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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The price of diplomacy
By Graham Usher
The PLO Central Council's (PCC) decision last week to postpone a declaration of Palestinian statehood on 4 May was received with glee by the Israeli government, relief by most of the world and disappointment by the majority of Palestinian factions, whether for or against Oslo. As for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, they responded mainly with indifference.
Palestinians fire into the air during a demonstration in the West Bank calling for a Palestinian state on the fifth anniversary of the autonomy agreement signed in 1994 (photo: AP)
Binyamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, viewed it as an endorsement of his own hard-line policies. "After a whole year of Arafat's threats to create a Palestinian state on 4 May," Netanyahu told Israel's Channel 2 TV on 28 April, "he gave in, and he did this because he knows we won't stand for it, that for as long as I am prime minister there will be no Palestinian state and no division of Jerusalem".
France, Germany, Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League all applauded Arafat's "courageous act", as did the US State Department which "warmly welcomed" the PCC's deferral. Washington has reason to be pleased, and not only because of the deferral. According to Palestinian sources at the PCC, American pressure was also evident in the PCC's final communiqué issued on 28 April.
In the communiqué's first draft, they say, there was a clause stating that 4 May marked the end of Oslo's five year interim period and thus the end of the Palestinians' commitments to Israel under the interim agreement. But by the time the final communiqué was released, and after meticulous scrutiny by Arafat and others on the PCC's eight member drafting committee, the clause had disappeared. This may reflect Arafat's desire to keep things as fuzzy as possible while he awaits the results of the Israeli elections. But there is also speculation that the omission signals a quiet acquiescence by him to an extension of the interim period in line with American and European wishes.
These suspicions gained weight with the comments made by US State Department Spokesman James Rubin on 28 April that he did not expect the Palestinians to "revisit" the matter of a declaration of statehood in June because "we [the US] don't want the issue raised at all".
Whatever the PCC's non-decision means, Arafat is meanwhile earning plaudits for his statesmanship, a point underscored by PLO executive member Nabil Shaath's confirmation on 1 May that seven countries (including Ireland) had agreed to upgrade Palestine's status to ambassadorial level.
Arafat will have also been pleased with the rare outbreak of Palestinian unity that the PCC engendered, with the anti-Oslo Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamist Hamas movement both sending "observers" to the meeting in Gaza.
The presence of the Hamas delegation -- including its spiritual head, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin -- aggravated relations between the Islamists' Gaza and more militant cadre abroad, an outcome Arafat will welcome since he has long laboured to prise these two wings apart.
Thus while Hamas' spokesman in Jordan, Ibrahim Ghoshah, dismissed the Hamas delegates' attendance as "a local initiative and not a central decision of the movement", Hamas' spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, defended their participation because "on issues to do with Palestine's destiny and future -- such as the declaration of statehood -- Hamas is an important part which no one can ignore".
Beyond these spats, however, most Palestinian observers viewed Hamas' attendance as further evidence of an alleged "understanding" between Arafat and Yassin based on Hamas (in Gaza) distancing itself from armed attacks on Israeli civilians in exchange for the Palestinian Authority allowing the Islamists' civilian institutions to remain intact.
"The pragmatic wing in Hamas has definitely become stronger in the last year," says editor of the Islamist Al-Risala newspaper, Ghazi Hamad. "It realises it cannot take on the PA, Israel and the CIA all at the same time."
Yet if Arafat's star has never shone brighter among the diplomatic corps, it has rarely been dimmer among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. It is a disenchantment the Palestinian leader ignores at his peril, warns Khalil Shikaki, whose Centre for Palestine Research and Studies conducts regular opinion polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Although "Palestinian public opinion didn't seem to be overly interested in the declaration of statehood on 4 May, underneath this apparent indifference there is a growing distrust of the Palestinian leadership," he says. "And in postponing a declaration you confirm the Palestinians' worst fears about their leadership."
This alienation is manifested not only in polls which show that 36 per cent of Palestinians no longer feel any affinity to the various PLO factions and Islamist movements that supposedly represent them. It is also evident in the minimal Palestinian protests that are today mounted against Israel's settlement and closure policies in the Occupied Territories, and especially in East Jerusalem.
And with Netanyahu chafing at the bit to close Orient House ahead of the Israeli elections, Arafat may yet have to call on the masses as well as the diplomats to defend the PLO's right to operate in Jerusalem. If those masses refuse to show, then the cost of Arafat's diplomatic success abroad will be clear -- the enervation of Palestinian resistance at home.
