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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 third way
By Graham UsherThe latest trip to the region by US Special Envoy Dennis Ross passed with all the excitement of a ship in the night. By the end of his four-day stay most Israeli commentators seemed as interested in the tourist trips Ross and his family made to Jerusalem's Old City as in the discussions he held with Israelis and Palestinians over its political fate.
Nor was the lack of concern surprising. No sooner had Ross touched down than he made it clear that he was not bringing "new ideas" to break the impasse in the Oslo process caused by the failure of the Camp David summit last month. Rather, "our focus is on making a judgement as to how both sides are working and whether or not the differences that exist can be overcome," he said on 17 August.
The immediate answer he received from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was that there was "no point convening another summit" unless there are "signs of positive change in the Palestinian position." Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Mohamed Dahlan told Ross much the same thing, but for "Palestinian" read "Israeli."
Yet it is clear the longer the impasse continues, the harder the positions of "both sides" are becoming. It was Barak who first upped the ante by predicating Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state on an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. "If the Palestinian leadership is truly prepared to deal with the challenge of setting up a Palestinian state and solving the plight of its people," he told a meeting of military academy graduates on 17 August, "it must understand that the condition for it is ending the conflict with Israel."
It was left to Yasser Arafat to spell out to the Israeli leader that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not and never has been about Palestinian statehood, but about occupied territories, international law and, of course, Jerusalem. "Before the conflict can be ended, the most important issue of Jerusalem [must be resolved], which is important not only to the Palestinian people, but also to the Arab nation and to the Christians and Muslims," he said in Gaza on 19 August.
Arafat's comments were followed by hard-hitting statements on Jerusalem and the refugees from the Palestinian Cabinet on 20 August and, unusually, from the Palestinian Authority Cabinet Secretary, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman. Interviewed on Voice of Palestine radio, he warned that once "we begin implementing our sovereignty [over the occupied territories] the conflict will reach new levels." For then "Israelis who are present on Palestinian territory will become hostages, Israeli settlements will be isolated and will face a real threat."
This is rhetoric of course, but the temper of Abdel-Rahman's outburst is a measure of how bruised the Palestinian leadership is feeling of late. In a round trip covering 26 countries in as many days, Arafat was dealt cards no better than those he held at the outset. The view of virtually every leader with whom he "consulted" was that while the Palestinians had the "right" to a state, this should only be realised through negotiations and certainly not declared against the express wishes of Israel and the Americans.
JIsraeli troops handcuff a Palestinian who scuffled with Jewish settlers before arresting him in the West Bank town of Hebron on Saturday. Fighting between Palestinians and Jewish settlers was sparked when Israeli police accused a Palestinian taxi driver of striking a settler boy
(photo: AP)
It is this international consensus that Barak hopes will make Arafat "see sense" and "discuss the ideas that came up at Camp David, particularly those relating to Jerusalem." It is the Palestinian consensus that those ideas lead only to Israeli sovereignty over the Old City and the abandonment of the refugees' right of return and risk Arafat being accused of treason by his own people and apostasy by the Islamic world.
Caught between such undesirable choices, Arafat's preferred posture is to wait. His first stop will be a meeting of the Jerusalem Committee in Rabat on 28 August, where he hopes an Arab-Islamic consensus on Jerusalem will be promulgated as effectively as US President Bill Clinton has promulgated the Israeli consensus. Then there is the millennium gathering of the UN's General Assembly on 6 September where Clinton is set to meet both Arafat and Barak to "assess" the possibilities of another summit this side of the US presidential elections.
The outcome of these meetings will colour the discussions on declaring a Palestinian state to be held by the PLO's Central Council on 8 and 9 September. It is almost certain that these will not result in a Palestinian declaration on 13 September, the deadline for the final status negotiations as set by last year's Wye agreement. But there is also a growing sense -- including within Arafat's Fatah movement -- that the status quo in the occupied territories cannot hold. "On 13 September we will declare the end of [Oslo's] interim period, the end of 'self rule'," says Fatah leader and PLO Central Council member Sakher Habash.
Other Fatah activists are talking of readying Palestinians for statehood not simply through symbolic gestures like the upgrading of PLO embassies but via elections for national and local institutions in the West Bank and Gaza to "achieve popular sovereignty as the basis of our nation." It is a proactive strategy with which many independent Palestinians and opposition factions concur, regardless of when or even if the state is declared.
"It is not just a question of declaring a state," says Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi. "What we need to do is embody statehood by building institutions and by taking concrete steps in terms of a constitution and elections. We have to get beyond looking at statehood as a political manoeuvre."
It remains to be seen if Arafat will go beyond manoeuvres and for once allow his people to wrest the political initiative from the hands of Israel, the US and the "international community" -- or whether he will stay true to type and wait.
