It could have been 1987, the early days of the Palestinian intifadeh, all over again. In the dusty, barricaded streets of the Gaza Strip, steel-helmeted Israeli troops played deadly hide-and-seek with bands of rock-throwing Palestinian youths. Three knife-wielding men set upon Israeli settlers, who shot two of the attackers, one fatally. Riots swept through occupied West Bank towns; soldiers fired tear gas and bullets that killed eight Arabs and wounded dozens. The hard-line Islamic movement Hamas called on Arabs to take revenge on Israelis for the massacre of at least 30 Palestinians in Hebron two weeks ago. The Israeli government poured in troops to enforce a 24-hour curfew and sealed off the occupied territories with roadblocks, effectively confining most Palestinians to their homes. "The purpose of the curfews," said Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, "is to prevent a total uprising."
Israeli soldiers inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs were scrubbing away the pools of blood, but it will not be so easy to clean up the political wreckage of the Hebron massacre. Talk of peace has been thrust aside by something close to urban warfare in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are demanding the disarmament and dismantling of the Jewish settlements before they return to the negotiations. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, no lover of the settlements, is under deeply conflicting political pressures about how to respond, and many feel he has failed to do enough. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat will be damned by his own people if he does resume talks, and damned by history if he does not. When Dr. Baruch Goldstein walked into the Hebron shrine and opened fire on rows of kneeling worshippers, his intention was not just to kill Arabs but also to destroy the peace process that promised to end decades of bloody struggle over the occupied territories. If a way cannot be found to allow both sides to fulfill the pledge they made on the White House lawn last September, Goldstein will have succeeded.
Only 48 hours before the Kiryat Arba settler pulled the trigger on his Galil assault rifle, P.L.O. negotiator Nabil Shaath and Israeli Major General Amnon Shahak had reached agreement in Cairo on specific steps to carry out the scheduled withdrawal of Israel's military forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. On March 11, according to their plan, Israel would release 3,000 Palestinian prisoners. On March 17, troops would begin to pull out of the Gaza Strip and Jericho. By April 12, one day before the original deadline set last September, the Israeli withdrawal from those first test-case areas for Palestinian self-rule would be completed.