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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Interview Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters To rouse a sleeping giant
by Graham UsherYasser Arafat, who visited Washington last week but came back empty-handed, appears to have been successful in rousing the other sleeping giant -- the European Union.
After intensive PLO-led diplomacy, EU leaders issued last Thursday what has already been coined the Berlin Declaration on Middle East peacemaking. On paper, it amounts to the most unequivocal affirmation to date of the EU's commitment to Palestinian national rights.
Grounded on the principle of "land for peace" and UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the declaration "reaffirms" the Palestinians' "unqualified" right to self-determination, "including the option of a state". The Palestinians will also be pleased with the EU's call that "both parties... refrain from any activity contrary to international law, including all settlement activity".
But the real prize is the EU statement of intent toward the peace process after 4 May, the deadline originally set for the termination of the interim arrangements spawned by the 1993 Oslo agreement. While urging both parties "to agree to an extension of the transitional period established by the Oslo agreement", the EU "believes that it should be possible to conclude the negotiations [on the final status of the Occupied Territories] within a target period of one year". Furthermore, it believes the Palestinians' right to self-determination "is not subject to any veto" and "declares the EU's readiness to consider the recognition of a Palestinian state in due course in accordance with the basic principles referred to above".
Such commitments may provide Arafat with the ladder he needs to climb down from the tree of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence on 4 May, a step he has repeatedly threatened to take. Whether or not these commitments will be translated into a more assertive, independent and united European policy toward the peace process after the Israeli elections, scheduled for 17 May, however, is an entirely different matter.
In Washington last week, Arafat was told by President Bill Clinton that Washington would oppose any unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. If Arafat was seeking some other US initiative to fill the "legal vacuum" left by Oslo's formal demise, such as a new deadline by which "accelerated" final status negotiations should be completed, then here too he was disappointed.
US officials made it clear that deadlines and dates were going to be no more sacred after 4 May than they have been before.
But there are divisions between the EU member states over whether Europe should take a more overtly political role in the Oslo process. During the negotiations that led to the declaration, France had argued for an "in principle" European recognition of Palestinian statehood prior to the conclusion of the final status talks. Britain and Germany, on the other hand, were wary that such a stance would not only cause conflict with Israel but, critically, with America's diplomatic control of the negotiations. The phrase "readiness to consider the recognition of a Palestinian state" represents a fudge between the two positions.
There are many EU officials -- and a few leaders -- who remain unhappy about a role in Oslo which, at present, consigns Europe to footing the Palestinian Authority's overdraft, while excluding it as a party to the political negotiations (at the Wye River talks last October, the EU's special envoy to the peace process, Miguel Moratinos, was not even allowed into the conference room).
Nor is the reticence due to the EU's lack of power vis-à-vis Israel. As that state's third largest export market, the EU could, if it so chose, hurt the Israeli economy simply by withdrawing the numerous trade agreements and privileges it currently bestows on it. Rather, a more assertive EU stand is inhibited by differences between those member states -- like France -- which seek a more independent European foreign policy in the Middle East and others which prefer to sit behind the US, rather than alongside it at the negotiating table.
An intimation of that battle came in Binyamin Netanyahu's response to the EU's declaration. In a discreet allusion to Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, Netanyahu commented that it was "regretful that Europe -- where a third of the Jewish people perished -- would see fit to impose a solution that endangers the state of Israel and its interests".
Arafat clearly hopes that a more political and independent role for the EU will be part of the reward for any deferring of Oslo beyond its formal end-date. The first down-payment for this was the Berlin declaration. But future payments -- after the Israeli elections -- may require actions as well as declarations. And when it comes to action, the EU has a history of deferring to the US, as witnessed not only from its role in Oslo but also in Iraq and in former and present-day Yugoslavia.
