A European boycott of Israeli goods?

By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

The call for a Palestinian state is particularly opportune on the fiftieth anniversary of Israel's creation. The extravagant celebrations marking the occasion highlight a basic flaw in the implementation of the document from which Israel draws its legitimacy as a state. The document is, of course, UN resolution 181/1947, more familiarly known as the partition plan, calling for the division of Palestine, then under a British mandate, into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. If the Arab refusal to accept the resolution at the time did not invalidate the legitimacy of the Jewish state, then, by the same token, Israel's refusal to accept an Arab state in Palestine despite the fact that the Arabs now recognise Israel casts a cloud over its own legitimacy, for the resolution is an indivisible whole. This argument is not affected by the Oslo agreements between Israel and the Palestinian authority, because these agreements do not address the final status of the Palestinian entity.

The call for a Palestinian state is not new. What is original in the initiative is the idea of holding a conference on the Middle East peace process without the participation of the two main players, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. While Arab-Israeli negotiations over the issue of Palestine have been conducted, prior to the Oslo accords, in the absence of Arafat, no such negotiations have ever been conducted in the absence of the Israeli government.

The proposal to bypass Netanyahu, despite the obvious centrality of the Israeli government's role in any peace negotiations, is indicative of a growing feeling, at both the international and regional levels, that Netanyahu is not qualified to lead Israel towards a credible peace. Here the proposal makes a distinction between Israel as an indispensable party to the negotiations and the person of the man now heading its government. To my mind, this distinction is long overdue. Indeed, I would go as far as to attribute much of the blame for the present deadlock in the negotiation process to the reluctance of key parties, notably the United States, to imagine a future for the peace process in isolation from Israel's present prime minister.

Netanyahu has been swift to react to what he perceives as a challenge to his authority. A few days ago, he came up with the idea of holding a referendum in Israel to determine how the Israelis see the peace process; that is, whether they regard it as a positive development or as a threat to their security. This manoeuvre aims at attributing the current impasse in the peace process to objective flaws in the process itself rather than to his own policies.

However, the idea of making a distinction between Israel as a state on the one hand and the man now responsible for its policies on the other, which is in effect a gamble that Israel's next government will be more likely to move forward with the peace process, can only work if it is firmly backed by the Clinton administration. So far, this does not seem to be the case. Indeed, despite the fact that all the signs point to Netanyahu's adamant refusal to back down from his inflexible position, despite the repeated failures of American envoy Dennis Ross to get the peace talks back on track, Washington still insists on conducting secret negotiations with the Israeli government. The clear message is that the Americans still consider Netanyahu to be the only party qualified to speak in Israel's name.

Clinton is obviously not ready for a showdown with Netanyahu, especially with the investigation into is private life reaching a critical point and with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich coming out strongly in support of Netanyahu's policies during his recent visit to Israel. Nor is this the position of the Republican Party only. It is well known that the Democratic candidate in the coming election, Vice-President Al Gore, is even more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than Clinton himself. With both parties gearing up for the coming US presidential elections, it is highly unlikely that either will risk antagonising Netanyahu.

In fact, it might well be to the advantage of the Democrats to oppose rather than go along with the Republican Party's unreserved support for Netanyahu. Two strategic imperatives inform US Middle East policy: the security of Israel and the stability of Arab oil. Both Rabin and Peres, Netanyahu's Labour predecessors, had succeeded in creating the impression that the peace process was moving forward, thereby making the two key objects of US interest in the Middle East appear to be complementary, not mutually exclusive, factors. Netanyahu's strategy is producing just the opposite effect: his perception of Israel's security is so demanding for the Arab parties that it is bound to provoke havoc throughout the Arab world and expose the oil area to widespread destabilisation. Prominent figures in the American Jewish lobby are aware of the need to avoid the emergence of a conflict of interests between the United States and Israel. Some go as far as to advocate the creation of a Palestinian state, side by side with Israel, provided it is demilitarised and enjoys only limited sovereignty.

The main issue at this point is not to discuss what the prerogatives of the Palestinian state should be, but to launch a concerted campaign in defence of such a state. Here, the attitude of the American administration is of paramount importance. Will Washington support a campaign of this kind? Various signs indicate that it is by no means an option that should be totally written off. Hillary Clinton's televised statement that she supported the idea of creating a Palestinian state cannot be dismissed as just a slip of the tongue.

Here Europe, and particularly France, can play a key role in helping President Clinton overcome his indecisiveness. That is why I believe it is wrong to reduce the European role to that of a bit player supporting the American role. After all, the widespread persecution of Jews that finally brought about the creation of the state of Israel originated in Europe, and the Europeans cannot simply shrug off their responsibility for the consequences of their actions. They have a moral responsibility not only towards the Jews for the suffering they endured in Europe but also, and equally, towards the Palestinians for the suffering they are today enduring at the hands of the Jews, in a classic example of the victim-turned-tormentor syndrome.

An idea worth considering in this connection is the one put forward to me by a close friend now visiting Cairo, Lakhdar Brahimi, one of UN General Secretary Kofi Annan's assistants, and former Algerian foreign minister and ambassador to Cairo in the Nasser era. One of Brahimi's early assignments for the UN was to supervise the South African elections that brought Mandela to power. At the time, it will be remembered, the international community was boycotting South African companies and enforcing sanctions against the white supremacist government. According to Brahimi, the ANC's insistence that the sanctions remain in place as long as the practice of apartheid continued was instrumental in bringing about the change. He was quick to point out that the boycott strategy he advocated was not the Arab but the South African type, which was initiated at the popular level and aimed at achieving a specific objective. If similar initiatives are undertaken by the Europeans, that is, if they boycott Israeli goods in the aim of bringing pressure to bear on the Israeli government to end its dehumanising treatment of the Palestinians, this will help redress the imbalance now responsible for the deadlock and hence further the cause of peace.