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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Driving the hardest bargain
By Sharif Elmusa *As the Palestinian Authority negotiates with Israel the borders of what appears to be an emergent Palestinian state, it is well for its negotiators to remember that the Zionist movement has always approached the land question pragmatically and with ambiguity. Irrespective of plans and pronouncements, that movement and, subsequently, Israel both accepted less territory than they had originally demanded; occupied what they could when the opportunity presented itself; and kept open their future options. Their actions were governed by political, physical, and strategic dictates.
In 1919, the World Zionist Organisation lobbied the Paris Peace Conference to adopt an ambitious map of Palestine where Jews would be allowed to immigrate and settle. The map included the Negev desert; the headwaters of the Jordan River, especially Mount Hermon (which they called the "Father of the Waters"); the last stretch of the Litani River after it bends westward toward the Mediterranean; and an eastern border along the Hijaz Railway line, which ran north-south east of the Jordan River. The boundaries were justified on economic, hydrological, and security grounds. Religion and history were also summoned for the task, and Palestine's borders were described in Biblical terms, "from Dan to Beersheba." If one can tailor a "designer" state, why not draw optimum borders that would accommodate the many perceived imperatives?
Britain and France, the two powers presiding over the Conference, drew a somewhat smaller map of Palestine, which was to be placed under British Mandate by the League of Nations. The map did not include Mount Hermon or the Litani River; and the eastern border coincided with the Jordan River itself. The Zionist leaders found it politic to accede to the decision of the two powers, and to confine Jewish settlements within the demarcated borders. But even here, Jewish settlements before 1948 were limited mainly to the plains of the Jordan Valley and the coast, areas with irrigable land and sufficient water resources that also enjoyed territorial continuity. It is striking how the location of the settlements that were established even by the mid-1930s already had defined in an embryonic form the eastern borders of the Israeli state. Jewish immigrants did not settle in the hilly regions of what would become later on the West Bank, or in the Jordan Valley below the Baysan district. Their avoidance of these parts probably stemmed from the harshness of the climate in the lower Jordan Valley and, in the rugged mountain terrain, from the low economic returns of agriculture that depended on rain water and from the lack of security assets (transportation in particular). The settlement patterns attest to the pragmatism with which the Zionists handled the land question, an approach that continued later.
Thus the Zionist leadership accepted in 1947 the United Nations partition plan for Palestine, which, although it gave the Jews much more territory than they owned at the time (six per cent of the country), was much smaller than British-mandated Palestine. The Zionist leaders worked on the premise that they could go beyond it when the opportunity arose. Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, responded to the critics who opposed the plan because it had left out the Negev and impaired "the country's wholeness" by saying that the Negev was not going to go away and that in Biblical times the borders of Palestine contracted and expanded. The thrust of these remarks, according to Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, is that they represented both a nod to the balance of power and "a hint of other borders in the future." Indeed, since 1947 Israel's boundaries have expanded and contracted, sometimes in modest increments and at other times in leaps and bounds.
It was not until the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 that Israel was called upon to begin defining its borders in precise terms. The borders with Egypt were demarcated in accordance with the international line of 1923, and Israel removed the Jewish settlements it had built in the Sinai desert. A similar thing happened with Jordan's territory as a result of the 1994 peace treaty between it and Israel. In both cases, Israel behaved pragmatically and gave back the territory it had captured by military force in exchange for peace. In recent days, Israel relinquished the area in Lebanon it had occupied for 18 years without even a peace agreement because it could no longer sustain the human losses inflicted on its forces by the Lebanese resistance, even depicting its disorganised retreat as a victory. There is no doubt that Israel will eventually trade the Golan Heights for a peace accord with Syria.
Why should the Palestinian case be an exception? It is argued that Israel views the West Bank (including Jerusalem) differently, because of security and historical considerations, as well as established facts (i.e., the Jewish settlements). Yet the historical record indicates that the Zionist movement, for example, by accepting the 1947 UN Partition Plan, had acceded to less than the putatively biblical Dan-to-Beersheba boundaries. For security, it has made mutually acceptable arrangements on each Arab border, and has not in the final analysis insisted on land retention. Even in the course of Israel's negotiations of West Bank and Gaza redeployment and surrender of territory back to the Palestinians, it did not appear that there was a pre-determined Israeli position. Its stance was fluid and changed even under the right-wing Likud government. Indeed, it would seem that much was ad hoc in the redeployment agreements. Israel, of course, sought to extract as many concessions as it could, and the Palestinian leadership justified its own acceptance of some unfavourable terms as transitional.
In the upcoming stage, however, the Palestinian Authority must not accept boundaries that do not conform to the international border lines. It must not lose its nerve, but rather drive a hard bargain until Israel relents as it did on other Arab fronts. To be able to bargain solidly, the PA must do things many Palestinians have demanded repeatedly. It has to prepare itself in an expert and professional manner for the negotiations, and to deploy talented and credible teams. While preparedness does not guarantee a favourable outcome, it is doubtful that such an outcome can be realised without full mastery of the complex issues and the linkages among them. More important, the PA needs to improve its bargaining position, first and foremost by being able genuinely to mobilise the Palestinian people; this can only be achieved if it initiates a process of institutional reform that lifts its sagging popularity. Secret negotiations by a weak PA are likely to result in flawed agreements; to say that there would be secret negotiations but no hidden accords is disingenuous. Secrecy might not be so perilous if the PA were sufficiently prepared and enjoyed the confidence of its populace.
If the PA is unable to restore the Palestinian territory, that would be not just because of Israel's intransigence; it would also reflect the PA's own failures. There is no reason for the PA to fail; the Palestinian people are no less willing or able to liberate their land than their Arab brethren.
*The writer is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.
