JERUSALEM — The year ended with Israel and the Palestinian Authority heading into a long-delayed Hebron agreement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent the year’s final hours shuttling between a Knesset debate on his 1997 state budget and working to gain greater backing for the Hebron deal from his 18-member Cabinet.
About one-third of the ministers threatened to oppose the redeployment, citing insufficient security arrangements for Hebron’s 450 Jewish settlers. But a senior adviser to Netanyahu remained confident the pullout would pass the Knesset.
“I have no doubt that he will have widespread support,” David Bar-Illan told Israel Radio.
In Hebron, home to 130,000 Palestinians, tensions remained high early in the week as security forces discovered a bomb and an explosive gas balloon near the city’s Jewish quarter.
Earlier, Israeli police arrested and subsequently released 15 Jewish settlers who tried to occupy a vacant building in Hebron’s market, adjacent to the Jewish quarter.
Meanwhile, a Jewish settler in Gaza on Monday shot dead a Palestinian who was believed to be trying to abduct residents of the settlement Kfar Darom.
A police investigation of the body of the Palestinian found no signs of any weapons or intention to carry out a terrorist attack.
Police said he was caught sneaking into the settlement by a resident who was following Israeli army regulations for shooting someone suspected of infiltration.
The last-minute flurry to conclude a Hebron deal came 10 months after Israeli troops were originally scheduled to redeploy from 80 percent of the volatile West Bank town, under the 1995 Interim Agreement signed by the previous Labor government and the Palestinians.
The transfer of most of Hebron to Palestinian self-rule was initially postponed by the Peres government after a series of suicide bombings in Israel.
It was further delayed when Netanyahu took office in June. He demanded more stringent security arrangements for the deal, and the Palestinians then countered with other demands.
Netanyahu said this week that the emerging Hebron deal had stronger security guarantees than the previous one.
Hebron is the last of seven major West Bank cities Israel agreed to hand over to Palestinian rule.
In negotiations this week, the sides were haggling over the three further Israeli redeployments in rural West Bank areas called for under the Interim Agreement.
Science Minister Ze’ev “Benny” Begin, a staunch opponent of the existing Israeli-Palestinian accords, called on Netanyahu to oppose any further redeployments at this stage.
Meanwhile, the Knesset on Monday defeated a no-confidence motion submitted by the right-wing Moledet Party in response to the emerging Hebron accord. Key coalition members from the Likud and the National Religious Party stayed away from the plenum rather than vote against the government.