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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 September 1999 Issue No. 446 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 September 1999 Issue No. 446
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Books Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The endgame begins
By Graham UsherAt one point during the Israeli cabinet's discussion on Sunday of the "revised" Wye agreement signed in Sharm Al-Sheikh the night before, Industry Minister Ran Cohen made what turned out to be an extremely prescient prediction. "We're in a sensitive time-frame now in which the terror organisations will try to cause damage," he told his colleagues. One hour later, two car bombs exploded in Haifa and Tiberias, killing their three Palestinian occupants and wounding several Israeli civilians, one seriously.
For Yasser Arafat, a return to the Islamist-inspired suicide attacks inside Israeli cities that, in the spring of 1996, brought the Oslo process to its knees and drove Shimon Peres' Labour government from power is just about the worst "damage" that could occur. But for Ehud Barak, this already dim prospect was compounded further by the discovery that the perpetrators of the two bombings were not just Palestinians, but Palestinian citizens of Israel and active members of Israel's Islamist movement. And the question that is gnawing away at Israeli commentators and politicians alike is whether the blasts are evidence of a radicalisation of elements of the Islamist movement inside Israel or a desperate attempt by Hamas to extend its military arm beyond the Occupied Territories to Israel proper.
For the moment, the second explanation looks the most likely, if only because the coincidence of the hits with the Sharm Al-Sheikh signing and their apparent coordination (the two explosions occurred within five minutes of each other) carries the mark of previous operations by Izzadin El-Qassam, Hamas' military wing. It also bears out intelligence assessments by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are planning "strategic attacks" inside Israel to scuttle any resumption of the Oslo process, judgments that explain the recent arrest sweeps of Islamist suspects by Israel, the Palestinian Authority [PA] and, most recently, Jordan.
Beyond the spectre of renewed carnage in Israeli cities, Barak has so far had a relatively easy time selling his "improved" Wye agreement to the various parts of his coalition. The cabinet meeting on 5 September endorsed the agreement by a massive 22 votes to two, with only the National Religious Party's Yitzak Levy and Yisrael Baaliya's Natan Sharansky voting against. A similarly hefty majority was expected yesterday when the government presented the new deal to the Knesset. Once this vote was out of the way, the first batch of Palestinian political prisoners were to be released and the first phase of Israel's redeployment (consisting of a seven per cent transfer of West Bank land from Israel's "full" security control to the PA's "partial" civilian control) should happen "not later than 13 September", the sixth anniversary of the Oslo Accords.
If Barak is currently riding high, it is because most Israelis know a good deal when they sign one. Despite the occasional hiccup in the negotiating process, the Israeli consensus is that their leader came out the clear victor in his first diplomatic tussle with Arafat. He succeeded in extending Wye's timetable for implementation until January next year and extracted grudging Palestinian acceptance for a "Permanent Framework" document by February 2000 that supposedly will set the terms for Oslo's final status negotiations on Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and water. Nor did Barak budge from the criteria set down by Binyamin Netanyahu for releasing Palestinian prisoners, with the upcoming release of 350 detainees excluding not only those with [Jewish] "blood on their hands" and Islamist connections, but also Palestinian prisoners from occupied East Jerusalem and inside Israel. It was these latter distinctions that prompted protests against the agreement last weekend by Palestinians in Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem.
The Israeli consensus is shared by most Palestinians. "I'd say the Israelis got 75 per cent of what they wanted and we got 25 per cent," said Palestinian analyst and Palestinian National Council [PNC] member, Ilan Halevi. "But compared to previous agreements we have signed, that's not such a bad ratio". The "25 per cent" comprises Arafat's refusal -- underscored by the "letters of assurance" he received from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the European Union on 4 September -- of any "linkage" between the final phase of Israel's redeployment and the "Permanent Framework" document. The Palestinian leader also managed to bring forward the deadline for the final status negotiations from Barak's preferred date of December 2000 to September 2000.
The reason such gains are important, says Halevi, is the growing awareness on the Palestinian side that it is going to be "very difficult" to reach an agreement on the "Permanent Framework" with the Israelis, let alone a fully-fledged peace treaty. What could occur then is less a final status agreement than another "interim" agreement, in which Arafat defers again contentious issues like Jerusalem and refugees in exchange for Israeli recognition of an "undefined" Palestinian state. If that recognition is not forthcoming, "Arafat will declare the state unilaterally", says Halevi, "in September 2000".
This may just be Barak's reading, which would explain his desire to extend the redeployment and the final status deadlines as far ahead as possible. In the meantime, he is likely to concentrate on resuming negotiations with Syria to give substance to his election promise to have Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon by March 2000. If he achieves this -- and agrees to a withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights -- the Arab-Israeli conflict will be finally stripped down to what increasingly appears to be its insoluble core: the issues of Palestinian self-determination, return and Jerusalem.
