Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

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Beyond the Intifada? (1)

By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

Any attempt to predict the outcome of the worst paroxysm of violence to convulse the Holy Land since the Madrid peace process entails defining the exact nature of the Intifada. Can it be characterised as a completely spontaneous uprising sparked off by frustration with the peace process, or is it, rather, a calculated game plan that was deliberately launched by one of the protagonists, either the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli occupying power? Does the Intifada reflect the total breakdown of the peace process and hence the need for a different type of relationship with Israel, which could include, among other things, the possibility of a new war in the region, albeit by accident or miscalculation? This worst-case scenario can no longer be altogether discounted: the Intifada cannot retain its spontaneous character indefinitely, but is bound, sooner or later, to lead either to a resumption of efforts to reach a settlement or to an escalation of violence that could plunge the region into a new round of military confrontation.

And if the Intifada is not a spontaneous expression of popular resistance by an occupied people, who is responsible for deliberately setting it off? According to the Israelis, it was engineered by the Palestinian Authority, which they accuse of sacrificing the lives of children for political purposes, in a cynical attempt to discredit Israel in the eyes of the world. But despite Israel's best efforts to sell this version of events to international public opinion, the widely accepted view is that the Intifada was sparked off by Ariel Sharon's visit to Al-Haram Al-Sharif on 28 September. Analysts explain Barak's failure to condemn this unjustified provocation, indeed, his connivance with the notoriously hawkish opposition leader (who was protected during the visit by some 2,000 Israeli soldiers provided by Barak), as a desperate measure aimed at appeasing his critics and deflecting attention from his failure to reach a viable settlement at Camp David.

High expectations were pinned on the Camp David summit, but Barak returned empty-handed. Not only that: his performance at the summit betrayed confusion and political bankruptcy, prompting a number of parties making up his already shaky coalition to pull out altogether. To ensure majority support in the Knesset, he had no option but to join hands with the Likud and the hard-line Sharon, who replaced Netanyahu as party leader following the latter's defeat at the polls and his involvement in a corruption scandal.

But after being acquitted of all the charges against him, Netanyahu has emerged as a serious challenge to Sharon's leadership of the Likud as well as to Barak's leadership of the government. Recent polls indicate that if Netanyahu were to run against Barak, 48 per cent of Israelis would vote for him versus only 27 per cent for Barak, while if he were to run against Sharon the figures would be 41 per cent versus 30 per cent. These figures attest to a hardening of Israeli mainstream opinion, which clearly favours the intransigence of Netanyahu and, to a lesser extent, of Sharon, over what a majority of Israelis perceive as the unacceptable concessions Barak was ready to make at Camp David. The growing popularity of the extreme right set the stage for the Haram Al-Sharif provocation, which sparked off the Intifada.

However, the seeds for both the infamous Sharon visit and the Intifada were sown at Camp David. Clinton wanted the summit between himself, Arafat and Barak to be the crowning point of the whole Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process, the meeting that would produce a final settlement of the historical conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. But despite some promising early results, it soon became apparent that if the parties could reach agreement on a number of the easier issues, the more highly-charged problems like Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory remained as stubbornly resistant to a solution as ever. With an eye on their constituencies back home, neither party could make the extreme concessions required, and the concessions they were willing to make proved insufficient to bridge the wide gap between their positions.

With the failure of the Camp David summit, it appeared that negotiations could not be resumed without a "power test" on the ground to explore what further cards the parties held beyond the ones either could use within the tripartite summit. Sharon's visit and the Intifada are expressions of this power test.

If this interpretation of the course of events is the right one, the Intifada was not entirely spontaneous. In a way, it was the continuation of the negotiation process by other means, widening its scope to include the street instead of keeping it confined to the tripartite negotiators alone. In that sense the introduction of confrontation in the equation is not necessarily a renunciation of the negotiation process, but a recognition that its traditional formula proved unable to overcome the obstacles in the way of a settlement. But even if the Intifada did not set out to pave the way to all-out war, the rising spiral of violence threatens to spin out of control and widen the scope of confrontation throughout the region.

True, we are unlikely to see the outbreak of a conventional war fought with regular forces in the age of globalisation. But it is also true that Israel's very survival depends on its ability to resort to the military option at will. Indeed according to the military doctrine it advocates, any potential peace agreement with an Arab party should be preceded by a crippling blow directed at that party, to enable Israel to dictate its terms for peace and protect it from the danger of disintegration when the unifying factor of an external threat disappears.

What is even more dangerous is that two of the principal actors in the Middle East drama are currently facing a power vacuum at home. In the United States, the undecided outcome of the presidential elections has placed even more constraints on the incumbent president, whose freedom of manoeuvre from now until he steps down next January will be determined to a great extent by whether the Republican Bush or the Democrat Gore is declared the winner. In Israel, the power vacuum derives from the fact that Barak does not enjoy a majority in the Knesset and could find himself facing a vote of no-confidence at any moment.

Meanwhile, neither Russia nor the European Union can be expected to fill the breach. Although Putin managed to arrange a telephone call between Arafat and Barak during the Palestinian president's visit to Moscow last week which led to the re-opening of the liaison bureaus between them -- at least for a limited period -- Russia no longer has the necessary clout to play an effective role in brokering a peace settlement in the Middle East. As to the European Union, the recent Euromed meeting in Marseilles revealed a shift in Europe's position that is not to the advantage of the Arabs. Although the statement issued at the end of the meeting reiterated Europe's support for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the near future, it failed to condemn Israel's use of excessive force against the Intifada, prompting a Palestinian spokesman to accuse Europe of adopting a "pernicious doctrine of neutrality that established a moral equivalence between the victim and the victimiser." The European Union, which aspires to play a more assertive role in the Middle East, is positioning itself to step into the gap left by Washington's diminishing ability to continue monopolising the peace process. To that end, Europe has decided to adopt a more even-handed approach towards the Arab-Israeli conflict by pulling back from positions previously adopted in favour of the Arabs.

All of which leaves the Middle East in a dangerous vacuum, which the Israelis will certainly try to exploit to their advantage. As the Intifada rages on, Barak is talking of a "protracted conflict with no end in sight," and might well be tempted to end what he calls Israel's "policy of restraint" (!) and use even greater force against the Palestinians in order to silence his opponents at home and neutralise their attempt to overthrow his cabinet.

This raises the delicate problem of how best to move beyond the Intifada, which is an untenable situation that cannot be sustained forever. How to ensure that it does not spark off other hot conflict situations that can plunge the region into all-out war? How to keep the event within the framework of a "power test" that can create a situation conducive to overcoming the conflict rather than exacerbating it still further?

What is certain is that the Intifada has improved the Arab bargaining position. The least the Arab parties can do to prevent the huge sacrifices of the Palestinian people from going to waste is to come forward with a "package deal" defining the fundamental Arab requirements that must be met by any final settlement. They should take the initiative, instead of leaving it to Israel to determine the features of a final deal. But are the Arabs up to this ultimate challenge?

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