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Jonathan Braude

''WE have to stop the peace process,'' said Moosa Elqaq, waving his cigarette angrily in a doorway in the Old City of Jerusalem.

  ''There can be no more talks until the Israelis withdraw completely to the borders as they were before 1967. And that includes Jerusalem. We must break the whole peace process down.

  ''We're dealing with the head of a mafia here, [Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin gave orders to kill people inside the mosque,'' the Palestinian businessman said, repeating a barely credible conspiracy theory gaining currency among Arabs.

  In one morning, months of preparation and negotiation seem to have been undone. The massacre in Hebron has raised old angers and hatreds to a new pitch.

  Arabs and Jews alike expect a new upsurge in the Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, which seems to have been running out of steam even before Israel's initial talks with the Palestine Liberation Organisation became public.

  Palestinians, who last Thursday were ready to give the peace process a grudging chance, now demand an end to all talks and speak of an explosion in the occupied territories.

  And while Mr Rabin has said he is ''ashamed as an Israeli, that a Jewish Israeli had committed this crime'', a minority is more equivocal.

  ''If you want to know what I think, Goldstein did no more than they do to us every day,'' said a driver who called himself Ezra Taxi.

  ''Every day they kill Jews. Only last week they murdered a pregnant woman. Shot her in her car. What had she done to them, poor thing.

  ''Where was the outcry from you people then? The world only starts crying when Arabs get killed.''   So did Ezra Taxi think Baruch Goldstein had done Israel a favour, by murdering at least 45 Arabs and injuring many more on a day holy to both Jews and Muslims?   ''At this stage in our history, perhaps not,'' he admitted. ''But believe me. I feel no sympathy.''   Most Israelis were revolted and shocked by the massacre.

  That a devout Jew had emptied four magazines - 108 bullets - into the mosque in the Muslim fast of Ramadan and the Jewish festival of Purim, supposedly a time of rejoicing and levity, was lost on no one.

  Many Israelis were genuinely heartened when the Government announced Arab victims of Jewish violence would be compensated just as the families of Jewish victims of Arab terror have been.

  For them, watching Goldstein's fellow settlers praising him on television as an angel, was a disgusting spectacle.

  ''They shouldn't show this,'' shouted Ya'akov Haiim, 41, after one settler in religious garb said Goldstein's act was an action suitable for Purim - which celebrates successful Jewish resistance against ancient Persian oppression.

  Mr Haiim, whose first reaction to the killings was to exclaim ''this madman has killed the peace process'', is one of many Israelis from all backgrounds who believe the state should be ready to give even the most strategically sensitive territories for the sake of peace.

  But there is a real undercurrent of resentment among Jews that the Government is not doing enough for their security.

  The years of the Intifada have shown the world the conditions in which Arabs have been living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Few reports point out that Israelis, who 10 years ago used to feel safe walking the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, well within the pre-1967 borders, now fear terrorist attacks when they venture outdoors.

  Nowadays, many men automatically carry a pistol for self-defence. In the territories, even more Jews carry guns, most of them displayed openly to intimidate or dissuade Arab attacks.

   Arabs, however, believe it is the Jews who should be disarmed, arguing that Palestinians are not allowed to walk around with guns in the same way.

   Now, on both sides, the extremists have found their voice again.

  The tensions and violence that have erupted since the massacre were precisely what Goldstein was trying to achieve. He made it clear in a letter before his death he was planning an act that would stop the talks.

  That, according to the Government, is precisely why the peace process should continue. Giving in to violence, they argue, is to provoke more violence.

  For the Palestinians, the massacre is a signal that Israel is not serious about peace, and that the Government, the Army and even the President of the United States were accomplices in Goldstein's crime.

   If Mr Arafat continues with the peace talks now, he will lose whatever remaining credibility he still has with the disaffected residents of the territories, many of whom argue he is making a deal over their heads.

  Hassan Said, another Old City Palestinian, put it simply: ''Arafat sold out. Everyone hates him now.'' 



Fury simmers in massacre aftermath