25 - 31 January 2001
Issue No.518
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 25 - 31 January 2001 Issue No.518 |
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Does peace have a future?
The failure of the peace process so far has demonstrated that its real intentions do not coincide with its declared intentions, which include the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. What is really being proposed is not a state that will satisfy Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, but one whose function will be to contain the Palestinian problem and defuse what Israel perceives as a threat to its security. And this latter objective is very different from the former.
The key idea in the package of ideas proposed by Clinton to resolve the Palestinian problem is to cancel the Palestinians' right of return to their homes in what is now Israel, a right consecrated in Resolution 194, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 11 December 1948, which embodies international legality. Until Clinton came forward with his ideas, this was still the basic document of reference for the Palestinian refugee problem. What we are being asked to accept now is the scenario envisaged in the Balfour Declaration for the creation of a Jewish state in Israel, i.e. the implementation of the very essence of Zionism.
While Clinton's ideas do contemplate the return of a limited number of Palestinians to Israel, it is only in terms of humanitarian considerations, such as the reunion of families, that is, as charity, not as a right. UN Resolution 194 is clear on this point: Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes and, if they choose not to exercise that right, then they are entitled to receive compensation. Replacing the right of return by the right to compensation is a clear violation of the resolution and hence of international law.
It is interesting to note here that Clinton sees nothing incongruous in asking the Palestinians to give up their right of return, which is enshrined in international law, while Israel's Law of Return, which allows any Jew in the world, irrespective of where he is born and what nationality he carries, to become an Israeli citizen the moment he sets foot on Israeli soil, remains in full force and effect. So much for equal rights and opportunities.
Actually, Clinton is asking the Palestinians to relinquish their right of return with no counterpart, because one cannot allege that the counterpart is the recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state and sovereignty over the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem. Indeed, in terms of equal rights, Palestinians have recognised West Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Arafat has gone even further, acknowledging Israel's sovereignty over the Jewish quarter in East Jerusalem as well as access to the Wailing Wall. If we proceed from the premise that both parties have equal rights to a sovereign state as stipulated in the Partition Plan, it is clear that the so-called tradeoff proposed by Clinton in which the Palestinians would relinquish the right of return in exchange for sovereign rights in East Jerusalem and over Al-Haram Al-Sharif is no tradeoff at all.
A key element in the Clinton peace proposal is the preservation of the Jewish character of the Israeli state by ensuring that it will not be diluted into the wider Arab environment. At the same time, the proposal offers the Palestinian entity only partial and restricted sovereignty and deprives it of military power.
But for all the antagonism which the Palestinians and Israelis harbour for one another, a complete separation is hard to envisage given the various forms of interpenetration between the two communities. Barak himself has described the process of separation as a "painful divorce," the clear implication being that it will entail the use of force. Moreover, separation might even be impossible to implement for structural reasons. On the one hand, there is a significant Arab minority in Israel, which now occupies one tenth of the seats of the Knesset; on the other, there are the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel is refusing to abandon. Rather than requiring Israel to dismantle the settlements, Clinton has proposed a territorial swap between the two sides: five per cent of the West Bank, in which there is the greatest concentration of settlements, for Israel, against one to three per cent of Israeli territory for the Palestinians.
With Israel needing to maintain a presence in the West Bank and to accept the presence of a substantial Arab population within its borders, talk of complete separation is meaningless. How can Israel preserve its purely Jewish character when one tenth of its Parliament is in the hands of Arabs? How can it ensure the security of settlements scattered over wide areas of the West Bank? How can it talk of a complete separation between Israel and the Palestinian state and then insist that Jerusalem remain an open city incorporating the capitals of both states? But if, as these questions clearly indicate, total separation is not a viable option, would the opposite be any easier to achieve -- that is, the integration of the two states into one?
There are Arab Israelis who, divided between their Arab identity and their Israeli citizenship, believe this is the only way out of their dilemma, and indeed, the only solution for Israel's existential dilemma in general. The proponents of this scenario believe conditions are ripe for a struggle along the lines of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa, or the civil rights struggle under Martin Luther King in America. But this scenario places Israel before another dilemma, which is how to reconcile its declared commitment to democracy with its inability to afford equal rights to all its citizens in the context of a theocracy which derives its legitimacy from the purity of its Jewish identity.
The failure of the peace process attests to the difficulties inherent in both scenarios and is a clear indication that neither total separation nor total integration between the Israeli and Palestinian entities is possible -- at least, not as long as the declared objective of the peace process, which is to realise the legitimate aspirations of the two sides, has nothing to do with its real objective, which is to ensure the security of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.
With one of the main players in the tripartite negotiations that sought to reach a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict out of the picture and another expected to be out next month, attention is now focused on their successors. Some commentators believe that the failure of the tripartite formula will induce the Bush administration to distance itself from the negotiation process, and that Bush considers his predecessor's deep involvement in the process to have been detrimental to American interests rather than the opposite. But it is still unclear where the Middle East peace process will stand in the agenda of the new American administration. As to the disappearance of Barak from the scene and his likely replacement by Ariel Sharon, this opens up a whole new can of worms.
If Bush does decide to disengage from the tripartite negotiations, this will leave the door open to Europe, or even to Russia, to take over America's preponderant role. Given America's vital strategic interests in the Arab world, notably oil, this is not an option. Moreover, the new administration has close links with the oil lobby in the United States. The still high price of oil, plus the beginning of a slowdown in American growth rates, is bound to worry the new US President and encourage him to be concerned with the Middle East, whatever the state of the negotiations.
It might be true that the Jewish lobby in America is very close to the Democratic Party, but the Christian far right, which is very close to the Republicans, is strongly pro-Israeli. This explains how the Republican-dominated Congress went even further than the Democratic administration in support of Israel, calling for the transfer of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In keeping with this tradition, Bush is now calling for giving Israel's security full priority over any other issue in the Middle East.
Will this place him on the same wavelength as Sharon, the man everyone expects will be Israel's next prime minister? In a last-ditch effort to revive Barak's dwindling chances for reelection on 6 February, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are conducting an intensive round of negotiations in Taba to hammer out a framework agreement that would prevent Sharon from coming to power. Despite the deterioration in relations between them, despite the absence of Clinton and also of Bush, who is busy building his new administration, Barak and Arafat are united in their determination to foil Sharon's bid for election by any means. But what could be the credibility of an agreement achieved in such conditions?
Sharon represents a state of mind in Israel where a majority of Israelis have lost confidence in the peace process and now look to a solution based on strength, even if this should entail the perpetration of dreadful crimes. Sharon is not among those who believe there can be no military solution to the conflict. On the contrary, he believes that Israel's military superiority over all the Arab states taken together allows it to resort to a military solution if all else fails -- which now seems to be the case.
We have seen Clinton's relations with Netanyahu deteriorate because of the latter's refusal to comply with the peace process, even though it was highly favourable to Israel. Are we likely to see Bush's relations with Sharon deteriorate for the same reason? What are the chances that this factor could revive the tripartite formula for a settlement and prevent a state of total chaos from engulfing the region? Or could Bush be tempted instead to revive the issue of Iraq and to tighten the boycott against it even further? His father succeeded in using Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to convince the rulers of many Arab Gulf states that an Arab leader could be a worse enemy than Israel. Because this assumption was accepted by most of these rulers, the Madrid conference became possible.
Of course, the situation today is not what it was a decade ago. But reconciliation between Arab rulers still remains fragile. Not enough has been achieved to prevent Bush from being tempted to follow the path of his father in using inter-Arab conflict as a means to overcome conflict with Israel.
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