The New York Times · 30 May 1993

CP-1993-041

ISRAEL SHIFTS VIEW ON OCCUPIED LANDS

Emergency Measure to Limit Movement of Arabs May Bring Permanent Split

By JOEL GREENBERG / Special to The New York Times

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, May 29 — When the Israeli Government sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip in late March, it was responding to Palestinian attacks that had killed 15 Israelis that month. Now, what began as an emergency measure is becoming a fixture, and changing entrenched Israeli attitudes toward the occupied territories.

The closing is the longest separation of Palestinians from Israelis since the two populations began mingling after Israel captured the territories in the 1967 war. It is a significant shift from the open-door policies set in the early years of the occupation by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

Now, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has promised that the days of free Arab movement into Israel are over. To some officials, the separation has sent a clear political signal that the current Labor-led Government, unlike its Likud-led predecessor, is not wedded to the occupied territories.

“The headline is: We’re on the way out,” said Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former military governor in the West Bank. “The closing indicates the direction this Government is going, which is separation from the territories through an interim period of Palestinian self-rule.” No Big Happy Family Gad Ben-Ari, Mr.

Rabin’s spokesman, said that another lesson of the last two months was that “there is no concept of a Greater Israel in which the Palestinians will live with us like one big happy family.”

“The relatively calm public reaction to the Government’s decision shows that the illusion of coexistence with the Palestinians, one inside the other, doesn’t sell,” he said.

The ban prevents most of the 1.8 million Palestinians in the territories from entering Israel and East Jerusalem, including about 100,000 laborers who cannot reach their jobs and whose absence has been keenly felt by Israeli farmers and contractors.

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