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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 The great divides
By Graham UsherBreaking his own vow of silence on the subject, US President Bill Clinton said on 16 July that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations at Camp David were the "hardest thing" he has ever had to deal with. "What's really troubling," he told the New York Daily News, "is that [the leaders] know if they make an agreement, half their constituencies will be angry with them."
This is to put it mildly, and explains both Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat's clear avowals of their "red lines" even before they boarded the plane to Washington. Clinton was less forthcoming about the cause of the leaders' fear of their "constituencies." For that would be to admit that the peoples they represent remain utterly opposed over what constitutes a fair compromise to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The gaps may be wide at Camp David; they are wider still in Israel/Palestine.
And they have been starkly revealed over the last week by the various activities in Israel and the occupied territories accompanying the summit. Among Palestinians, there have been rallies and marches ostensibly in support of their leadership at Camp David, but always laced with warnings lest it deviate from the established Palestinian national consensus, especially on the cardinal issues of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Sometimes the emphasis is on loyalty -- like at the "town meeting" on 12 July at Orient House asserting that east Jerusalem will be the capital of a future Palestinian state. "I am sure our Palestinian leadership will not accept any kind of compromise on Jerusalem," said PLO executive member for the city, Faisal Al-Husseini, at the meeting." It is for Israel to accept that the 4 June 1967 lines are the borders of the Palestinian state, and that includes Jerusalem."
Only still photos of informal sessions held between Clinton, Arafat and Barak at Camp David were provided by the White House amid a tight media blackout
(photos: AFP, Reuters)Sometimes the emphasis is on warning. While some 500 or so Palestinian notables gathered at Orient House, 1,000 or so refugees marched from Deheishah camp to Bethlehem's Manger Square, brandishing keys and deeds to their homes across the Green Line. A flyer distributed on route in the name of the Popular Organisations of the Camps of the South (West Bank) was blunt in its message. "The refugees tell the Camp David clique do not bother to return if you are bringing us anything less than the right to return," it said.
The same dialectic between solidarity and threat can be seen on the Israeli side. The start of the summit on 11 July woke Israel's Peace Now movement from its long slumber under Barak, galvanising rallies and motorcades that were mostly uncritical in support of their leader and nebulous in their desire for peace. But these were dwarfed by the protests against the summit by the Israeli right, including setting up new hill-top settlements on the West Bank and hunger strikers outside the prime minister's office in west Jerusalem.
For the settlers -- who remain the foot soldiers of Israel's national camp -- the high-point was a mass demonstration on 16 July at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. There they heard their increasingly lacklustre leader, Ariel Sharon, proclaim, "We are for peace," but not "a bad peace, a peace of the moment. We must stop speaking about what we will give up and speak about what Arafat will give up. I want to hear from Camp David that Arafat has given up east Jerusalem and the Old City, that he gave up the Jordan Valley, the airspace over Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]."
The crowd roared its approval beneath a canopy of Israeli flags and banners screaming "Barak will lose the land!" Yet their consternation simply disguises the reality that the difference between Barak and Sharon is one of degree rather than kind.
Like much of the Israeli left, Barak believes that Israel is now strong enough to make peace with the Palestinians. There are conditions of course: Jerusalem must remain under Jewish sovereignty, most of the settlers must be annexed in blocs to Israel proper and there can be no right of return for the refugees save for a few thousands under the rubric of "family reunification." Sharon's vision is a mixture of Biblical promise and military fear, requiring not only the annexation of all the settlements to Israel but also the Jordan Valley.
But the practical difference between them boils down to how much land in the West Bank they would cede to the Palestinians. For Barak, it is between 80-90 per cent; for Sharon, between 50-60 per cent. Neither has any time for the international legitimacy that underwrites the Palestinian question and no time whatsoever for the national aspirations voiced by the Palestinians at Orient House and in Deheishah, and just about everywhere else they can be found.
The one exception to this mismatching of aspirations came at a demonstration of Israel's Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) movement at Abu Dis on 15 July. The group chose the spot partly to protest Barak's delay in transferring the village to Palestinian control but mainly because of the splendid view it commands of Arab east Jerusalem. Led by the veteran Israeli peace activist, Uri Avneri, the main message was that Jerusalem must become the capital of two peoples. It was the only joint Palestinian-Israeli action all week. There were about 50 people who attended. At "the mother of all demonstrations" in Tel Aviv, there were 150,000.
