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Jubilant Palestinians raise flag over Hebron

'This is the happiest day of my life'

January 17, 1997
Web posted at: 1:00 a.m. EST (0600 GMT)

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HEBRON, West Bank (CNN) -- A Palestinian waved his national flag from the roof of Israel's military headquarters in Hebron on Friday, signaling the start of Palestinian control over the city after 30 years of Israeli occupation.

The handover before dawn was brief. A long convoy of jeeps pulled out of the headquarters, and the Israeli and Palestinian commanders briefly shook hands at the gate.

Palestinian police rushed into the fortress-like building and flashed V-signs from the windows. "This is the happiest day of my life," one officer shouted.

Cheering Hebron residents set off fireworks. A young Palestinian waved the flag from the roof of the building. He then climbed up a tall antenna -- the flag on a stick tucked into the back of his pants -- to raise the banner at the highest possible point.

The withdrawal from the last West Bank city under Israeli occupation -- worked out in months of tortuous negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians -- is the first tangible act by Benjamin Netanyahu's government toward making peace with the Palestinians.

Pullout approved late Thursday

 knesset

Israel's parliament approved the withdrawal by an 87-17 vote late Thursday, after an all-day debate in which Netanyahu faced attacks from members of his own Likud Party. They felt betrayed by his acquiescence to a peace process he long opposed.

Netanyahu said the Hebron pullback should be completed before the Jewish Sabbath begins Friday night. "We will not permit desecration of the Sabbath," he said. "If there is a problem, we will stop."

By the end of the pullback, 400 Palestinian police will be deployed in 80 percent of Hebron, while Israeli troops will patrol the downtown area, where 500 Jewish settlers live in five heavily fortified enclaves. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Palestinians live in the area that will remain under Israeli control.

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In addition to the Hebron withdrawal, the agreement calls for Israel to hand over a large part of the West Bank countryside to the Palestinians by mid-1998. The three-stage withdrawal from the rural areas is to begin the first week of March.

Netanyahu emphasized Thursday that Israeli troops will remain in the parts of Hebron where Jewish settlers live.

"We are not leaving Hebron. We are redeploying in part of it," he said. "We are remaining in all the parts of the city where the Jewish community existed and exists and will continue to exist. ... There will not be Palestinian police with guns near the Jewish areas."

This followed Netanyahu being bitterly attacked by members of his own Likud Party.

"We have no say in anything," legislator Reuven Rivlin said. "What will we do if the Palestinians declare a state? How can we even stop them?"

Netanyahu's opponent defends him

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    • Foreign Minister David Levy, who has often disagreed with Netanyahu, defended him Thursday.

    "What is the alternative?" Levy shouted. "There is no alternative. The only alternative you can give is stalemate."

    Netanyahu called the agreement "better, safer and more responsible" than the one the Palestinians signed with his predecessors.

    Unlike his predecessors in the Labor Party, he said he wanted the Jews who live in the city of more than 150,000 and the 6,000 Israelis who live in the Kiryat Arba settlement just outside the city, to remain.

    In a sign of how heated the controversy was, Cabinet members who approved the agreement Wednesday were assigned special bodyguards on Thursday. Israeli Science Minister Benny Begin, son of the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, resigned from the Cabinet in protest after its vote.

    Most Israelis support withdrawal

    According to a survey published Thursday in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, 67 percent of 504 Israelis polled were satisfied with the new peace agreements, while 25 percent said they were not. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

    Noting that Israelis would continue to control the center of the city where 20,000 Palestinians live, spokesmen for the group Hamas pledged "continued resistance and jihad (holy war) against the Zionist occupation."

    Underscoring the tense atmosphere, Palestinian police commander Brig. Gen. Abdul Fatah Guyadi appealed to Palestinians in Hebron not to shoot into the air in jubilation for fear it could touch off violence.

    "We cannot make any mistakes," he said. "Hebron won't tolerate any mistakes -- from our side or theirs -- because it will be the end of the deal."

    Palestinians living near the military headquarters were euphoric as they watched the Israelis prepare to leave.

    "We welcome Arafat," said 12-year-old Samer Karama, who was holding a picture of Arafat and Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque. "God bless him. His coming is an end of the occupation."

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

     
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