Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Conditions for war

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 22 - 28 November 2001 Issue No.561
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Conditions for war
Hassan Nafaa* explains why current events do not bode well for the Middle East

The 11 September attacks, and the events that followed, will continue to affect efforts to reach a political settlement of the Palestinian cause. The nature of this impact, however, is determined more by factors related to perceptions surrounding that event, and the behaviour that results from these perceptions, than by the facts of the event itself.
Israeli and Palestinian reactions indicate that their respective perceptions of 11 September (and its potential impact on their interests) were diametrically opposed. To Sharon, it was a gift from heaven, from which he would wring every last drop of advantage. Arafat dreaded that its reverberations would constitute another blow to the Palestinians, and prepared to do his utmost to limit potential losses.
The terrorist attack on the US came at a time when the impasse between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships had become blatant. Sharon had begun to realise that force of arms would not suppress the Intifada, and that his policy would fail to bring Israel the security he had promised voters. More seriously, in his perspective, it would generate political rifts that would lead to the collapse of his coalition government. To Arafat, it had become clear that Israel's insistence upon a complete halt to the Intifada as a condition for resuming negotiations would erode his effective power, transferring it to the Palestinian street and the de facto leaders of the resistance. Simultaneously, because the international community could not idly contemplate the bloodbath taking place in this sensitive region, it intensified its search for a formula that would end the impasse. These efforts, it seemed, had even begun to pay off, with Palestinians and Israelis agreeing, in principle, that Peres and Arafat should meet to agree on a mechanism for resuming negotiations.
Unfortunately, by its very nature, this agreement could not guarantee a successful breakthrough. For Israel, it was concluded in deference to a growing sense of frustration and fatigue, not out of conviction or commitment to measures recognised as necessary for the success of the projected meetings. Perhaps, too, both sides felt they had to respond adequately to the international efforts being exerted on their behalf. Since Sharon had no political programme for ending the impasse, and refused to give Peres any mandate to suggest viable initiatives or to act as the sole peacemaker in what is essentially a war cabinet, the agreement offered no tangible basis for optimism.
It is hardly surprising, in this context, that Sharon should view the events of 11 September as a golden opportunity to push forward with his original agenda: suppressing the Intifada by force and compelling the Palestinians to surrender to his conditions. Since it is very much in his interest to tar the Palestinians with the same brush used to paint the perpetrators of the terrorist strikes on the US, the Zionist media in Israel and the West have done everything possible to convey this impression. In the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim climate thus generated, Sharon unleashed the full force of the Israeli military machine against Palestinian territories. To justify this military escalation and win US support, Sharon broke every moral rule in the book. When the US declared its "war on terrorism," Sharon announced that Arafat was a terrorist too, representing to Israel what Bin Laden did to the US. His message to the US was clear: deal with Bin Laden, and leave Arafat to us.
Arafat felt that the situation called for defensive rather than offensive action. Sharon, he believed, should not be given the slightest pretext to wriggle out from beneath the international scrutiny that had effected, until this point, some restraints on his freedom of action. To the astonishment of observers, the Palestinian leader therefore declared a unilateral cease-fire, in the presence of the German foreign minister, in order to rope Europe in as a witness and sponsor.
However judicious it was for Arafat to let himself be led by events, these were not entirely favourable to Sharon. The US administration knew it was not in its interest for the war against terrorism to turn into a war on Islam. Washington needed Arab and Islamic support to build an international coalition and it knew that such a coalition could only hold together without Israel's participation.
This realisation generated one of the greatest paradoxes of the post-11 September period: Sharon and Bin Laden began to act as though they were two sides of the same coin. Each sought to portray the crisis as a war between the West (with Israel at its heart) and Islam (with Bin Laden as its primary exponent). Washington could only distance itself, at least in form, from Sharon, and try to calm the situation in the occupied territories. This policy seems to have succeeded, for now, in restoring some of the moral imperatives Sharon had contravened, and in compelling him to withdraw from the PA- controlled areas he occupied with particular vengeance after Zeevi's assassination.
Perhaps we should also recognise that there has been an undeniable shift in the US's Middle East policy since 11 September. Suddenly, Washington found itself compelled to recognise, with unprecedented clarity, the need for a Palestinian state. Colin Powell declared that such a state "has always been part of the US vision for a settlement to the conflict in the Middle East." Soon after, in his address to the UN General Assembly, President Bush announced that Washington hoped to see Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace, and with secure and recognised borders in accordance with UN resolutions. To my knowledge, this is the first time an American president has issued an official document referring to "Palestine" and not just "the Palestinians," and to a Palestinian "state" instead of simply a "homeland" -- a state, moreover, that in the context of his speech appeared as equal to Israel.
In another noticeable change, the US has begun to encourage Europe -- although admittedly those powers, such as the UK and Germany, that had adopted positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict similar to those of the US -- to speak out more frankly on the need for establishing a Palestinian state, and to take a more active role in international efforts to reach a settlement to the Middle East conflict.
Nevertheless, there is still no reason to believe that these changes are little more than token gestures and that US policy on the Middle East conflict is still biased overwhelmingly in Israel's favour. The statements made by members of the US administration were not even accompanied by pledges to bring both sides back to the negotiating table within a framework that would ensure a just and permanent settlement. A policy designed to placate Arab opinion, and specifically to subdue the Intifada, without offering anything of substance is ultimately destined to serve Sharon alone. Simultaneously, the US at this stage is exclusively preoccupied with stamping out terrorism "the American way," and signals from Washington do not rule out the possibility of strikes aiming to overturn certain Arab regimes -- Iraq in particular -- and targeting Hizbullah, Hamas and Al-Jihad, recently listed as terrorist organisations whose assets should be frozen and to which material and political assistance should be cut off.
If this analysis is correct, then the most we can expect from the US at the present juncture is an effort to restore enough calm to the occupied territories to allow for a resumption of negotiations. The primary purpose of these will be to secure a truce until the Afghan problem is resolved. Once that is taken care of, the US will probably turn its attention to the Arab world in order to eliminate the "pockets of terrorism" in that region -- shorthand for describing the Arabs who believe armed resistance as the means to liberate occupied territory. Perhaps the US administration believes that the removal of such forces will help pave the way for the creation of a docile Palestinian state, amenable to Israel's understanding of security and regional ambitions. Should this prove to be the case, the US would be making quite a serious mistake. To create a Palestinian state tailor-made to Sharon's specifications will not bring the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to an end. On the contrary: it will dim any prospect for its resolution.
The Arab world must remain alert to the risks inherent in the current phase. If the regional and international climate cannot accommodate a truly just settlement, founded upon complete Israeli withdrawal from all the territories it occupied in 1967 and thereafter, including East Jerusalem, and the creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, then the Middle East conflict will continue to rage on. In addition, any negotiations held while the occupation of Arab territory continues are doomed to fail. If the US wants negotiations to bear fruit, it must agree immediately to an international peacekeeping force under UN auspices, which will take the place of Israeli forces in the occupied territories and guarantee the security of both Palestinians and Israelis. Whether such a UN-sponsored force consists of NATO or even entirely of US troops is not the issue. What is important is that the occupied territories be removed from the realm of negotiations and held in trust by a third party until they can be restored in full to their rightful owners. Then negotiations will be able to focus on security arrangements and the drawing of permanent borders -- in other words, on the conditions for a lasting peace.
*The writer is head of the political science departement at Cairo University.

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