Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Clinton's unlikely bid

Graham Usher

With the last day of his second term now over, President Bill Clinton today hosts Yasser Arafat in Washington in a dogged pursuit of the foreign policy goal that he has most craved but which has most eluded him -- a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The chances of that happening are perhaps lower now than at any point in his eight-year presidency.

Not that Clinton is going to give up trying. According to White House officials, the purpose of Clinton's meetings with Arafat today and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday is to assess whether there is "enough communality [between them] to get back to the peace process". The Palestinians too insist that Clinton remains the president "between now and 20 January 2001 and that is the period we are concentrating on," in the words of PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat.

But, less publicly, most Palestinian leaders see Clinton as a lame duck who, after the vote on 7 November, is now probably dead in the water. The only hope is that, unencumbered by the domestic constraints imposed by the electoral races of his heir Al Gore and wife Hillary, he may become more amenable to Palestinian needs and restrain his Israeli partisanship that has been particularly apparent since the Camp David summit in July.

According to Erekat, Arafat will be raising three main issues at his talks with President Mubarak in Cairo and Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Wednesday and thence to the meeting in Washington.

The first is to sound out support for the Palestinians' call that 2,000 UN soldiers be dispatched to the occupied territories to provide international protection for the Palestinians, 156 of whom have died at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers precisely for the want of such protection.

When it comes to Washington, Arafat surely knows the answer before he steps off the plane. It was told to Erekat by Madeleine Albright last weekend in Washington and stated publicly earlier this week by Barak. "The placement of forces or international observers cannot contribute to a solution of the conflict and a decrease of violence [in the occupied territories], and may in fact contribute to more complications," said Barak. And anyway, he added, "neither Israel nor the world should be in the business of rewarding Palestinian violence".

There may be more mileage in the second issue, the composition of the "fact-finding committee" to look into the causes of the recent violence, as called for by the Sharm Al-Sheikh summit on 16 October. The Americans initially wanted former Secretary of State Warren Christopher to head the panel, together with European Union representative Javier Solana, Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjorn Jagland and former Turkish president Sulieman Demirel. The Palestinians blocked Christopher and wanted former South African president Nelson Mandela. But the general view is that the committee's make-up can and will be agreed. The point, says Erekat, "is to activate it as soon as possible".

But the real sore of Clinton's "communality" quest is likely to be over the terms of future negotiations if and when they are resumed. The basic view of Barak is that no matter how long the Intifada rages, and no matter how much the human and economic cost, sooner or later Arafat will return to the negotiating table under the same conditions and facing the same "ideas" as obtained at Camp David.

According to the Palestinians' public position, neither the ideas nor the conditions are any longer acceptable. Rather, they want to end the US diplomatic monopoly of the process by "balancing" it with the participation of countries like Russia and Egypt and powers like the EU and the UN. Nor do they want any further Oslo-like negotiations as to what "constitutes" UN resolutions 242 and 338. "We want mechanisms so that 242 and 338 can be implemented," says Erekat. "In other words, we want to end the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem".

If Arafat remains true to these positions, it is difficult to see how his Washington meeting can end in anything other than failure, since Clinton (no less than Barak) wants a return to the Camp David and Oslo formats. Nor is Arafat's room for manoeuvre likely to grow in the weeks ahead.

Apart from the pressure of the Intifada, next week he has meetings of the Islamic Conference and the PLO Central Council. At the former, he will seek, and probably get, an Islamic commitment to the question of Jerusalem every bit as strong as the Arab commitment he received from the Arab summit last month. And from the Central Council there will almost certainly be calls to continue the Intifada and that there can be no peace without Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 lines, Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the right of return for the refugees. These are his main cards in the negotiations with the US, not with this administration, but with the next.

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Related stories:
Whither Yasser Arafat?
Blaming the victim 2 - 8 November 2000
The Intifada this time 2 - 8 November 2000
See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
Intifada special 19 - 25 October 2000
Palestine pages 12 - 18 October 2000

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