Dead-end security

By Khaled Amayreh

It is not certain yet who carried out the attack, but Israeli radio reported later on Monday that the militant Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) had claimed responsibility.

Hamas or not, the Israeli media appeared to inflate the casualty figures, ostensibly to vindicate Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's security demands in his US-sponsored talks with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the secluded Wye Plantation near Washington. The talks opened on Thursday and were scheduled to end on Sunday. But due to the lack of progress, the meeting was extended till Monday. After the explosion early on Monday, and Israel's threat to freeze the talks, US President Bill Clinton intervened and pressured Arafat and Netanyahu to issue a joint statement confirming they were committed to continuing the negotiations.

By mid-afternoon on Monday, it became clear that only a handful of the 67 Israelis reported injured in the incident were still in hospital. This, Palestinians charge, raises questions about the veracity of the Israeli account, and even the possibility that the Israeli government staged the whole incident for propaganda reasons.

But whatever the truth about the Beer Al-Saba'a incident, Netanyahu exploited it to the full, saying it vindicated Israeli security demands. He insisted that only "security" ought to be talked about, a feat consistent with his relentless efforts to block an agreement without having to bear the consequences.

According to Palestinian sources, however, the peace talks at Wye Plantation, Maryland, were not expected to produce substantive results even before the attack in Beer Al-Saba'a. President Clinton himself alluded to the virtual deadlock in the talks, saying rather diplomatically on Sunday that "the issues are difficult, the distrust is deep."

This somber outlook should come as no surprise to serious observers of the Palestinian-Israeli scene, especially since the extremist, right-wing Netanyahu came to power more than two years ago. Besides the mostly artificially-induced "positive" atmosphere and diplomatic pleasantries that often permeate the talks, Netanyahu has remained largely faithful to his original adamant rejection of the Oslo Accords, refusing to recognise even a modicum of Palestinian rights, let alone prospective statehood in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, the very concept of withdrawing from even 10 or 13 per cent of the West Bank, let alone the entire Occupied Territories, seems starkly incompatible with Netanyahu's basic mindset. However, for the sake of public relations expediency, and in order not to be accused of political parochialism and blind demagoguery, Netanyahu has chosen political deception and verbal juggling as his modus operandi so as to obscure his enduring ideological rejection of the peace process.

The talks at Wye Plantation, preceded by inadequate preparations, would seem to have failed once again to resolve any of the substantive issues, including the pivotal issue of the second Israeli redeployment from up to 13 per cent of the West Bank. Palestinian sources participating in the talks stressed that the Israeli delegation didn't even present maps detailing the scope of proposed redeployment. Ahmed Teibi, Arafat's adviser on Israeli affairs said in a radio interview on Tuesday that the sides were no closer to an agreement than they were two weeks ago.

According to Teibi, five major interim issues were still unresolved.

The first issue concerns the paramount third redeployment, which according to the Oslo Agreement should culminate in Israeli redeployment from the entire West Bank, save East Jerusalem, the settlements and military positions, considered as final status issues.

The Israeli prime minister, however, rejects this stipulation, insisting that Israel alone has the right to determine the extent and scope of the third redeployment. So far, he has insisted that no more than one per cent of the West Bank would be included in the third phase, which the Palestinian Authority views as a "scandalous trivialisation of the Oslo Accords and a rude attempt to alter the terms of reference of the peace process."

The second issue focuses on the Palestinian charter, and principally on Israeli demands to rescind clauses calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. The issue doesn't seem to be genuine since the PLO Executive Committee agreed more than three years ago to adopt the peace process, which arguably supplants the charter since it is based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Nevertheless, the Israeli government, aware of the difficulties facing Arafat in securing a majority at the Palestine National Council (PNC), has insisted that the charter be amended before an interim agreement on the second redeployment can be carried out.

The third and fourth issues concern security, the sacred cow of Israeli propaganda. Last year, the Israeli government and the PA reached an agreement on all outstanding security issues, including security coordination, under CIA supervision. However, when Netanyahu found out that he was about to lose one of the most effective pressure cards at his disposal, he withdrew his support for the agreement, insisting that a new understanding or "security memorandum" be formulated, conceivably one that would be too humiliating to be acceptable to the PA leadership. It would include imposing draconian measures on Palestinian civilian life and freedom of expression within the autonomous enclaves, as well as handing over scores of Palestinian activists to Israel.

Needless to say, any Palestinian consent to these dictates would seriously corrode the PA's image as a national entity and would irremediably undermine the authority of President Arafat among the Palestinian people. If Arafat were to accept such tough Israeli security conditions, many Palestinians would equate him with Israel's quislings, such as Antoine Lahd, commander of the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA), the Israeli-backed Christian militia in Lebanon's occupied zone.

The fifth issue on which Israel has been equivocating and procrastinating is the estimated 3,000 Palestinian prisoners languishing in squalid conditions in Israeli jails. The Hebron agreement, signed a few months after Netanyahu came to power, stipulated the release of these prisoners.

However, the Netanyahu government has since ignored the issue, choosing to keep it as a card they can play against the Palestinians.

For its part, the PA leadership is under tremendous public pressure not to sign any agreement that does not include the liberation of prisoners -- the suspended martyrs of the Palestinian revolution.

With the looming failure of the Wye Plantation talks, observers here believe Palestinians, Israelis and people throughout the region, should brace themselves for more violence on the Palestinian-Israeli front.

Moreover, Arafat will doubtless come under increasing pressure to formally declare the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. For the Palestinians, the declaration of statehood would spell the end of the Oslo Agreement as we have known it. More important, however, the declaration of a Palestinian state would certainly usher in the beginning of a new episode of bitter, and most likely bloody, struggle for freedom and liberation.

Only a political transformation within Israel itself could reverse this trend, and this seems unlikely now, given the country's constant drift to the right.