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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 June 1999 Issue No. 435 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 June 1999 Issue No. 435
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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 Interview Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters A bridge too far
By Graham UsherAfter a month of coalition talks, Israel's prime minister-elect, Ehud Barak, broke his silence last week in an interview with one of the stoutest pillars of his support -- Israel's Haaretz newspaper. On perusing its content, many Palestinian leaders may have preferred that he had kept his mouth shut.
As always, Barak was long on red lines, "I will not go to peace if I am not convinced that it strengthens the country's security", and short on detail. But the interview did at least give a sense of what Barak's priorities are in the field of foreign policy. It also offered a suggestion for freeing-up the two year long jam in the Oslo peace process. Neither the priorities nor the proposal are likely to assuage Palestinian worries about the new Israeli leader.
In pursuit of what he hoped would be a "comprehensive solution" to the "100-year-old conflict" between Zionism and the Arabs, Barak made clear which Arabs "are a paramount subject" as far as he is concerned and which "with whom it is necessary to make peace". It is not the Palestinians.
"The Syrians have 700 warplanes, 4,000 tanks, 2,500 artillery pieces and surface-to-surface missiles that are neatly organised and can cover the whole country with nerve gas," said Barak. "The Palestinians are the source of the legitimacy of the continuation of the conflict but they are the weakest of all our adversaries. As a military threat they are ludicrous. They pose no military threat of any kind to Israel."
Given this accurate appraisal of the regional balance of power, (Israel, said Barak, is less "a carp among barracudas" than "an enlightened killer whale -- if it's not angered it doesn't attack and devour for no reason"), it follows where Israel should be generous in negotiations with its "adversaries" and where it should not.
"There is a wonderful and important settlement enterprise on the Golan Heights," said Barak, "but it will not be possible to make peace without a compromise in the Golan Heights." But as for the "settlement enterprise" in the Palestinian Occupied Territories ("the cradle of our history", pace Barak), here the new Israeli leader barely saw the need for any compromise other than the most minimal.
"Is it impossible to make peace with the Palestinians and with Beit El [a settlement near Ramallah]? Ofra [another settlement near Ramallah] is located next to one of our most important strategic points, and Ariel [near Nablus] is Ariel." After all, "they [the Palestinians] have Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem."
The only crumb of comfort Barak had for Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat was that he, unlike Binyamin Netanyahu, would be "on the same side of the table in order to resolve the problems". This and a radical formula for unpicking a snag that has dogged the Oslo process virtually since its inception -- the matter of establishing a "safe passage" that would link the geographically separate areas of Gaza and the West Bank. Barak envisages "a kind of highway on pillars for 47 kilometres... from Beit Hanoun [in Gaza] to Dura near Hebron... with four lanes, a railway line, a water pipe, a communications cable -- that's about what is needed. It's a relatively simple thing."
The official Palestinian response to this "simple thing" was to shoot it down before it left the ground. "I think Mr Barak should concentrate on [implementing] the south and north safe passages for the interim period," said PLO negotiator, Saeb Erekat. "And then this issue will be discussed in the permanent status accords."
On the surface, the Palestinian Authority's negative response to Barak's (so far) one and only kite is surprising. Of all the 30 or so issues outstanding from Oslo's 1995 interim agreement, implementation of the safe passage is the one that would have the most tangible benefit for the 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
This is because the absence of a safe passage has been the chief weapon in Israel's eight year old closure policy, enabling Israel to demographically separate not only Jerusalem from Gaza and the West Bank but both from each other. Aside from denying Palestinians the most elementary human right of mobility in their own country and forcibly separating members of the same family, the lack of a safe passage has exerted a catastrophic toll on Palestinians right to education, with hundreds of students from Gaza each year forced to live as fugitives in order to pursue their studies in one or other of the West Bank's six Palestinian universities.
Even more ominously, no territorial corridor between Gaza and the West Bank has facilitated the growth of two distinct Palestinian entities or cantons which are now far more firmly embedded in the Israeli economy than they in the Palestinian.
So why were PA officials so cold to Barak's bridge? According to the interim agreement -- and reaffirmed by the 1997 Hebron and 1998 Wye agreements -- the safe passage is to operate through two routes, a southern road between Gaza and Tarqomiyah near Hebron and a northern road between Gaza and "around Mevo Horon" in the West Bank.
Negotiations have long been held up on Israeli demands over "security provisions" for the safe passage. But the main bone of contention has been about the precise location of the northern route's West Bank exit. The Israelis want it to be next door to Ramallah; the PA wants it at Latrun, on the 1967 Green Line. Nor is the difference between them a matter of logistics: where the exit is located will thus set a precedent as to where the eventual borders of the future Palestinian entity will be. Barak's bridge proposal neatly resolves the dispute by abolishing the northern route altogether.
Beyond this, Barak's proposal implies an almost Netanyahu-like disregard for international agreements that Israel has signed and promised to fulfil. As such it is fully in line with his stated desire to skip or collapse the Wye Agreement into the final status negotiations on borders. It is an aim that has so far been rebuffed not only by the PA, but also Egypt, the US and the G8 countries.
It is a united front Palestinians hope will endure. If -- on the evidence of the Haaretz interview -- there is a real difference between Barak and Netanyahu when it comes to Syria and Lebanon, the same source reveals little substantive difference in their combined vision when it comes to the future of the Palestinian Occupied Territories -- both appear to hanker for a truncated, demilitarised Palestinian "entity" in most of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. But whereas Netanyahu offered an "iron wall" to the Arab world, Barak is likely to offer "bridges".
The aim of Palestinian and Arab diplomacy should be to convince all that, without the recovery of all or most of the Occupied Territories and a real Palestinian sovereignty therein, such bridges will go nowhere.
