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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 August 2000 Issue No. 496 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 August 2000 Issue No. 496
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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 A role without a hero
By Hassan Nafaa *
As the peace process nears the moment of truth, all the unresolved issues seem to crowd in at once, clamouring for attention. They may serve to remind the parties that little has been done over the years.
The great urge to keep the peace process alive, even through artificial respiration, at any price, has been a costly enterprise. The parties went to great lengths, inventing new ways and means to conceal or gloss over facts, and to circumvent or postpone decisions instead of addressing and eliminating them once and for all. In the early stages of the peace process, theatrical effects may have been justifiable or even desirable (for technical or psychological reasons). Yet continuing to conduct the peace process as a show in the precious moments that remain is far too risky. Instead, each party must brace itself for battle, draw on its energy reserves, and play to win.
Ever since the beginning of this rigmarole, the Arab team has said that it was aiming at a draw. The Arabs assumed the Israelis felt the same, since only a fair deal would be acceptable to those calling for revenge. The Israelis plunged into the game -- played on their turf, to hordes of their cheering fans -- bent on winning. Theirs would be the lion's share, but even that depended on the game and the surprises their adversary held in stock.
On the political scene, the peace settlement began when the Arabs realised, after the October War, that a historical reconciliation with Israel was both necessary and feasible. This idea was based on the assumption that a realistic, fair compromise was possible. The Arabs would relinquish certain conditions (demands for a secular state or even recourse to the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution for the partition of Palestine) in return for Israel's withdrawal from all land occupied after the 1967 War, including East Jerusalem, and a solution to the refugee problem. The Arabs considered such a compromise to conform in letter and spirit with Resolution 242, considered the terms of reference for a settlement. Israel, however, had and still has a totally different idea of a compromise settlement. Israel considered all Arab lands occupied after the 1967 War, particularly Palestinian land, as liberated Jewish land, or at the very best disputed land.
A compromise solution for Israel is not based on the partition of historical Palestine, therefore, not even taking the Palestinian boundaries of 1967 as a reference (rather than the boundaries set out in 1947). Rather, it entails the partition of the area occupied in 1967. In other words, Israel's concept of the settlement means to pursue the annexation of land and to add new areas occupied during the war it calls "preventive." This is the essence of Israel's interpretation of Security Council Resolution 242, an interpretation that radically violates international law and the will of the international community. Israel has never been ready to exchange occupied land for peace. Despite the relative differences in the positions of Israeli leaders on the area to be "relinquished" in return for Israel's security, no Israeli official has, to this day, ever mentioned Israel's preparedness to withdraw to the 1967 lines.
Arab states have built their negotiating positions on the assumption of a possible change in Israeli policy rather than on the reality of this policy. A structural distortion, therefore, has always been at the root of the negotiations. The minimum of the Arabs' legitimate rights -- that is, the recovery of land occupied in 1967 -- has been converted during negotiations into the most the Arabs can hope for. On the negotiating table, maximum Israeli rights -- the recognition of Israel as a state within the 1967 borders -- has become the least Israel can accept. Israel has manipulated the negotiations from the vantage point of the victorious, whereas the Arabs have been negotiating from their debilitated position as the defeated party. As a result, there is no agreement on destination, nor a mutually acceptable interpretation of the terms of reference. Neither the assumption that the Arabs would accept less than their legitimate rights, nor the assumption that Israel would concede to Arab demands, was realistic.
Nonetheless, Arabs and Israelis alike plunged into the peace process, each hoping to win. The Arabs believed the Americans would pressure Israel, while the Israelis relied on their own strength and ability to impose their policy. The parties' endeavours to "manage the process" revealed the weakness and ineffectiveness not only of the American role, but of the Israeli role as well, despite its guarantee of US support. This fact has been brought to light by the actions and reactions that have riddled the peace process.
Israel interpreted Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in the light of Arab reactions. It was taken as a sign of weakness in the Arab front rather than a genuine initiative by the largest Arab state to reach an honourable settlement. Israel was therefore tempted to conclude an agreement with Egypt more to eliminate Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict than to reach an agreement based on mechanisms capable of leading to a comprehensive settlement. From this perspective, Israel exhibited relative flexibility in its settlement with Egypt, but appeared rigid in the talks with Palestinians. What ensued was a peace treaty that was officially accepted in Egypt and a framework agreement for a Palestinian settlement that did not include the Palestinians, rejected by the people of Egypt and by governments and peoples in all Arab countries. As a result, Egypt was isolated from the events that subsequently took place at the local, regional and international levels, eventually leading to Sadat's assassination in October 1981.
