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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 December 1999 Issue No. 460
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Debate Focus Profile Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters What about the Palestinian track?
By Sherine BahaaAs US President Bill Clinton announced the resumption of Syrian-Israeli peace talks in Washington this week, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was implicitly withdrawing from the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, declaring that they had reached a point where the two parties had to work together to find a way forward. Concerns that the new international pre-occupation with Syrian-Israeli issues might throw the Palestinians onto the back burner thus became acute, as news of an imminent Israeli-Syrian deal was released.
For Ghassan Al-Khatib, Head of the Jerusalem Center for Media and Communication, these concerns were not new fear, and different Israeli governments had historically often tried to play one set of talks off against the other to their advantage.
"Barak and other Israeli leaders have been trying to play the tracks game so as to create competition between the different Arab partners involved in the peace process. This is not new, Barak, Rabin and even Netanyahu have done the same thing," Al-Khatib told Al-Ahram Weekly.
However, this did not rule out the fact that Israeli negotiations with Syria were likely to be far less complicated than were those with the Palestinians, which would require the untangling of a century-old conflict and the resolution of sensitive issues such as the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
"Issues on the Syrian-Israeli peace track are easier to negotiate and to solve than are those with the Palestinians," Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine told the Weekly. Hawatmeh, who is based in Damascus, had predicted the re-opening of the Syrian-Israeli talks when Barak came to power.
Hawatmeh said that while agreement on the Syrian-Israeli track was viable, the "possibilities of a parallel agreement with the Palestinians are very flimsy, since none of the crucial topics to be negotiated have yet been approached."
However, for Hawatmeh, a staunch critic of Oslo who was last month denied entry to Palestinian territories as a result of his call for continuing armed struggle, the possibility of Israeli-Syrian agreement should not be missed, since it could show Palestinian national forces the success of Syrian determination.
"Sticking to balanced resolutions based on international legality and restructuring destroyed Palestinian national unity are the most effective weapons we have. And this is exactly what the Syrians did," he commented.
Meanwhile, talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis have reached ten sessions this week without any major progress having been made. Settlements, the present stumbling block in the talks, is only one of five main issues to be dealt with in the final-status talks, the framework of which should have been agreed by February 2000.
According to the Sharm Al-Sheikh agreement signed last September, final settlement talks should conclude by September 2000.
However, Al-Khatib pointed out that such dates have never been sacred for the Israelis. "I cannot imagine an agreement being concluded by February 2000," he said. "This is another date that has not been really respected by the Israelis. Israel delayed the beginning of the negotiations, and it is now busy expanding settlements rather than preparing for ending the occupation, which is the core of the peace process."
In the light of these delays, talk of the resumption of multilateral talks is inexplicable for the Palestinian side -- Israeli diplomatic sources having revealed that the United States had promised Barak the resumption of multilateral talks aimed at strengthening regional cooperation between the Arabs and Israel as soon as progress had been made in the Syrian-Israeli talks.
The mere mention of multilateral talks is a clear indication that serious attempts are being made to relegate talks with the Palestinians, Al-Khatib believes.
"There is an attempt being made in general to bypass the Palestinian track and to move ahead whether in normalisation or on the multilateral level," he said, adding that, "Here comes the question of which Arab partner will be willing to be part of the multilateral negotiations before a significant breakthrough on the Palestinian track is concluded."
