JERUSALEM — When Israel and the Palestinians finally reached an agreement on Hebron six months ago, Ariel Sharon said it would not work.
The hard-line Likud Party veteran suggested an alternative plan that would have left a smaller area in the West Bank town under Israeli control, but would have created a wider buffer zone between the Jewish and Palestinian areas.
After several months of tense quiet after Israel transferred control over most of the city, Hebron — where Jews and Palestinians live in close proximity — has burst into a mini-war.
For the past several weeks, Palestinian protesters have hurled rocks, explosive charges and gasoline bombs at the Jewish enclave. Israeli soldiers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Observers see the almost-daily violence as a sign of what could happen throughout the territories as the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace lies all but shattered.
Analysts are also wondering whether the Hebron pact — and indeed, the entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process — was anything more than a wish set down in writing.
For one thing, despite reports that security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians had resumed, there was no sign of it in Hebron. Indeed, while Palestinian police tried to calm the riots when they erupted last month, the policemen had vanished from the streets by last week.
Israeli undercover agents disguised as Palestinians stepped in, crossing over to the Arab sections to arrest some protesters. Jibril Rajoub, the head of Palestinian security in the West Bank, said over the weekend that any Israeli agent found operating in Palestinian-held areas would be killed.
Palestinians blame the violence on anti-Islamic provocations by Jewish settlers, as well as on the deadlocked negotiations.
But Israel maintains that the Palestinian Authority sparked the riots without reason and has orchestrated their intensity at will.
“They can be put to an end within minutes” by the Palestinian leadership, said Maj. Gen. Gabi Offir, commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Indeed, the rioting subsided earlier this week, after heavy clashes last week left two Israeli soldiers and dozens of Palestinians injured.
Under the long-awaited agreement signed in January, some 80 percent of Hebron was transferred to Palestinian self-rule. Israel retained control over the area where about 450 Jewish settlers live, as well as over the city’s Jewish holy sites.
Hebron was the last of the Palestinian cities Israel relinquished as part of its overall peace accords with the Palestinians, but it was the only one that has a Jewish community.
With Israeli-Palestinian talks suspended since March, Israeli security experts have been warning that the territories were on the verge of exploding.
And on June 27, a young Israeli woman single-handedly escalated the violence. Tatyana Suskin, 25, who immigrated from Russia six years ago, went to Hebron to hang posters depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed as a pig stepping on the Koran, Islam’s holy book.
The posters stirred angry reactions from Hebron to Tehran. Israeli President Ezer Weizman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also condemned the posters. But Palestinian leaders ignored the official condemnations and the fact that they were the work of a lone extremist.
Hasan Tahboub, the Palestinian minister of religion, called for a campaign against “hateful settlers who have no respect for human beings.”
Suskin, who was arrested June 28 while throwing stones at Palestinian cars in Hebron, lives in Jerusalem with her boyfriend, Yehuda Shomron, also a Russian immigrant.
Both identify with the outlawed Kach movement of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the territories.
Suskin faces charges of committing a racist act, harming religious sensitivities and supporting a terrorist group.
She had confronted police several times in the past with minor misdemeanors, such as riding a bus with a forged monthly ticket, and provoking Muslim guards on the Temple Mount by wearing a Kach T-shirt.
It seems that Suskin acted alone in Hebron. She told journalists she did not care about worldwide reactions to her action.
Meanwhile, another anti-Islamic incident in Hebron threatened what the Arab media were calling a religious war in the city that is a stronghold of the fundamentalist Hamas group.
The Al-Yaakubiya girls’ school was vandalized over the weekend, and amid the demolished furniture were torn copies of the Koran.
Israeli soldiers often use part of the Hebron school as a base of operations, and Rajoub did not hesitate to declare that the Israel Defense Force was responsible for the vandalism. Israel denied Monday that any of its soldiers were involved.
What remained unclear was how long the violence would continue — and how far it would spread.