Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Desperate remedies

By Graham Usher

For the first time since the Camp David summit, Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak met on Monday at the Israeli leader's home in Kochav Yair -- reportedly built on land taken from a Palestinian now living as a refugee in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. By all accounts it was a "successful" encounter. They traded jokes and held a heart-to-heart chat on the veranda. According to PLO negotiator Nabil Shaath, it was the "best meeting" the two men had ever had.

This is presumably because nothing of substance was discussed. Bowing to American pressure, including a telephone call from President Clinton during the meeting, Arafat reaffirmed he would "maximise" the time remaining in the presidential term to reach an agreement. And, sure enough, within hours Israeli negotiators Shlomo Ben-Ami and Gilad Sher and their Palestinian peers, Saeb Erekat and Mohamed Dahlan, were dispatched to Washington for another round of talks.

These, initially, will be held separately with American mediators. The aim is to draft what, if any, understandings were reached at Camp David and, once in writing, see whether they can provide the basis for resumed negotiations and perhaps another trilateral summit between Arafat, Barak and Clinton.

But these talks had been agreed at the weekend and hardly needed an Arafat-Barak get-together to authorise them. A better key for understanding the need for the meeting was given by Palestinian negotiator Hassan Asfour just prior to its occurrence. "We need to calm down the political tension," he told Reuters on Monday. These tensions had been translated on the ground into increased stand-offs between Israeli and Palestinian military forces. On Sunday four Palestinians were injured in Gaza following a collision between Israeli and Palestinian vehicles outside the Netsarim settlement, triggering clashes around one of the most inflammatory locations in the occupied territories. The next day plainclothes Palestinian police breached "Israeli-controlled Hebron" in pursuit of wanted Palestinians. They were unceremoniously bundled back to "Palestinian-controlled Hebron" amid official Israeli complaints that the Palestinian Authority is "no longer in control of events."

Beyond this, the meeting may be seen as another of Barak's increasingly desperate remedies to shore up a political future that seems to be fast disappearing.

With the Knesset set to reconvene on 30 October, he remains the head of a minority government with not even a "narrow coalition" in sight. On Monday a Knesset committee endorsed for a second and third reading a "Basic Law" requiring an absolute majority of 61 Knesset members to make any change in Jerusalem's existing and annexed municipal borders. Moved by the Likud opposition, the aim is to scupper Barak's "big idea" at Camp David to "give" Palestinian sovereignty over several Palestinian villages on the perimeter of Jerusalem in exchange for Israel's recognised sovereignty over its heart, including the Old City.

If this slap was not hard enough, it was leaked on Tuesday that Israel's attorney-general had decided not to indict former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice. This effectively clears the way for Netanyahu's re-entry to the political arena.

Even in absentia, Netanyahu has become the anointed head of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls an emerging "neo-Zionist" coalition made of the settlers, orthodox Jews, Russian immigrants and the Mizrahi poor which, if not yet strong enough to bring down Barak, can certainly prevent him from making any meaningful decisions. According to the latest polls, Netanyahu is also leading Barak by three to five points.

Clinton, as he did at Camp David, will surely invoke Barak's disastrous domestic situation to press Arafat into making concessions on final status issues, above all on Jerusalem and the refugees. Arafat resisted this blackmail before; it remains to be seen if he will do so in the weeks ahead.

Hours before Arafat and Barak sat down together, Israel's acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami flew to Cairo and Amman to brief officials there on the next moves in the peace talks. "The idea behind the tour is to bring both [Egyptian and Jordanian] leaders into the process toward a comprehensive agreement," said an Israeli embassy spokeswoman in Cairo.

Ben-Ami discussed with President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Amr Moussa the issues of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees. Ben-Ami said that while Egyptian ideas "are always welcome," the talks at present are focused between Palestinians, Israelis and Americans.

Moussa denied that negotiators were seeking an interim agreement, leaving the most controversial issues, such as Jerusalem, for future negotiations. "This notion is incorrect because postponing any items means leaving open-ended issues, which is unacceptable," Moussa said.

Ben-Ami also said that postponement "is not on the agenda right now. What is on the agenda is a sincere attempt by us, and I hope by the Palestinians as well, to exhaust the possibility of reaching a framework agreement on all pending issues. Now we have to take the tough decisions."

Additional reporting from Cairo by Nevine Khalil

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