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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Wrong turn down
By Abdel-Moneim Said *
the road to peaceAfter much longer than it should have taken, the new Israeli prime minister formed his government. The coalition, which he described as "ideal", won the support of 85 Knesset members, among them 10 Arab MKs who have said that they would support Barak in any real step towards peace.
After that was out of the way, Barak began to make his regional moves. He was received warmly by President Mubarak, President Arafat and King Abdullah. Then he flew to the US, where his hosts welcomed him with greater affection than they had shown any Israeli leader in a long time. In the Middle East and abroad, Barak is now perceived as the man who will make it possible to get the peace process rolling again. He is hailed as ushering in a new era that will contrast markedly with the grim and depressing period brought about by his predecessor.
Syria's responses since Barak's election have also been highly positive. Open messages of good will have been exchanged through British writer Patrick Seale. Damascus also cancelled a conference on resisting "normalisation" with Israel, scheduled to be held in the University of Damascus, and has exonerated Barak from the bombing of Beirut, which occurred during Netanyahu's last days of office. Syria has asked the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is opposed to Yasser Arafat, to move from a military to a political footing. Soon another torrent of messages was exchanged between Syria and Israel via Amman, Moscow and Brussels.
Barak has thus found the circumstances "ideal" for him to move towards peace and fulfil his electoral promises to the Israeli electorate. Instead of taking full advantage of these circumstances, however, his initiative has proved highly dispiriting. If I were President Arafat, I would have rejected the new Israeli prime minister's proposal out of hand. I certainly would not have waited two weeks before notifying the Israeli government of the Palestinian position. Not only is the proposal inherently extremely prejudicial to the Palestinian people, it also represents a blatant manoeuvre to totally reshape the negotiating climate in a manner certain to be inimical to the entire peace process. The consequences will be detrimental not only to Arab interests, but also to those of Israel and to its future in the region.
By delaying his answer, Arafat has given Barak the opportunity to promote his programme in the US, Europe and even Russia. For these countries, the chronic Middle East conflict is just another problem on the list of international priorities and crises that have drained their diplomatic resources for the past three years. Certainly, they are tempted to pressure the Palestinians to indulge Barak. In this way, they will not have to contemplate more nightmarish anxieties of the sort Netanyahu generated.
The essence of Barak's proposal to Arafat was that Israel will immediately implement the second phase of the Wye River Memorandum, in accordance with which five per cent of area C, currently under Israeli military and administrative control, would be transferred to area B, which is under Palestinian administrative control and joint security control. After that, both sides will move to the final status negotiations, which are to settle such matters as the borders, the status of Jerusalem, the allocation of water resources and the rights of Jewish settlers and Palestinian refugees.
Barak's proposal has set a relatively short time frame -- from three to six months -- for the parties to formulate a declaration of principles. Then they are to discuss the third phase of the Wye accord and other outstanding issues.
Barak contends that he is determined to achieve peace, contrary to his predecessor who claimed that the Wye accord would put an end to Israeli withdrawals and concessions. Both sides, he says, have nothing to gain by wasting time in quibbling over their commitments under Wye. It would be better to take advantage of the current climate of peace and press ahead with the final status negotiations, to get the entire problem settled once and for all. Barak argues that it would be unwise at this point to go ahead with the third phase of Israeli withdrawal -- or "redeployment" in the terms of the Wye accord. To do so would create points of convergence between areas under Palestinian control and some Israeli settlements, thereby heightening the possibility of friction and violence between those elements on both sides that are hostile to the peace process. Such violence could jeopardise the entire peace process, or at least derail it for some time.
These arguments do not stand up to scrutiny, either in terms of what they say or of what they have omitted. Barak is once again asking the Palestinians to pay for the actions of the Israeli government and for the settlements it has constructed. This price, moreover, must be added to what the Palestinians have already paid in the negotiating process. In very practical terms, it is equally unreasonable to ask the Palestinians to pin all their hopes on the promise of a speedy end to the final status negotiations, when everyone knows that the issues involved are extremely sensitive and that the red lines the respective negotiating parties have drawn for themselves are virtually antithetical.
If such negotiations stall, Barak will be in a position to scupper the third phase of the Wye accord. When the deadline for the negotiations is past, he will be able to claim that he has done his utmost to reach a peace agreement, but that the Palestinians refuse his proposals. As a result, the Palestinians will be left with the ball in their court, and will be the butt of international disapproval.
