Leiter is executive director of the YESHA Council’s foreign desk. YESHA is the Hebrew acronym for Judea and Samaria — the biblical terms for the West Bank — and Gaza.
Even if the Netanyahu government agrees to redeploy Israeli troops in Hebron, Leiter said, the city’s 450 Jews will not resort to threatened violence in efforts to prevent a pullback.
“That’s all talk,” he said.
And even if some Hebron Jews stage takeovers of Arab buildings in protest, Leiter said, the effect would only be temporary.
“The army will remove them. I’ve been in hundreds of demonstrations and sit-ins. So what? The army will pull you out in five minutes. It’s meaningless.”
Still, Leiter cannot rule out the possibility of a “deranged” individual acting alone: This is the label he uses for assassin Yigal Amir and for Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994.
“When you’re dealing with deranged people, I don’t know if anything pragmatic will prevent them,” he said.
Yet contrary to the typical media image of radical Jewish settlers who are now turning against Netanyahu, Leiter offered an upbeat assessment of the prime minister’s handling of the Oslo Accords so far.
“I would be happiest if there would be no Oslo,” said Leiter, who lives in the West Bank community of Eli. “But under the circumstances, we have to get the best deal we can. I am happy we have a prime minister who is negotiating tough with [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat.”
One of Netanyahu’s only mistakes so far, Leiter said, has been allowing six months to pass without beginning any new construction in West Bank Jewish settlements. Despite all the focus on the new government’s plans to expand Jewish areas, Leiter said, nothing has actually happened.
He blames international pressure on Netanyahu for the delay.
By getting criticism but no new construction, “we get the worst of all worlds,” said Leiter, whose Bay Area stopovers included Stanford Hillel, Palo Alto Orthodox Minyan and San Francisco’s Hebrew Academy.
Leiter acknowledges that all of the West Bank’s 150,000 Jews do not share his positive view of the prime minister.
“Some of my colleagues make the mistake of trying to prove their loyalty to YESHA by attacking the prime minister, by attacking anybody who is not intent on immediately scrapping Oslo,” Leiter said. “I think they’re ignoring the basic politic.”