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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Two fronts, one cause
By Graham UsherA week can be a long time in politics. For Israel's one-year old Prime Minister Ehud Barak it can be an eternity.
It was only on 15 May that he decided to move forward a little on the Palestinian "track" of the peace process, belatedly transferring three villages bordering Jerusalem from partial to full Palestinian control and finally defying the threats emanating from the right flank of his coalition. Flushed with praise by Israel's more liberal commentators for this "courageous step", he had also acquired international support for his decision to withdraw unilaterally Israel's occupation of south Lebanon by July not despite but in "full cooperation" with the UN.
Finally, he was preparing to meet President Bill Clinton in Washington amid Israeli and Palestinian rumours of "progress" in the unofficial negotiations then being carried between them in Stockholm on reaching a Framework Agreement on the core issues of the conflict: Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements and water.
By 22 May, each one of these "advances" lay in ruins. On 21 May, Barak recalled his Internal Security Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and most trusted negotiator, Gilad Sher, from Sweden "in light of the situation in the [occupied] territories". He sent a stern message to Yasser Arafat that neither the three villages nor anything else would be transferred until and unless the Palestinian leader took active "measures" to stop the "violence" of his people in the West Bank and Gaza. Finally, he put off his trip to Washington since -- without material and negotiated progress with the Palestinians -- there is nothing to talk about, with Clinton or anyone else.
It is not difficult to fathom the cause of the change. The last week witnessed the worst violence in the occupied territories in four years. It also saw a major and sustained offensive by Hizbullah guerrillas in south Lebanon that, by 22 May, had forced most of the Shiite battalions of Israel's surrogate South Lebanese Army (SLA) to go over to the other side and about a third of the occupied zone slip from the SLA's and Israel's control.
A Palestinian demonstrating in the West Bank for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails
(photo: Reuters)Responding to a call for "two days of rage" in pursuit of the release of 1,650 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, on 19 May Israeli and Palestinian soldiers engaged in a ferocious gun-battle in Gaza, leaving 16 Palestinians and one Israeli wounded. The next day Palestinians again took to the streets not only for another day of solidarity with hunger striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails but also, in Ramallah, in protest at another Palestinian killed by Israeli gunfire, the fifth in as many days. These were followed by a wave of firebomb attacks on Israelis in Hebron, Ramallah and Jericho, where a two-year old Israeli settler girl was left severely burned.
It was this last incident that spurred Barak to call off the negotiations. He warned of "steps" Israel would take should Arafat not get a grip on his increasingly enraged people. The first of these came on 21 May with a rigorous new system of checkpoints imposed on Palestinian controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza and a ban on all Israeli and foreign nationals entering them. The pretext of course was "security". But the aim was to hurt the Palestinian Authority economically, especially in Jericho, whose Oasis casino (with 28 per cent PA share in the ownership) rakes in a cool $15 million a month, mostly from Israeli customers. But Barak was also setting down new ground rules in Lebanon.
On Saturday, Israeli aircraft destroyed ten tanks -- and, according to Israeli reports, killed three guerrillas -- at a base in the Beqaa Valley belonging to the radical Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). The ostensible reason for the strike were Israeli reports that the PFLP-GC was transferring tanks to Hizbullah for use in the war in the south.
But the real message was for Syria. The PFLP-GC may be a Palestinian militia but it has long been in Syria's charge. And the present working Israeli assumption is that should there be cross-border attacks on Israel after the withdrawal these are unlikely to come from Hizbullah in the name of liberating Lebanon. They will be done by dissident Palestinian groups like the PFLP-GC under the banner of Palestine and in the name of the right of Palestinian refugees to return.
One year after his election as Prime Minister, Barak is facing low-intensity wars on the two fronts where he pledged he would try to bring peace. But he is increasingly facing one cause, whether it is authentically invoked by Palestinians protesting in the West Bank and Gaza or less authentically used by the Syrians in Lebanon. That cause was underlined by no less a person than President Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, speaking on 21 May at Tel Aviv University where he had been awarded an honorary degree.
"Some may question the relevance of the Palestinian track, arguing that the Palestinians present no genuine military threat [to Israel] and that today's reality is preferable to tomorrow's costs of an uncertain peace," he said. "I profoundly disagree. The Palestinian issue still resonates from one end of the Arab world to the other, whose resolution is vital to help dry-up the emotional and ideological wellsprings of the Arab-Israeli conflict and to de-legitimise Arab hostility to Israel."
The events of the last week in the occupied territories and Lebanon underscore the truth of that judgement. The question of course is whether Israel, and indeed the Americans, are prepared not only to recognise that Palestine is "the core of the conflict", but to resolve it by addressing Palestinian rights on Jerusalem, refugees, borders and prisoners.
