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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465
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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 Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The wood for the trees
By Graham Usher
Just as the Syrian-Israeli talks in the US seemed to be derailing the Palestinian "track" off the horizon, two events last week brought it back to everyone's attention.
The first was a pipe-bomb blast on 17 January in the Israeli town of Hadera, leaving 25 people wounded, all moderately. As with a similar bombing in Netanya a couple of months ago, no group has yet claimed responsibility. Not that this prevented Israeli police from rounding up the usual suspects -- 50 "Palestinian Arabs" were summarily arrested, largely it seems for being in the wrong town on the wrong day. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak took a "grave view" of the incident, vowing that Israel would "place its hand on the terrorists who executed the attack".
The Palestinian Authority took a similarly grave view of the other event that had preceded it. This was Barak's wholly unilateral decision on 14 January to defer for "three weeks" the third 6.1 per cent phase of Israel's second West Bank redeployment, scheduled -- under the September 1999 Wye agreement -- to be implemented on 20 January.
Aside from the wider implications of the move, Barak's brusque way of taking the decision -- without so much as a phone call to Yasser Arafat -- deeply embarrassed the Palestinian leadership. The reasoning it had used to justify its climb-down on the miserly second phase implemented by Israel earlier this month, was that the third would exhibit "the principles of partnership and joint decision making", as promised by PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat. Barak's notion of "partnership" apparently means that the redeployment could not go ahead because he has no time to "jointly decide" its content with his own cabinet.
More worrying than the protocol, however, are Barak's motives for the deferral. According to a spokesperson from his office, the Israeli leader wanted to delay the redeployment until after Arafat's upcoming meeting with President Bill Clinton on 20 January. For Erekat, this represents a blatant attempt by Israel to "insert the 6.1 per cent redeployment as the main issue in the summit between President Arafat and President Clinton" rather than the Palestinian view on the final status issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and water.
Armed with recommendations from both the PA cabinet and Fatah's Central Council meetings held last weekend, Arafat had been intending to raise with Clinton the Palestinians' position on all the final status issues ahead of the deadline to draft a "Framework Agreement" with Israel on them by 15 February. Barak's move may thus be read as a tacit warning to the Palestinian leader not to jeopardise the third phase hand-over by being overly critical in his meeting with Clinton about Israel's ongoing settlement policies in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
But there are other reasons why Barak -- for now -- would want to keep the third phase up his sleeve. Recent weeks have witnessed numerous rumours as to what regions Israel would include in the third phase redeployment. This is an especially important decision for the PA as this phase, unlike the previous ones, involves the transfer of territory to its "full" rather than partial "civilian" control. The current map for the transfer includes Palestinian towns and villages in the Hebron hills as well as some land north of Ramallah. But the areas much of the PA leadership -- including perhaps Arafat -- truly cherishes are the "eastern" villages of Abu Dis, Azzariyyah and Al-Ram that border Jerusalem, if only to enlarge the PA's toehold in or near the putative Palestinian capital ahead of the final status talks.
Addressing the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on 17 January, Barak said he did not "forsee" Abu Dis being included in the third phase hand-over. Yet in postponing the redeployment three weeks, he is essentially combining it with the discussions on the Framework Agreement. And the trade-off would appear to be clear. The more amenable Arafat is to a text of Israel's liking on the final status issues the more "quality" lands he will receive in the third phase and in the final third redeployment that is to follow.
It is a trade many Palestinian analysts fear Arafat could accept, since (in the words of one) "he often has difficulty saying 'no' to the Israelis, especially when faced alone with both them and the Americans", as he will be in Washington. Wary of such combined pressure, the Fatah Central Council on 15 January "recommended" that the PLO's long adjourned Central Council meeting reconvene on Arafat's return from the US and Europe. And the next day Palestine National Council Speaker Salim Zanoun announced that the PLO Central Council would indeed meet in Gaza on 2 February to discuss "the embodiment of Palestinian sovereignty on our national soil" (i.e. whether and when to declare a Palestinian state).
Thus, as Arafat flies to Washington to meet Clinton and perhaps Barak, Palestinians will be watching to which constituency he lends his ear -- the organisation he heads or to the Israeli and American leaders to whom he is now the anointed "partner in peace". Barak is gambling on the latter, grounded on the experience that "Arafat tends to focus on the crumbs at the expense of the big picture", as described by one Palestinian analyst. For in accepting such crumbs, Arafat not only helps maintain the Israeli and American fiction that Barak can maintain simultaneous "progress" on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks of the peace process. More importantly, he continues the Oslo mode of bartering, in which the Palestinians are invited to trade the trees of the Hebron hills and perhaps Abu Dis for Israel's consolidating grip on the woods and lands of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
