26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
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The road taken
This week Yasser Arafat was supposed to go to Damascus. Instead, he may go to Washington. He will not go to both, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem
Last week was just another seven days in the Intifada. Three bombs went off in Israel, leaving two dead (including a Hamas claimed suicide bomber) and dozens wounded. The Israeli army shot dead three Palestinians, including a disabled man and a 12-year old boy at a funeral in Gaza for a Palestinian police officer killed the week before. And mortars were fired on Gaza's Gush Qatif settlement bloc in reprisal for a series of Israeli tank incursions into Palestinian-controlled territory.
And yesterday, Israel tightened its blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, fearing attacks by Palestinian militants while Israelis commemorate their fight for statehood.
But on the surface there appeared subtle changes, stirring talk among both Palestinians and Israelis that something may be cooking on the diplomatic plane even as the fires were still smouldering on the military.
For one thing, and breaking with recent custom, Yasser Arafat condemned the recent bombings in Israel because "we do not agree to any form of attack on Palestinian or Israeli civilians." For another, there was a flurry of meetings in Gaza and Tel Aviv between Palestinian and Israeli military officials, described by the Israeli side as "serious and positive" and by the Palestinian side as gleaning "no results." Finally, the mortar strikes were the first in three days following Arafat's reaffirmation on Saturday of a "standing order" that there be no firing of whatever kind from Palestinian civilian areas.
The reason for the renewed diplomatic buzz is the revival of interest in the Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative as a possible exit from the impasse. Now nearly a month old, and currently in its fourth version, the plan calls for a series of confidence-building measures as a road back to political negotiations, among them a renewal of Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation in return for the army's withdrawal from Palestinian civilian areas.
Having initially been supported only by Cairo, Amman and the Palestinians, the plan now enjoys the backing of UN Middle East special envoy Terje Larsen, Israeli politicians like Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid and several European states. The Palestinians also say that the Americans support the package, though there has been no US confirmation of this.
Faced with such a groundswell, and chastened by his ill-advised decision last week to send Israeli tanks rolling into a Palestinian area in the Gaza Strip, even Ariel Sharon seems to be having second thoughts about the plan. Having dismissed it out of hand as a ruse to get Israel to negotiate "under fire," yesterday Sharon told Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper that the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative was "important." But "we think it needs some changes and improvements."
Seeking "improvement," Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will fly to Egypt and Jordan within the coming few days and then, next week, to Washington. Speaking in Germany on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said Egypt and Jordan were "willing to consider [newly] proposed ideas, providing that they are not detrimental to the principles of peace."
The Palestinian fear is that this will be the exact effect of Sharon's and Peres' desired "changes and improvements" to the plan.
"When Israel says it wants to incorporate revisions, what it really means is that it wants to scuttle the plan," PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP on Tuesday. "Israel understands the plan calls for a cessation of settlement activity and renewal of talks from the point at which they stopped [at Taba in January]."
The eventual fate of the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative will probably be decided when Peres goes to Washington at the end of next week. And that destination is what explains backing for the proposal among certain blocs within the Palestinian leadership. For them, the plan offers not only a way out of the Intifada but also back to Oslo and, above all, direct American engagement in the political process. There are other blocs, who seek not only to continue and deepen the Intifada but also a new road to Damascus, as anticipated at the Arab summit in Amman last month.
Arafat was due to meet today [Thursday] with Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad to discuss Palestinian-Syrian "coordination" in the face of the common Israeli onslaught against them. That meeting was postponed, perhaps to the end of the month, perhaps indefinitely. Instead, PLO negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo said on Tuesday he "hopes" the Palestinian leader will be meeting President Bush "at the end of April or beginning of May." If that happens, the choice of Palestinian road will have been made.
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