What is really at the heart of Barak's proposal is a refusal to implement the agreements Israel has signed. These include not only the Wye and Hebron accords signed by Netanyahu, but also the interim phase agreements signed by the former Labour government. The interim agreements were the foundation of all subsequent agreements, which, in turn, were little more than executive and procedural protocols. The interim phase agreement that was battered out in Taba and signed in Washington in September 1995 provided for the withdrawal -- or redeployment -- of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza in three phases over a period of two years. Following the stipulated redeployment, the parties were to enter final status negotiations, a phase which was to have ended on 4 May 1999. The timetable was flung out the window. The first phase of redeployment called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from seven Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Israeli forces withdrew from only six, and the withdrawal was only completed in December 1995. The withdrawal from Hebron, remained pending until mid-January 1997, well beyond the deadlines for the beginning of the second and third redeployment phases (March and September 1996).
The only deadline that was met at all was the beginning of the final status negotiations: the parties met once in May 1996, and nothing more was heard.
The purpose of the Wye River agreement was to implement the second redeployment phase, which had been suspended for two years and was to have been implemented in three stages, of which Netanyahu completed one. Two stages are still pending, along with the third redeployment phase stipulated by the interim agreement and reaffirmed in Wye.
Barak's proposal, therefore, defers the remainder of what is essentially the second phase of redeployment under the interim agreement, but it also defers -- indeed abolishes -- the third phase of redeployment. It casts a fog over the other Palestinian entitlements laid out in the agreements signed in Oslo, Washington, Hebron and Wye. Thus, according to Barak's proposal, issues such as a port, the safe corridor between the West Bank and Gaza and the return of Palestinian refugees are all pinned on the fantasy of reaching a speedy agreement in the final status negotiations.
Of course, there is nothing to prevent Barak from resuming the final status negotiations while going ahead with the implementation of the agreements that have already been signed. In fact, the sooner he does so, the sooner he will compensate the Palestinian people for the pains of occupation that were prolonged because of Israel's endless procrastination. Barak, however, has not suggested implementing the provisions of the Wye agreement in parallel with the resumption of negotiations. On the contrary, he wants to defer the former in favour of the latter, which are unlikely to bring results, at least within the relatively short period of time he has in mind, particularly when we remember that the negotiations will take place against the backdrop of Israel's continued occupation of 65 per cent of the West Bank.
It is important in this context to recall Barak's original position on Oslo. When the agreement was brought to a vote before the Israeli cabinet under Rabin, Barak abstained. At the time, he said he objected to the notion of a three-phase redeployment because that would reduce the cards Israel could play in the final status negotiations. The same logic continues to apply. Were Israel to fulfil its obligations under the Wye River accord, it would place more than 40 per cent of the West Bank under full or partial Palestinian control. If a minimum of another 13 per cent was added to this by virtue of the third phase of redeployment, Israel would enter the final status negotiations controlling only 48 per cent of the occupied land.
Barak, then, does not want to hasten the process of reaching a peace agreement that will painlessly solve all outstanding issues in one go. Rather, he wants to improve his negotiating hand. The Palestinians and the Arabs have nothing to gain by giving him a greater edge. Barak knows this, but he sees nothing to stop him from trying, as did Netanyahu on more than one occasion, the last time being in February. Amidst the auspicious climate generated by Barak's election inside Israel and abroad, and with the enticing signals coming and going between Israel and Syria, Barak's proposal and the anticipated Palestinian rejection will work to cast Israel as the instigator of peace initiatives and the Arabs as obstructers of the peace process. At the very least, implementing the Wye River provisions will perhaps lead to the delay, or even cancellation, of the third redeployment phase and other pending issues. This should delight the Jewish settlers, who have no right to be in those settlements to begin with, and whom Barak is nevertheless using as a pretext to improve his negotiating advantage.
The Palestinians should have rejected Barak's proposal immediately. Perhaps he wanted to test how firm the Palestinian negotiating stance was. They should have made it very clear. This would have shown the other parties, particularly the US, Russia and Europe, that Barak, like his predecessor, is tampering with the agreements that these powers sponsored and witnessed, and that the Palestinians know exactly what he is doing. Moreover, it would have told the Israeli public that we did not care much what happened to Netanyahu as a person. What we wanted was an end to the manoeuvres to renege on the implementation of the agreements Israel had signed, and an end to his attempts to make peace impossible. The message the Palestinians would have conveyed by making themselves clear was that, if we refused such behaviour from Netanyahu, we will continue to refuse it just as vehemently from Barak.
There is a way to peace and to building mutual confidence. Carving it out does not require bulldozing the agreements that have already been signed and reneging on their implementation within their stipulated time frames. It does not include granting Israel the exclusive privilege of indulging the whims of every new government. I hope that the parties involved in the peace process will succeed in guiding Barak back to the proper path to peace before we discover, too late, that Netanyahu's term in office was not an exception in the inherently arduous task of making peace, but rather the rule governing Israel's behaviour.
* The writer is the director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
