4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
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A role for Clinton beyond 20 January?
It is preposterous to believe that a problem which has remained resistant to a solution throughout decades of unsuccessful negotiations can be solved in a matter of days. And yet that is exactly what outgoing US President Bill Clinton is hoping to do before he leaves office in less than three weeks' time. The peace package on offer is a take-or-leave deal based on "ideas" floated by President Clinton just days before his presidency ends. While the deal offers the Palestinians sovereignty over East Jerusalem, including Al-Haram Al-Sharif, it requires Arafat to forego one of the fundamental tenets of the Palestinian liberation movement: the right of refugees to return to what is now Israel. What Clinton and the Israelis are betting on is that much of the support of the Arab and Muslim worlds for the Palestinian cause is centred on the emotionally-charged issue of Jerusalem. They believe that once the Palestinians accept the swap proposed by Clinton and the Muslim holy sites are restored to Palestinian control, Arab and Muslim support for the rest of the Palestinian demands will weaken considerably.
Moreover, Clinton's "ideas" for a framework agreement are extremely sketchy, ignoring as they do some fundamental aspects of the Palestinian problem. For example, there is no mention of the issue of water, which is expected to become a new source of conflict in the Middle East as a whole. Then there is the question of Israel's undeclared nuclear dimension which Clinton's proposal completely ignores, even though it requires the Palestinian state to remain completely "disarmed," or, in a compromise formula designed to satisfy the Palestinian need to sustain security requirements, "unarmed." The proposal also delinks a final solution of the Palestinian problem from the other aspects of a final peace in the Middle East, particularly on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks. As both countries have substantial Palestinian refugee populations, it is hard to see how their direct interest in a viable settlement of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects, including refugees, can be disregarded in so cavalier a fashion. Lebanon has made it clear that the third of a million Palestinian refugees presently in the country will not be able to remain in the context of final agreement arrangements, especially that some 450,000 Lebanese nationals who left during civil war are now pressing to return.
As to the aspects of the Palestinian problem that Clinton's "ideas" do address, they are couched in what the US president calls "constructive ambiguity," that is, in deliberately abstract and obscure generalities, where principles are sometimes accepted but their effects vitiated by restrictions on implementation. The Arab parties have often experienced how Israel takes advantage of such ambiguities, most notoriously in the case of Security Council Resolution 242, where failure to place the definite article "the" before the words "occupied territory" allowed the text to be interpreted by Israel as requiring it to withdraw not from all but only from some of the territories it occupied in 1967. The broad contours of Clinton's proposal become less general and more specific on certain issues, notably in requiring that the framework agreement include an article putting an end to the conflict. Thus once the Palestinian Authority agrees to Clinton's "ideas," it will lose any leverage it still has to dissipate ambiguities or correct misreadings, Palestinian negotiators have described Clinton's proposals as a trap rather than a genuine step towards a final settlement. Instead of answering either yes or no to the contents of the proposal, they have come forward with 26 demands for clarification which they say are needed before they can seriously contemplate the Clinton deal.
The deal contains four key elements: two concerning structure -- the territory and frontiers of the Palestinian state and the security issues -- and two concerning the deal itself -- Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem in exchange for Arafat's waiver of the right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel's creation in 1948.
Clinton's "ideas" talk of the transfer of between 94 and 96 per cent of Palestinian territory to the PA. Vagueness on such a key issue of the deal is amazing. What territory is not to be transferred? What justification is there for this specific proportion to be kept back? What criteria is used to justify the allocation of territory? Certain vague rules have been mentioned: the four to six per cent of Palestinian territory that will remain under Israeli sovereignty should optimally cover 80 per cent of the settlements, guarantee territorial contiguity of the Palestinian state, reduce annexed territory to a minimum and reduce the number of Palestinians prejudiced by these measures. On the other hand, in exchange for the annexation by Israel of approximately five per cent of the West Bank, one to three per cent of Israeli territory, probably in the Negev, will pass over to the Palestinian state.
On issues of security, why should advance alarm stations be placed in Palestinian territory and not in Israel as well? After all, terrorist acts have not been perpetrated by Palestinian extremists only, but also by Israeli extremists as well as by many settlers. Everybody remembers the massacre of Palestinian worshippers in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque by a fanatic settler, while in the present Intifada settlers are not only firing live bullets at stone-throwing children but are hunting down and murdering Palestinians.
Actually, the Clinton proposal is drafted in a way that responds to his and Barak's needs at the expense of the Palestinians. Both Clinton and Barak are facing tight deadlines. Clinton's presidency ends on 20 January, while Barak's political survival will be determined on 6 February, when he runs for re-election against Ariel Sharon. Polls show that the popularity rating of the Likud party leader, who is totally opposed to Clinton's "ideas," is 21 points higher than Barak's.
Thus the time factor is all-important for Clinton and Barak. It is less so for Arafat, whose top priority at this juncture is substance and the formulation of substance in clear and unequivocal language. In fact, time is on Arafat's side in the sense that the closer their respective deadlines draw, the more pressured Clinton and Barak will be to accommodate Palestinian demands. Of course, if no agreement is reached within the limited time frame left, Arafat will be forced to deal with Sharon. On the other hand, America will be under a Republican administration which is not expected to be as blatantly biased towards Israel as a Democratic administration.
Clinton proceeds from the assumption that Arafat should know that he is being offered something close to Israel's best offer. Clinton has declared that "if there is a peace agreement here, I'm convinced it's within the four corners I laid out." But Arafat is justifiably cautious and apprehensive. He needs a concrete victory and he can of course claim that he brought back Jerusalem with full sovereignty, an objective that until recently seemed totally unattainable. But foreclosing the options of millions of Palestinian refugees, many of whom have been in refugee camps for more than half a century, is certain to have very serious repercussions. Hamas and other opposition organisations will be able to pull the carpet from under Arafat's feet.
Also, Arafat is aware that even if he does agree to Clinton's ideas, there is no guarantee that the Knesset will vote for Barak. All the polls indicate that Sharon will be the next prime minister. Moreover, George W Bush himself has not been tested as US president. Arafat knows that the Israelis will not concede on the non-return of the overwhelming majority of the refugees, that they will keep most of -- and the more important -- settlements in the West Bank as well as a security band all along the Jordan valley. What is actually proposed for Jerusalem still remains ambivalent. Under pressure from both Israel's generals and its politicians, Barak is once again declaring that he refuses to sign an agreement that will offer sovereignty over Al-Haram Al-Sharif to the Palestinians.
In the final analysis, Clinton is first and foremost concerned with the time factor, namely, that a deal be reached before he leaves office on 20 January. For Arafat, it is the substance of the agreement that matters, not its timing. On the contrary, abstaining from reacting to Clinton's ideas has compelled the latter to improve some of his proposals in answer to the Palestinians' requests for clarification. What if the time factor was removed from the deal, and Bush, for instance, mandated Clinton to go on sponsoring the negotiations until an agreement is finally reached? After all, this would be implementing Bush's declared intention of bringing about a reconciliation with the Democrats after the rift in American society engendered by the uncertainties of the presidential election. Jimmy Carter, another former Democratic president, has undertaken, often with success, a number of such mediation assignments. And Clinton himself has declared readiness, once he is no longer president, to accept any assignment the new president could call upon him to perform.
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