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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Study Special Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The Barak deal
By Graham UsherDespite the inordinate delay, there was no disguising the joy felt by most of the 450 or so Palestinians who, on 25 October, were finally permitted to take the southern safe passage between Gaza and Tarkumiya near Hebron. Approaching the southern flank of the Hebron hills, one young Gazan was struck by their greenery. It was the first time he had seen them.
The opening of the safe passage was the sole bright spot in a dim week for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA). On the domestic front, his people were reeling from a double assault. The first was a fire at a Hebron "lighter factory" that left 16 Palestinians dead and triggered widespread popular anger directed at those officially responsible for ensuring at least a modicum of safety at workplaces in the town. The second was what Palestinians insist was the wholly unprovoked killing of a Palestinian vendor by an Israeli soldier at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. The two events led to demonstrations in Hebron against the municipality and two days of clashes in Bethlehem.
There was also a chill wind rising on the diplomatic front. On 19 October, Israeli Premier Ehud Barak instructed his ministers to dust off plans from the Rabin/Peres era aimed at realising a "legal, political and economic separation" between Israelis and Palestinians in any final status deal. With less than a week to go before the Oslo summit commemorating the fourth anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination (where, according to President Clinton, substantive discussions on the final status issues will be "re-launched"), Barak finally got around to appointing Israel's ambassador to Jordan, Oded Eran, as head of the Israeli delegation for the final status talks. Neither move went down particularly well with the Palestinians.
In the absence of an agreement on borders, most analysts (Palestinian and Israeli) are aware that "separation" spells ruin for a Palestinian economy that remains utterly dependent on Israel's. As for Eran, his relatively low status confirms that Barak prefers "back-channel" diplomacy to "serious negotiations", as his Palestinian counterpart, Yasser Abed Rabbo, sniffed on 26 October.
Abed Rabbo's hunches appear justified, if recent reports in the Israeli press on Barak's game plan for the final status talks are anything to go by.
On 22 October, the respected Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote in Ma'ariv that Barak's "opening offer" in the final status negotiations will be Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state "with all the symbols and signs" on all the land the PA will fully control at the end of Israel's "second" redeployment in January 2000 -- i.e., around 70 per cent of Gaza and 18 per cent of the West Bank.
Caspit is at pains to point out that no Israeli (not even Barak) expects Arafat to accede to this offer. The aim rather is "to present a minimalist Israeli demand opposite the expected maximum Palestinian demand": Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 lines. The two leaders will then haggle over how much land either can give up. Caspit's assessment (shared, privately, by several Palestinian negotiators) is that the maximum Barak will yield is about 65 per cent of the West Bank. This is based on the Israeli leader's desire to keep the West Bank's "strategic areas" under Israel's sovereignty in the final status arrangement.
As for the Palestinian refugees, a limited number will be allowed to live (under Israel's "supervision") in the Palestinian "state" in the West Bank and Gaza, but the vast majority "will be rehabilitated in their current place of residence". None will be allowed to return to their homes and land inside "sovereign Israel", other than perhaps 50,000 or so under the "family reunification scheme".
Barak's plan, as sketched by Caspit, would be risible were it not for the fact that most Israeli commentators view it as entirely feasible. The Israelis are aware that at least one Palestinian leader has already blessed a final status agreement not too dissimilar to the one outlined by Caspit. In 1995, the PLO's overall head of negotiations, Mahmoud Abbas, reached a series of "understandings" with Israel's Justice Minister, Yossi Beilin. The trade-off here was a Palestinian state on 90 per cent of the West Bank in return for a deferral on the issue of Jerusalem and the resettlement of the bulk of Palestinian refugees in either their "host" or third countries.
The Israelis are also sensitive to how important the question of statehood is psychologically to Arafat and how little time he has left to realise it. "Arafat is no longer young and not particularly healthy," writes Caspit. So he "will have to decide: Should he take Barak's deal (while making a desperate attempt to salvage a few more grains of sand), or reject it, blowing the deal and entering into crisis mode?" Caspit's assumption is that, in the hothouse atmosphere of a Camp David-like retreat -- and under the combined pressure of Barak and President Clinton -- Arafat will yield.
Many Palestinian analysts share this assumption. They are also aware that such a dispensation would mean an apartheid solution modelled almost exactly on the bantustan system of racial "separation" dreamed up by the Afrikaan regime in South Africa of not so distant memory. They are convinced that apartheid will no more endure in Palestine than it did in South Africa. But, as Caspit's article attests, just because it won't endure is not to say it won't happen.
