15 - 21 February 2001
Issue No.521
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 February 2001 Issue No.521 |
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Backlash!
Ariel Sharon's victory at the polls cannot be seen in isolation from the issue that lay at the heart of Israel's latest election battle, namely, the peace process. The ascension of the notorious hawk to the pinnacle of power must thus be placed in a broader context than the immediate events that allowed him to score a landslide victory over his Labour opponent. Sharon's rise to power is a metaphor for the decline of the peace process, a confirmation that the prospects of peace are rapidly receding, if not altogether lost. It is difficult to assess how long this critical setback will last, but what is certain is that it represents a new, dangerous and independent stage of the process, a stage in which all the parties recognise that the peace process in its traditional form (if not necessarily in any form) has reached a dead end.
The decline and fall of the peace process can be traced to the moment when the parties began for the first time to discuss the deepest points of contention between them. The Camp David summit between Clinton, Arafat and Barak got off to a promising start, and for a while a breakthrough towards peace appeared to be imminent. With a high personal stake in its success, Clinton was the dynamo of the summit, ensuring its continuity in the face of insurmountable odds. His determination to bring the summit to a successful conclusion even led him to cut short his attendance of the G-8 meeting in Okinawa to rush back to the negotiating table. The summit failed all the same, however, because of the inability of the parties to overcome their differences over the issues which had, because of their intractability, been deferred to the final stage talks: Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees and the Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory. The failure of Camp David marked the end of a stage in which the Oslo agreements served as the agreed frame of reference between the parties. And, in case the point was lost on anyone, Sharon was quick to announce that "Oslo is dead."
The Intifada is an expression of Palestinian frustration with the failure of the peace process to respond to their most basic aspirations; Sharon's landslide victory is an expression of Israeli disenchantment with the concessions the losing candidate agreed to in Camp David. In a way, Barak's crushing defeat at the polls is the price he paid for a dithering attitude which only succeeded in alienating both Israelis and Palestinians, the former because they felt he had made too many concessions, the latter because they felt he had made too few. If he had been able to present the Israelis with some kind of agreement they could live with, the outcome might have been very different. As it is, his mismanagement of the situation has exposed the peace process to a serious setback and doomed the region to live for an indefinite period of time in a state of perturbation and chaos without any frame of reference that could serve as a guideline for ending the conflict.
It is no accident that the new US secretary of state, Colin Powell, has instructed American diplomats to replace the expression "peace process" by "negotiations" or "movement" towards peace. This deprives the peace effort of its continuity, its integrity as an organic whole. It implicitly suggests that "peace" as an aim is being replaced by "negotiations" whose real aim is to avoid a further deterioration of the situation rather than to actually achieve progress towards peace. Another more dangerous meaning that can be inferred from Powell's directive is that putting an end to the chaotic situation (the Intifada) is to be given precedence over requiring Sharon to proceed with the peace process from where his predecessor left off.
The fact is that Clinton's exit from the scene has deprived the peace efforts of the driving force that kept them alive. The Bush administration has rejected the package of "ideas" that Clinton proposed as basic guidelines for a solution of the conflict. That is not to say that Clinton's ideas were satisfactory or that they responded to fundamental Palestinians demands. On the contrary, they studiously avoided gainsaying any of Barak's famous nays (no to the return of Palestinian refugees; no to Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem; no to the dismantling of the settlements; no to a foreign military presence west of the Jordan river), while openly denying the Palestinian right of return. But, by totally rejecting Clinton's package of "ideas," Bush allows Sharon to disregard whatever agreements have been reached between the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, particularly in Taba a few days before Clinton's departure, where intensive and (according to Israeli negotiators) "constructive" negotiations had been undertaken.
Sharon has announced his intention of forming a national unity government which would include, with the Likud that he leads, the Labour Party in particular. But the latter is still reeling from its crushing defeat at the polls. A number of its leaders namely, Afraham Burg, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Haïm Ramon and Shimon Peres, are now jockeying for the top party post following Barak's resignation as party leader. His resignation excludes him from any leading government position, as is the case with Netanyahu. Peres has already indicated his readiness to accept a cabinet post in Sharon's government under the pretext that his participation could help save the peace process. However, his condition for joining a coalition government, which is that the negotiations resume from where they left off, is totally rejected by Sharon. In any case, if Peres does eventually accept a ministerial portfolio, it is more likely that Sharon will use him to neutralise the opposition than that Peres will succeed in persuading Sharon to soften his position.
The formation of the new government will probably take a long time, but even if Sharon fails to form a government within the prescribed 45-day period, it will not necessarily follow that the negotiations will be resumed from where they were interrupted. Rather, we can expect another right-wing government with another right-wing prime minister to be constituted -- possibly headed by Netanyahu, who would follow the Likud line, probably in a more sophisticated manner.
Neither Sharon nor Netanyahu declare that they are against peace. they both say they are "correcting" the path of peace, and opposing the unacceptable concessions that Labour made in the name of peace. Sharon claims that he endorses a perception of the peace process that is more in keeping with the real balance of power between the protagonists, and that he is ready to risk undoing previous achievements in the field of peace to prove his point. This meaning came across very clearly in the amazing statement made by Sharon's close collaborator, Lieberman, who, one week before the elections, declared that Israel would not hesitate to destroy the High Dam if Egyptian forces fought alongside the Palestinians in the event Israel considered it necessary to reoccupy Palestinian territory it formerly evacuated.
The peace Sharon is talking about has nothing to do with peace. Proceeding as it does from the assumption that all the concessions are to be made by the Palestinian side, it is closer to capitulation than to peace. Sharon's frame of reference in this respect is not politics but military superiority. He is taking the peace process back to square one.
It has been argued that the Likud, despite its right-wing extremism, has done more for peace than the Labour Party. After all, it was Begin who signed the first Camp David peace accords with Sadat. Any hopes that Labour would achieve better, or even similar, results have always been dashed. But the regional dynamics which prevailed under Begin a quarter of a century ago are very different from those under Sharon in the present. Then it was the signing of an agreement between Begin and Sadat that brought about a rift in Arab ranks; today, it is Sharon's refusal to sign an agreement with the Palestinians that will exacerbate inter-Arab tensions. It is the Arabs, not Sharon's Israel, who now raise peace as their "strategic objective."
What Israel's Labour Party must understand is that a "historical compromise" leading to a final settlement will never be achieved as long as its leaders continue to straddle the fence, torn between the need to appease the Israeli right on the one hand and to respond to Palestinian demands on the other. Barak's procrastination, his attempt to juggle the imperatives of a historical compromise with the expediencies of domestic party politics, led to his downfall. In the final analysis, Labour became a captive of the Likud vision of "peace" and ended up with a disastrous defeat at the polls. If there is a lesson to be drawn, it is that Labour should not accept to join a Likud-led coalition government in which it will be neutralised and used to serve Likud's vision of a peace imposed by military might rather than by political means.
Here the Arabs are called upon to launch a vigorous campaign warning of the dangers posed to regional peace by a Likud-Labour coalition tilted sharply to Likud's advantage. At the same time, they should launch another equally vigorous campaign to expose Sharon's unsavoury record and his direct implication in crimes against humanity. Arab governments may have no choice but to deal with him in his capacity as Israel's elected prime minister. But this should not prevent a non-governmental organisation made up of international civil society personalities enjoying a high credibility rating from calling for Sharon to be tried for his crimes like other wayward leaders of other countries who have been indicted in the name of humanitarian intervention.
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