Chou-en-Iai, China's prime minister for decades, was extremely
worried by the-then widely acclaimed detente of the late
sixties/early seventies. He feared that American-Soviet collusion
might result in a world condominium. In his own inimitable way, he
warned: "Detente is like a bed, but where each makes a different
dream." Today the same could be said of the Middle East peace
process. Everybody is in favor of peace, of course. Majorities in
each constituency support the peace process, but, like in
Chou-en-lai's detente, each player has a different finality in
mind, where visions are competing and incompatible and the dreams
of one side can be a nightmare for others.
When Labor was still in power in Israel, I often repeated that it
seemed to me that in this peace process, we, the Palestinians, were
interested in peace but that the Israeli side seemed more
interested in the process itself. Today, with Binyamin Netanyahu
and the Likud presiding over an extreme right-wing coalition, I
believe that we neither have peace nor do we have a process
anymore.
Expectations
In any negotiation, the nature of the forum, and the nature and the
number of the participants, determine the possible outcome. Instead
of an "International Conference" under UN auspices, we all were
invited to a "Peace Conference" with the USA and the rapidly
vanishing USSR as co-sponsors. The UN was expected to be and to
remain a silent observer. The European Community that hoped - and
the Arabs supported that aspiration - to be a co-sponsor with a
decisive role, was relegated to a financial-economic one on the
margin of the geo-strategic sphere, jealously kept as the domain of
the Americans.
As we all remember, the Palestinians were offered to be half a
delegation, representing half the people and seeking half a
solution. On the pretext that the Israeli government would not
negotiate with the PLO and that it was also opposed to the
emergence of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians were offered to
sit in a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The Palestinian
participants were supposed to be recruited from the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip only, but no Jerusalem residents or diaspora
Palestinians or PLO officials could be admitted to the negotiating
room. The fact that it was the PLO leadership which selected the
Palestinian negotiators and gave them legitimacy and instructions
made former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban say: "Whether he
likes it or not, Shamir is negotiating with the PLO, but he prefers
to adopt the ostrich posture which is neither a comfortable nor an
elegant posture." By seeking half a solution, I mean that, unlike
the other tracks, we were expected to negotiate a five-year interim
transitional period of Palestinian self-government on the road to
final status. The more difficult issues - Jerusalem, the refugees,
the settlements, boundaries and sovereignty - were deferred to a
second phase, starting no later than the beginning of the third
year.
The Palestinian attitude was then unreasonably reasonable because
peace, and peace now, corresponds to our enlightened national
interest. Any loss of time is extremely detrimental to us. We are
the ones whose land is being confiscated, whose water is being
plundered, whose individuals are being deported, whose houses are
being demolished, whose trees are being uprooted, whose
universities and schools are being closed, whose economy is being
strangulated. Yet we went to Madrid with great expectations, in
spite of all the flawed and humiliating conditions, since we were
led to believe that this was the only game in town. From March to
October 1991, we carried all the burden of momentum, all the burden
of flexibility, because we wanted to give peace a chance, hoping
that Madrid would trigger a snowball process.
On the other hand, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir had to be
dragged reluctantly and grudgingly to the negotiating table. He had
difficulties understanding and adhering to the principles of "land
for peace," the basis and foundation of the entire exercise, and
his political "generosity" and "magnanimity" never went beyond
offering "peace for peace" and the perpetuation of the territorial
status quo. In Madrid he looked as though he had been ambushed and
trapped. He sounded anachronistic and out of place. Months later,
in June 1992, Madrid resulted in the electoral Waterloo for Shamir
who, back in opposition, admitted that he had intended to play
delaying tactics at the negotiating table for 10 years, while
accelerating settlement-building and accomplished facts on the
ground creating, thus, an irreversible situation that even the
peace process would not overcome.
After Madrid
From Madrid, the bilateral talks moved to Washington and the
multilateral talks (arms control, economic development and
integration, water, environment and refugees) literally to the four
comers of the world. In Washington, resorting to "corridor
diplomacy," the Palestinian team succeeded in imposing an Israeli
recognition of the gradual decoupling of the Jordanian and
Palestinian tracks while the composition of the different layers of
the Palestinian team - PLO coordinators, diaspora advisors,
Jerusalem spokespersons - reflected more and more the different
categories of Palestinians that Israel wanted to see
excluded.
But in Washington, the talks quickly stagnated and the change of
Israeli government, from Likud to Labor, did nothing to
reinvigorate them. Israel amused itself, but not the others, by
sometimes giving the semblance of an impression that it might shift
the emphasis from the Palestinian to the Syrian track.
In the meantime, the level of support among public opinion started
eroding seriously. In Palestine, on their return from Madrid, the
Palestinian team were welcomed by massive and spontaneous
demonstrations where a new subversive weapon - the olive branch -
was brandished proudly. But, by now, disenchantment and skepticism
prevailed and radicalism was again on the rise.
It was at this juncture that a secret channel was opened in Oslo by
the Israeli government and the PLO and when, in August 1993, the
breakthrough was announced, it took almost everybody by surprise,
including the official negotiators in Washington.