Sadat was assassinated at a time when Arab attention was focused on the Iran-Iraq war. Israel had seized the opportunity to launch a number of attacks on Lebanon in a bid to impose a settlement on its own terms on the Arab East. In fact, by laying siege to Beirut and expelling the Palestinians from Lebanon in 1982, Israel almost succeeded in implementing its plan and establishing an allied regime in the south of Lebanon in May 1983. Israel's muscle-flexing, however, was soon to arouse Arab resentment of its hegemony. The Egyptians refused to normalise relations, and Egypt's new leadership nurtured the same sentiments. As a result, the peace with Israel was left to freeze, and indeed metamorphosed into nothing more than a "new cease-fire" or a cold peace. Then the Lebanese resistance, reinforced by Iranian-Syrian support, brought the collapse of the 1983 agreement and sparked the popular liberation war in the south. The Intifada found unexpected support in the West Bank and Gaza, while the "1948 Arabs" (who did not leave Palestine in 1948), joined forces to keep the Palestinian people and its cause alive as the major party in the conflict (although its leadership had been forced to move to new headquarters in Tunisia).
While Israel agreed to participate in the Madrid conference, held in the wake of the Gulf War, it was soon evident that its acceptance was somewhat forced. Israel was bent on "negotiating for negotiation's sake" rather than negotiating to reach a comprehensive peace. At that time, the Israeli government seemed to be moving in a direction opposite to that of the "new world order" forged by the Gulf War. The way was paved for Rabin to seize power, reach out to the Palestinian Authority and bring about the major breakthrough in the "peace process." The Oslo Accord signed in 1993, after secret negotiations with the PLO, showed the PLO had entered into direct negotiations with Israel, which made a final agreement with Jordan possible. But subsequent events showed that the breakthrough was intended for tactical purposes only, and did not reflect any real shift in the positions of the negotiating parties, particularly the Israelis. Israel had accepted limited compromises in the hope of halting the Intifada, and pitting one Arab party against another as it pursued the various peace tracks, with the aim of generating chaos for the Arab negotiators and driving the Arabs to rush to make more compromises. The PLO, on the other hand, signed an ambiguous and porous agreement in order to assert its own legitimacy as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and to secure for itself a position from which to start the gradual process of building the Palestinian state. The Oslo agreement, however, aroused within Israeli society reactions similar to those triggered by Camp David throughout the Arab world. Oslo killed Rabin and placed the ball in right-wing Israel's court.
When Peres attempted to accommodate the setback expected after Rabin's death, he misread the signs, and lost the momentum for peace. He sparked the "Grapes of Wrath" operation to attain a cheap victory in Lebanon, believing it would secure him the votes of right-wingers, but it backfired and precipitated his fall. Netanyahu was voted in on the pledge to guarantee both security and land. Since Israel is powerless to obtain both, it was expected that Netanyahu would fail to deliver, and that his supporters would abandon him gradually. Early general elections revealed a shattered and depressed society. Against this backdrop, the majority of the Israeli electorate gave their votes to the man who had promised to maintain Israel's unity. But Barak found the task almost impossible. He rallied the fragments of Israeli society, and established a broad coalition to embark on the peace process. But when it came to action, he resorted to obsolete tricks of pitting one track against another, and escalated military operations against Lebanon. Barak may have wasted precious time before he discovered that attempting to maintain a broad coalition for his government damaged the peace process, and that his policy would ultimately fail to bring peace, or even unity within Israel. He therefore found himself compelled to withdraw from Lebanon under disastrous conditions, while the Lebanese resistance emerged victorious . At every step, Barak was blackmailed by his closest associates. When Camp David II failed, his government seemed doomed to collapse. Perhaps the Knesset's summer recess saved the day...
Barak still has three months to go, no doubt a decisive period for his political career as well as for Israel's future, and possibly the future of the region as a whole. He has extremely limited options. If elections take place before a settlement is reached, he is sure to lose, as the chances of forging an agreement on the basis of his notorious "nays" to guarantee a landslide victory have become almost nil. According to traditional political and partisan calculations, the last option open to Barak to prolong his political life is to establish a national unity government or to revive the old coalition. But such an option will certainly lead to the freezing of the peace process until further notice, and possibly forever. It will make Barak a hostage to the coalition, vulnerable to continued blackmail by its members and without a chance of any substantial achievement to guarantee him success in subsequent elections.
If Barak wishes to contribute effectively to peacemaking, he will have to make the necessary compromises in terms of land for peace. The agreement of the Israeli population must be secured through a referendum. He can then go back to his people with the agreement and tell them frankly how much he was able to obtain. There is no other alternative, and the violence in the region could drag for another century. Barak must choose, and bring his people to the test.
Such a scenario may seem unrealistic, since Barak possesses neither the insight nor the courage required. In addition, the society that claims to embody the Zionist dream may by its very nature be unprepared for a settlement dictated by reason or incapable of producing a statesman of calibre. However, the current international and regional situation is so agitated that no settlement imposed by the US, the Arabs or even by Israel will be sustainable. Peace, on the other hand, can be established by Israel alone, since the Arabs have had more than their share of compromises.
Obviously, the US has no will independent of Israel's. If Israeli society is able to produce a rational leader who can save Israel from itself, peace is possible. There is a role waiting to be filled -- a hero's role. For the time being, only Barak has stepped forward. But can he really handle it?
* The writer is head of Cairo University's Political Science Department.
