saturday was blunt.

``What are you doing here?'' he asked. ``There are no tourists in Jerusalem.''

Well, that was true enough. Our group of 17 journalists, on a trip to Israel and the West Bank Oct. 14-20 organized by the National Conference of Editorial Writers, had the tourist sites all to ourselves.

Our 300-room hotel had 29 guests, total. There was no one except us in the Garden of Gethsemane, no one in the vast echoing spaces of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, hardly anyone shopping for souvenirs in the cramped cobbled streets of Jerusalem's Old City.

``So sad,'' said one journalist who had been there several times before, before the second Palestinian intifada began a year ago and frightened the tourists away.

It was a working trip, I told the driver. We'd come to learn more about Israel and the Palestinians, and we'd met with Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, among many others.

``So who is right?'' he asked. ``The Palestinians or the Israelis?''

Wrong question. Or at least, it is a question with no answer except ``both'' and ``neither.''

If I came away with one lasting impression from this trip, it is that Israelis at every level, from tour guides to cabinet members, fully understand the ambiguities of the situation. And except at the highest level, Palestinians do not. For the local officials we met, everything is right or wrong, black or white, all or nothing. And their people slip closer to nothing with every passing day.

For our meeting with Arafat Oct. 18, we traveled from Jerusalem to Gaza, little more than an hour's drive but in a different world. Because of travel restrictions on Palestinians, Arafat and his cabinet ministers cannot move between Gaza and the West Bank; they hold cabinet meetings by phone.

Matters were unusually tense, because on Wednesday morning the Israeli minister of tourism, Rehavam Ze'evi, had been assassinated in the Jerusalem Hyatt, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had claimed responsibility.

At 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the Erez border crossing was dark and entirely deserted. ``Nobody comes at night because that's when the shooting starts,'' said the Israeli security guards who checked us through.

We walked the length of the crossing, five or six lanes wide to accommodate waiting vehicles and about a quarter-mile long. To either side were the back walls of low, silent buildings. On the Palestinian side a dozen soldiers in their blue-and-gray camouflage uniforms formed up in a convoy with the two vans Arafat sent for us and careered through the nearly empty streets with sirens blaring.

The people in the first van saw and heard gunfire, though whether directed at us (or by whom) was unclear. Arafat opened the meeting by expressing his regret that one of our cars had been shot at.

Since we'd seen Peres earlier in the day, the outlines of their disagreements were stark, yet there are big things they agree on. Both Arafat and his Isareli counterparts say they favor the creation of a Palestinian state along the lines proposed in ``the Mitchell report and the Tenet understandings'' (that's former Sen. George Mitchell and CIA Director George Tenet).

But every detail is disputed. For instance, Israeli President Moshe Katsav told us that Israeli security had provided the Palestinian Authority with a list of 108 suspected terrorists.

``They are big liars,'' Arafat said. ``They give me a list of only 10 persons and I have arrested four of them, these others are under order of arrest.''

Twice during the meeting, Arafat's phone rang, and he announced there had been further arrests. Once he put a minister from the West Bank on speakerphone -- in Arabic, of course -- so we could hear for ourselves.

``You are seeing history as it happens,'' he said.

Well, there aren't many facts on the ground, but names on a list? Arafat said he had begged President Clinton, during the Camp David talks, to send American observers, but (then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak had refused.

``I am making the same request to Bush. Send observers, and quickly,'' he said. But he predicted the Israeli government would refuse.

Peres had, in fact, said that the time was not right for observers.

``Observers can monitor an agreement,'' Peres said, ``they cannot monitor the absence of an agreement.''

But that argument is specious. With so much distrust and accusations of bad faith there are plenty of things for observers to do besides monitor agreements. The United States should accept Arafat's offer and indicate to Israel that welcoming observers would be wise.

Arafat emphatically distanced himself from Osama bin Laden.

``I state for the record, Osama bin Laden never supported Palestine. (His organization is) creating havoc all over the Arab world from Bahrain to Algeria. Their target is Arab governments.''

The United States had not asked the Palestinian Authority for any specific assistance, ``but I offered my humble means to aid the U.S.,'' he said.

``We cannot allow international terrorism to continue in any form, big or small,'' he said. ``You must continue actions against terrorist forces.''

America should take him up on his offer of help. As witnessed by his ability to round up members of the Popular Front when he wanted to, he has excellent intelligence.

And then we should thank him, genuinely, publicly and effusively.

The Israelis understand that if the United States is trying to build a coalition with Arab states, Israel need not take a highly prominent role.

An end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would reduce, not eliminate, the threat of terrorism, but its main benefit is to the parties directly involved.

Israel's existence as a democratic Jewish state would be at risk if it attempted to incorporate the Palestinian territories into Israel itself. Yet it can't indefinitely continue an occupation that can erupt into violence at any moment.

There's no doubt that the occupation on the ground is brutal. For our trip to the West Bank on Wednesday, Oct. 17, we switched to a Palestinian bus (with Jerusalem license plates). Our guides were two Israeli Arabs and an American-born Israeli professor who is active in the movement to end housing demolitions in the occupied territories.

Along the main road, access from side roads is blocked by 3-foot-high heaps of dirt; simple but effective. At each blocked intersection, cars and vans pile up on both sides where would-be travelers have to change vehicles. A 5-mile trip might require five changes, making it impossible for those with permits to work in Jerusalem to get to work, for factories to get raw materials or for farmers to take their crops to market. Tourism is nonexistent and unemployment is 50 percent or more.

Everyone was jittery, because at 7 that morning the Israeli minister of tourism, Rehavam Ze'evi, had been assassinated in the Jerusalem Hyatt, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had claimed responsibility.

We went first to Beit Jala, a Palestinian town that looks north across a steep valley to the Israeli town of Gilo, built on the part of the West Bank that was annexed into Jerusalem in 1980.

To the Israelis, Gilo is not a settlement, because it is in Israel. The Palestinians in Beit Jala, who have never recognized the annexation, say, ``the whole Israeli colony so-called `Gilo' was built on land confiscated by force and threats from the people of Beit Jala.''

Local officials harangued us about ``Jewish religious fanatics'' and claimed the Jews were teaching their children to honor Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Moslems in a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

Our escort of Palestinian soldiers watched us closely as we were taken to see where the Israeli tanks had entered a churchyard, where Israeli shells had destroyed an expensive new house, a school where Israeli soldiers had trashed an office. I'm not sure whether they were protecting us from the residents or the residents from us.

The Israeli tanks had moved in Oct. 5, church officials said, terrorizing the children hiding in the basement. According to the newspapers, the Israeli Defense Force troops had withdrawn from Beit Jala Oct. 15, just two days earlier.

Now they are back. On Thursday night, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Gilo and Friday morning Israeli troops returned.

The U.S. State Department sniffs that Israeli actions are ``not helpful'' and demands it withdraw. Do we expect Israel to allow its citizens to be fired upon with impunity?

When you pick a war with someone who has bigger guns than you do, as the Palestinians did with the second intifada, you don't get to whine when they shoot back. Whether Arafat commanded the intifada, or merely couldn't prevent it, it has been a disaster for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian economy.

They missed their best opportunity when Arafat turned down the deal offered by Barak. As the situation on the ground grows steadily worse, yesterday will always be a better opportunity than tomorrow.

(1555 words)