The Declaration of Principles (DOP) agreed upon in Oslo was signed
on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, with the world as
witness. Even the reluctant hand extended by Yitzhak Rabin, after
an encouraging nod from Bill Clinton, to Yasser Arafat's
enthusiastic availability did not ruin the mood or alter the
general perception that history was in the making. It must be said
here that Israel was finally negotiating with the Palestinian
National Movement as such, representing the totality of the people
as an indivisible unit.
Yet the magic, the charm were of short duration. Again at the
negotiating table in Taba, the Palestinians were stunned to
discover that Israel intended to keep 40 percent of the Gaza Strip
during the interim period. After laborious negotiations, only 28
percent remained under Israel's exclusive control and those were 28
percent too many, knowing the Palestinian need for every single
square inch in overcrowded Gaza. Also, the Israelis interpreted the
"Jericho area" as far beneath Palestinian expectations. Again,
"constructive ambiguities" in diplomacy proved to be a dangerous
recipe.
Israel should be aware that redeployment in Gaza was a Palestinian
gift to Israel, and not the other way round, bearing in mind how
unmanageable Gaza was for the occupying authorities. For the
Palestinians, the test of Oslo and its credibility resided in
further redeployment in the West Bank. If the process became
static, the very pillars of its legitimacy would be seriously
shaken. Yet Rabin was in no hurry, repeating that "dates are not
sacred" even though, in the often unsatisfactory Oslo agreement,
the only precise area was the calendar of events. I believed and
often repeated then that "a territory that was occupied in 1967 in
less than six days, could also be evacuated in less than six days
so that Mr. Rabin could rest on the seventh."
The assassination of Rabin by a fanatic right-winger sent shock
waves through Israeli society. Shimon Peres, his successor, decided
to move fast towards redeployment in the urban centers of the West
Bank so that the Palestinians could go ahead with their
presidential and legislative elections. Yasser Arafat had, in the
meantime, obtained from the Islamic tendencies several months of an
unproclaimed cease-fire. During this period, it was the Israeli
authorities and their secret services who were provoking the
Islamists and not the Islamists provoking Israel. Dr. Fathi
Shikaki, leader of the Islamic Jihad, was assassinated in Malta in
October 1995 and Yehya Ayyash was blown up by telephone in Gaza
early in January 1996, in Palestinian territory and in the midst of
an election campaign.
Retaliation was to be predicted and, as expected, came in March
1996 both in West Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv. Israel immediately
resorted to its customary policy of closures and collective
punishment that totally crippled Palestinian society and suffocated
Palestinian economy. The date of the Israeli elections having been
already advanced to May 1996, Peres decided to out-Likud the Likud
in his campaign message to the extent that observers commented that
"with a dove like that who needs hawks, with a left like that who
needs a right?" He even waged an unnecessary war on Lebanon and
then succeeded in failing again in the Knesset elections.
Moment of Truth
Today, there is a tendency to view the Labor-led era with
nostalgia. In a way, this is simply the prolongation of the
undeserved praise and positive media coverage Labor usually
received, whether right or wrong. History will recall that when
Netanyahu assumed power, the Palestinian side already had 34
legitimate grievances on agreed-upon issues that were left
unimplemented during the interim period: freedom of movement for
people and goods, the management of the passages to Jordan and
Egypt, and through them to our Arab hinterland; the safe passage -
the corridor - linking the Gaza Strip to the West Bank; the port;
the airport; and the freeze on settlement building. But now
Netanyahu, carried away by his victory, his ideological
inclinations, his demagogic promises and a successful first trip to
Washington, where senators and congressmen shamelessly gave him
several standing ovations, simply declared war on the peace process
which he views as the continuation of war but by other means. The
battle for Jerusalem was immediately waged, first with the opening
of a controversial tunnel, and then by the bulldozers in Jabal Abu
Ghneirn (liar liama). The mounting pressures, local and
international, resulting from the "tunnel crisis" forced Netanyahu
to implement an 80-percent redeployment in Hebron city. This was
applauded, maybe too enthusiastically as an indication that the
pragmatic Netanyahu was prevailing on his more ideological nature.
For the first time, the Likud was negotiating with the PLO and the
Likud was seen withdrawing within the West Bank. That victory was
short-lived since he immediately rewarded or compensated his
indispensable extreme right-wing coalition partners with bulldozers
in Jabal Abu Ghneim. The "settlement" there would be innocently
repackaged as a "suburb." A week earlier, few Israelis had ever
heard of ''Har Homa." Now, abandoning the site became tantamount to
"national suicide."
I personally believe that, had Labor been in power, we would also
have had a deadlocked situation. We have now finally reached the
moment of truth: final-status issues, if the parties are left to
themselves, are simply unbridgeable.
In spite of all the diplomatic agitation, the local parties are
left to themselves. And the overwhelming military superiority
Israel enjoys makes impossible an acceptable compromise. In the
absence of decisive external input by third parties, this process
is doomed to failure. American decision¬makers, as well as
other Western capitals, had better realize soon that, unlike the
fifties, the sixties and the seventies, when Israel marketed itself
as a bastion against militant Arab nationalism, Israeli
intransigence today defies, destabilizes and delegitimizes a
profoundly pro-Western Arab regional state-system. In this context,
is Israel a strategic asset or a liability?
This article is based on a lecture delivered at Harvard University,
April 1997.
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