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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 July 2000 Issue No. 491 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 July 2000 Issue No. 491
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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 Letters Saving face, wasting time
By Abdel-Qader Yassin *Before climbing aboard the El Al aircraft that left Ben Gurion airport on 10 June, bound for Washington via Cairo, a somewhat vulnerable Ehud Barak reiterated his five famous nays (to the division of Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements, the repatriation of refugees, the 4 June 1967 lines and the establishment of the Palestinian state).
Barak's vulnerability was in sharp focus as six of his cabinet ministers (representing three political parties) resigned just days before his trip to Camp David. Their resignation emboldened the Likud opposition bloc to call for a vote of no confidence, which resulted in 54 votes against and 53 in favour of Barak, with six members absent from the voting session and the seven Arab Knesset members abstaining. In other words, Barak's government was saved by a miracle.
The miracle is to be attributed to the Arab deputies, who turned down Azmi Bishara's request to vote against the government as a means of preventing Barak from procrastinating and blackmailing the Palestinians at Camp David.
The second part of the miracle consists in the 10 Meretz deputies' vote in favour of Barak's government, from which the party's ministers had resigned a few days before. In other words, Meretz voted in favour of Barak's policies and did not switch to the opposition merely because it had quit the government.
Arafat, on the other hand, was not without a few trump cards of his own. It is true that the Palestinian decision-makers had been shackled since the signing of the Oslo Accord on 13 March 1993. The Palestinian-Israeli agreements that followed constitute a systematic series of compromises, in which Palestinian demands were chipped away systematically. This seems to indicate that the ceiling would be drastically lowered once again in Camp David II.
For the past decade, Arafat has been telling himself that his enormous compromises were justified by the firm stand he would take in the final status talks about the core issues in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (Jerusalem, the settlements, the 4 June 1967 borders and the refugees). Now it is his turn to say no in his confrontation with Barak.
This is the final test for Barak and Arafat. Instead of drawing on Arab support and the profound relevance of the Palestinian question in the Muslim world, Arafat mobilised his humble resources, bringing to Camp David a large Palestinian delegation representing Palestinian groups from across the spectrum. Such a variety of political views has not been represented since the Madrid Conference in 1991. In fact, in Oslo and elsewhere, Arafat was satisfied with the team that had cooked up the Palestinian terms.
The large delegation accompanying Arafat is a buffer allowing him to withstand the anticipated US-Israeli pressure. There are two possible explanations. Either Arafat hoped the Americans would think that he was acting normally (ie showing willingness to compromise); or he believed that bringing the key figures of the Palestinian resistance along would corner the Palestinian opposition and force it to take responsibility for the terms reached in Camp David. In this way, Arafat thought, he would pre-empt any subsequent objection to the agreement.
In a bid to foil Arafat's first tactic, the US administration deliberately isolated him from the rest of the Palestinian team. Barak was not subjected to the same measures, of course. The US administration permitted Israel's representative to hold a press conference about the ongoing negotiations, but denied the same right to the Palestinian representative. An American spokesman justified the US bias on the grounds that the Israeli representative would not leak the secrets of the negotiations.
When the three members of the PLO's Executive Committee (Taysir Khaled, Soliman Al-Najjab and Samir Ghosheh) arrived in Washington, no one was waiting for them. The television cameras captured them wandering around like lost souls. The US administration forbade the three men from joining the Palestinian team. Al-Najjab protested that they did not represent the Palestinian opposition and that the American authorities were confused as to their identity. While Ghosheh remained silent, Khaled announced that he was withdrawing in protest to the US's treatment of the Executive Committee members.
Certain analysts in the Palestinian Authority and the PLO believe that an agreement is already in place. As evidence, they cite the resignation of Yasser Abed Rabbo, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, some months ago in protest of the terms agreed upon during talks with Israel via a secret channel in Oslo. They also draw attention to Arafat's exclusion of Asaad Abdel-Rahman from the team of negotiators in a move resembling a dismissal from office. Abdel-Rahman is the member of the PLO's Executive Committee responsible for the refugee portfolio. Arafat also excluded Faisal Al-Husseini, also a member of the Executive Committee and the man responsible for the Jerusalem portfolio, the key issue in the ongoing negotiations in Camp David. On the other hand, he included elements with no competence or mandate in dealing with core issues, which raised fears of further compromises on Jerusalem and the refugee question.
The Camp David negotiations therefore appear arduous going for both parties involved, not to mention the one playing arbitrator. Bill Clinton is eager to see a concrete breakthrough that would qualify him for the Nobel peace prize, and enhance the Democrats' chances in the upcoming presidential elections. Barak is dreaming of an unprecedented victory by driving Arafat to declare the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict for all time. If that dream comes true, he will have outbid the extreme right's land grab and won security for Israel after a century of bloodshed and warfare. Arafat is unable to offer much, however, since even the most basic Palestinian aspirations have not been realised, namely: securing Arab Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the return of the refugees to their homes and the payment of compensation for the psychological damage and the material losses they have incurred since 1948; dismantling the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Israel's withdrawal to the 4 June 1967 borders.
The negotiating parties and the arbitrator may yet find some way of saving face, in the form of a "framework agreement" that would take the four controversial issues off the table until further notice. A Palestinian state could be established by the end of the year, giving the Israelis a chance to create new realities on the ground, which would be more difficult if not virtually impossible to reverse. This will probably occur in the case of Jerusalem and the settlements. In Oslo, the negotiators decided to leave Jerusalem and the settlements alone, introducing no additions or amendments, which gave Israel a free hand in expanding its settlements and tightening its grip. As a result, the two controversial issues became even more complicated, as Israel proceeded to implement the traditional Zionist "status quo" policy.
* The writer is a Palestinian political analyst.
