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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
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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 Creative solutions
By Lamis AndoniOn the eve of Camp David II President Bill Clinton warned that "neither side [the Palestinians or the Israelis] can achieve 100 per cent of its goals." While this statement generally holds true for a solution to any conflict, in practice Washington has been promoting a vision for a historic compromise that would perpetuate Israeli dominance and curtail Palestinian freedom.
The American interpretation advocates partial solutions that legitimise the status quo. These proposals substitute a comprehensive solution based on legitimate Palestinian rights. To achieve this objective a so-called "framework agreement" would essentially legitimise the fait accompli created by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- and consequently Israeli control over the emerging Palestinian entity -- and establish new terms of reference that would render international conventions and UN resolutions obsolete.
If the Palestinians accept these two basic principles, the framework agreement would effectively seal the conflict and end their historic claims, even before crucial details concerning the status of all of the core issues are addressed.
Indeed the secrecy imposed by the US on the Camp David negotiations, combined with the virtual isolation of the delegations, underscored Washington's eagerness to seize an "opportune moment" to reach a formula that will end the Palestinian political, moral and legal challenge to Israel.
Such logic seems to defy the deep and wide gap between the Israeli and Palestinian positions on all issues, and the apparent absurdity of solving a five-decade problem in such a short time. But the US was not seeking to bridge the gap but to redefine the core issues away from their historic focus on national and political rights and international law.
A careful reading of US statements suggests that American decision-makers believed the situation more conducive than ever for a compromise that reflected the skewed balance of power. This strategy appears to bank on a weak -- albeit crucial -- Yasser Arafat, and on Ehud Barak's readiness to accept some form of Palestinian entity. To this is added Clinton's personal rapport with both leaders, and his own "persuasion skills," as decried by his Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross. Equally important for this American vision is that after six years of the Oslo process, Israel has built new settlements and bypass roads, while demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, effectively drawing the parameters and limitations that would make up a fragmented Palestinian state.
Moreover, the US was not expecting the two sides to reach a detailed final settlement, but a framework agreement that lays the basis for a solution for all issues, ranging from the future status of the West Bank and Gaza, to the refugees, boundaries, water, the Israeli settlements, and East Jerusalem.
Such a framework was not meant to be of an interim nature. Rather, it was envisaged as providing the basis for detailed "resolution" to all the core issues. Under this scenario, the framework agreement would have served to replace United Nations resolutions and international conventions, preventing the Palestinians from seeking further redress in the future.
In recent months, US officials started to determine out the objectives and the conceptual basis for this framework agreement. In a recent briefing, a senior US official described the new landscape of compromise: "From the standpoint of the Israelis, they want to know that if they're doing something and they're making certain kinds of tough choices, that the pay-off for making them is that basically the claims are over. From the standpoint of the Palestinians, they're dealing with the reality that this is a process that hasn't fulfilled their aspirations and there's a lot of frustration."
Such a compromise requires a redefinition of the root cause of the conflict -- one that ignores Palestinian dispossession and Israeli occupation. Indeed, US officials have come up with a new concept -- "the problem of proximity" -- to explain the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. This is key to understanding the US position. "The problem of proximity" implies that the conflict is no longer about an illegal occupation of territories by one side, but simply a conflict between two neighboring communities living on the same piece of land, but unable to coexist.
Accordingly, any solution should be based on means to effect the separation of the communities in order to stop the friction. Under this American interpretation, the occupation ceases to be a factor or even a fact while the Israeli settlements just happen to be neighborhoods or even towns with a Jewish community. A solution based on this interpretation would automatically legitimise the settlements and accompanying security demands. Thus, the American vision is not only in line with Israeli official thinking, but also lays the conceptual basis for Barak's concept of "separation."
Accordingly, a Palestinian quasi-state will be merely a by-product of the necessity of separation, and allows Israel to impose its demands for limiting Palestinian sovereignty. Such thinking provides the conceptual basis that reduces the idea of a Palestinian state from that of an exercise of Palestinian self-determination to a perpetuation of Israeli power. Within this redefined context, Palestinians are not an indigenous people on their own land, but a community that simply happened to be there -- and a threat that should be contained to protect the bigger enveloping entity.
This way, a Palestinian "state" is not an affirmation of Palestinian legitimacy, but an entity based on the notion of proximity, a notion that would limit this entity's rights to seek an expansion of its territorial jurisdiction and of its sovereignty in the future. But more significantly, accepting such an emasculated state, that is not based on a free exercise of self-determination, would divide Palestinian demands and undermine the legal and legitimate basis for collective Palestinian rights. And this is precisely the crux of the American approach adopted at Camp David: present partial and fragmented solutions for the different core issues -- under the title of "creative solutions" -- that do not recognise the totality of Palestinian rights.
Such American and Israeli "solutions" would permanently destroy any basis for Palestinian collective rights. For even had the Palestinians accepted the principle of these partial solutions they would have been agreeing to new terms of reference -- effectively dispensing with international law, conventions and all pertinent UN resolutions.
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On compromise solutions 20 - 26 July 2000
