In the West Bank, both sides mistrust 'road map'

Mayor David Koplovitch, bald-headed, tieless, and garrulous, presides over this Israeli settlement of more than 1,800 people with the seen-it-before pragmatism of a veteran politician.

But Mr. Koplovitch is dismayed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, long the patron of Jewish settlement of Palestinian lands, has offered his qualified acceptance of a US-backed peace plan, known as the road map, that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within three years.

"That's been a shock," says the mayor, sitting in an office decorated with pictures of hard-line Israeli leaders, including three of Mr. Sharon. Implementation of the road map is likely to mean the end of Maale Efraim, which sits on a plateau in the West Bank that rises out of the Jordan Valley.

For years, leftist Israelis have said the Palestinians should establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza. "Now it comes from the man who took care of us, who brought us here," says Koplovitch, referring to Sharon. "He made a 180-degree turn - it's much more frightening."

Sharon's apparent pirouette notwith- standing, change does not come fast in the Middle East.

People on both sides who have been intimately involved in the past 32 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting - Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Palestinians in the divided city of Hebron - say they don't believe the road map will solve their conflict.

In a workshop in Hebron, glass blower Mohammed Hamdan, his face glistening from the heat of his furnace, places a delicate cone of purple-tinted glass into a cooling kiln. The light shade will outlast the road map, he says. "We don't have any hope - not in the road, not in the sea, not in the air."

The Palestinian skepticism seems derived from the conviction that while the road map may lead to some temporary easing of the strife, it will not address fundamental issues such as the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and the economic viability of any state that emerges from negotiations.

Among Israelis on the right, Sharon's embrace of the road map - however conditional - seems an act of conciliation in times that properly demand a resolute defense of their interests.

For an Israeli cabinet to approve the notion of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River "gave a prize to the terrorists," says Pinchas Vallerstein, the head of a regional council that administers 35 settlements. "It gives courage to the terrorists to continue," he says.

For politicians such as Koplovitch and Mr. Vallerstein, now is the time to plan demonstrations and otherwise use politics to ensure the failure of the road map.

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