Page 48 - Signs of the End

12 THE SIGNS OF THE END

Possibility of War

Wary Israelis, who do not trust the sincerity of the
neighboring Arab nations or the Palestinians, feel that the whole
peace experiment will collapse, and they will have to defend
themselves in another war. The difficulty is that, if such a war
comes to pass, Israel will have to defend itself from much less
secure military positions than they have now.

While a bare majority of Israelis appears to support the Labor
Party's government efforts with its peace agreement, a large
minority stridently oppose it. They are, for the most part, led by
the conservative Likud Party, with Benjamin Netanyahu as its
primary spokesman. We were able to interview several people
who reflected the opposition view.

YESHA
(Judea, Samaria and Gaza)

One of the most interesting interviews we had w as with a
woman who represented an organization called Yesha, which, as
we noted above, is a Hebrew acronym for the areas which Israel
occupied during the 1967 Six Day War; Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
They are primarily concerned with the problems of the Jewish
settlements in these occupied areas, which most of the world
calls the West Bank.

The Yesha organization is very worried that the Jewish
settlements are going to be abandoned and ruinously exposed to
the terrorist elements in the Arab villages. Currently, these
settlements are being protected and policed by the Israeli Army,
and they feel quite secure. But the peace agreement envisions
the contradictory development of the withdrawal of the Israeli
Army from the area, while at the same time continuing to be
responsible for the security of the Jewish settlements. Yesha is
afraid that there will be Arab attacks on the settlements and that
the Army will not be able to respond to problems from a
distance. They certainly don't think the Palestinian police will be
interested in arresting and prosecuting Arabs who attack Jewish
settlements.