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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Neither safe nor free
By Graham UsherOn 5 October Israel's Minister for Public Security Shlomo Ben-Ami and Palestinian Authority Minister for Civil Affairs Jamil Tarifi finally signed the security protocol to establish a safe passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as stipulated in the original Oslo Accords of September 1993. The southern route is between Gaza's Erez crossing and Tarqumiya near Hebron and will be open for passage next week. The northern route should become operational by next January if the two sides can agree on its exit point in the West Bank.
It remains to be seen how "safe" either of the routes will be for Palestinians. It is already clear that their transit will not be free of "interference from Israeli authorities," as promised by Oslo's 1995 interim agreement.
Nor was the signing free of the customary crises that seem to accompany every step of the Oslo process. Under the revised Wye agreement signed between Israel and the PLO on 5 September, the southern safe passage route was meant to open on 1 October. Held over until 3 October because of the Jewish Sabbath, the signing was delayed further due to a dispute over the security provisions that should govern the safe passage. Israel insisted that it -- and not the PA -- would issue the new magnetic cards required by Palestinians to travel on the routes. It also reserved the right to arrest Palestinians on route between Gaza and the West Bank. In the end a compromise was reached "on the basis of maintaining two key principles -- security and sovereignty," said Ben-Ami. A cursory glance at the protocol shows that "security and sovereignty" belong exclusively to Israel.
Under the protocol, Palestinians will apply for the magnetic cards via the PA Civil Affairs Ministry who will then pass on the list to Israel for "approval". If granted, the Palestinians will receive their passes from an Israeli office "in the presence of a plainclothes Palestinian police officer." The same right of Israeli veto applies to those Palestinians currently without entry permits to Israel but who, under the protocol, may now travel between Gaza and the West Bank two days a week in "clean" buses under escort by the Israeli Border Police.
As for powers of arrest, "Israel is the sovereign power [on the safe passage routes] and has the right to act as any sovereign power does," said Ben-Ami after the signing ceremony on 5 October, strongly implying that Israel's power of arrest remains. Tarifi and PA security officials insist, however, that they have a "gentleman's agreement" that Israel will not exercise this power. If so, it means the onus for weeding out undesirable or "wanted" Palestinians from using the route will now fall on the PA's myriad intelligence forces. It is a burden they appear happy to bear. "The same people Israel wants are wanted by us as well," a PA security source told Israel's Haaretz newspaper on 4 October.
The Palestinian leadership too seemed happy with the deal. "I would like to say that a lot was accomplished by Tarifi and Ben-Ami," chief PLO negotiator for the Wye agreement, Saeb Erekat, told reporters on 4 October. "Both sides were aware of the concerns regarding security and the sensitivity of the issues involved." And "I believe in such spirits we can work together on other agreements in the future". Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was even more enthusiastic. "The most important thing about [the protocol] is [that it ensures] geographic and demographic unity between Gaza and the West Bank," he said in Gaza on 5 October.
This is not how it will to look to majority of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Ever since Israel's closure policy was instituted in 1991 -- and precisely because of the absence of a genuinely free and safe passage between the Gaza and the West Bank -- they have been routinely prevented from visiting family members in Gaza, attending universities in the West Bank or even exercising the most rudimentary human right of mobility in their own country. The safe passage agreement is unlikely to change these enforced divisions, says a Palestinians lawyer involved in the recent negotiations. Nor - given that Israel will use the same security criteria to determine who will receive a magnetic card -- does he expect the numbers of Palestinians able now to use the safe passage to exceed by much the 50,000 or so who already have permission to enter Israel. "It is still not a right of passage," he says. "The Israelis view safe passage for Palestinians as a privilege it can withhold or exercise at whim. The whole business is still going to be a painful and humiliating experience for most Palestinians -- as painful and humiliating as crossing the Allenby Bridge".
Nor is it clear how long this interim safe passage agreement will endure. On 3 October Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, instructed Regional Cooperation Minister Shimon Peres to explore "alternatives" to the current safe passage routes the better to achieve Israel's absolute goal of "separation" from the Palestinians. So far, the alternatives considered are a "highway on pillars" between Gaza and the West Bank, a tunnel and a railway line. It is not clear if this is what Peres had in mind when he spoke of a "new Middle East" made up of "horizons, not borders". What is clear is that so far the only thing Oslo has delivered the bulk of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is ever more "borders" governed by the apartheid logic of Israel's "sovereignty and security". The protocol on safe passage proves the rule.
