16 - 22 May 2002
Issue No.586
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 May 2002 Issue No.586 |
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Catch up, Washington
The US is trailing behind in its ideas about how to bring about Middle East peace, writes George Giacaman*
If Ariel Sharon has no strategic vision as to where he is heading, an accusation often levelled by the left in Israel, then the present US Administration is trailing well behind even Sharon on this score.
This is not because Secretary Powell failed to bring about a complete Israeli withdrawal and a cease-fire agreement, his two most pressing objectives during his recent visit. It is, rather, obvious from the outdated language Powell is using. In the various draft-texts given to the Palestinian side, and in Powell's own public announcements, the phrase "negotiated settlement" kept cropping up, like a sacred incantation.
Not that there is anything wrong in principle with negotiations. Indeed, various forms of negotiation will have to be part of any future settlement. But to continue to view bilateral negotiations as the basic mechanism for reaching a realistic and stable settlement of the conflict shows that nothing has been learnt from the failings and pitfalls of the Oslo process. In reality, everything has changed since; but everything stayed the same for the US administration.
Even before the dust settles in the wake of the present Israeli government's war against Palestinians, lessons are clearly being learnt in Israel about the need for an alternative approach to invasion. In fact, no one is deluded that "violence" and "suicide bombings" will stop as a result of reoccupation of Palestinian territory, least of all the army and the security services.
Indeed, at the operational level, Sharon's onslaught has already posed new problems arising from the breakdown of central aspects of the Oslo model.
One pillar of the model, as a commentator put it, involved entrusting Palestinians with policing their own population in the interests of Israeli security, as "subcontractors in return for personal and economic advancement and vague political promises." (Ha'aretz, April 18, 2002). So if the model is no longer viable in its "security" aspect, as some in the army think, then direct occupation and policing is the other option, which is preferred by the right-wing in Israel. Yet this is not merely a throw-back to pre-Oslo days, grave as it is. It is also a recipe for continued conflict and bloodshed on a scale that even the present US administration cannot tolerate, let alone the rest of the world.
But this is not a new problem. From the time the right-wing Netanyahu government came to power in Israel in May 1996, barely a year after the "Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement" was signed on the White House lawn, the governments of Israel treated the Oslo accords essentially as security agreements. That is why Yasser Arafat continued to refer to the late Yitzhak Rabin as his "partner," recalling the hope that "vague political promises" would lead to a genuine independence.
Therein lies the crux of the matter: political independence, the end of occupation, sovereignty, and the establishment of a state, were all contingent upon the "negotiated process." This was to be the sole mechanism for progress.
Decoded, the "negotiated process" phrase means the following: negotiations within a balance of power wholly tilted in Israel's favour, with US support at every turn, while settlements and land confiscation continue unabated.
This continues, combined with Zionist messianism marching on with the colonial imperative of redeeming land from Palestinians. Ultimately, this happened even under the Labour government of Ehud Barak and with its support.
It took a bloody conflagration and a reoccupation of the West Bank, for which the Palestinians paid dearly, for the US administration to understand what the Palestinian Authority was modestly, indeed sheepishly, asking for to enable it to police its population: "a political horizon."
President Bush obliged the Palestinian Authority with several clear assertions on Palestinians "deserving" a state of their own. A horizon indeed, but also a continuation of "vague political promises" still wedded to a "negotiated process."
The fact of the matter is that negotiations have been taking place throughout -- not between the two sides but between different political parties in Israel on what they can agree to offer the Palestinians.
In the absence of outside pressure and a price to be paid for occupation, domestic Israeli politics have become a regional and a global concern. Still, everyone was an onlooker, hoping sometimes against hope that a "moderate" government might be elected. They looked, because domestic Israeli politics was at least an arena where significant negotiations were taking place. Yet that is also the reason why the "peace process" failed.
And now the US is pushing the same formula, perhaps with Arab leaders to be added on to the negotiating table.
Opinion among politicians in Israel is now becoming more polarised than ever before. Those on the right want a return of direct occupation, at least for a while, until a more pliable Palestinian leadership is found. Those on the left want a more assertive international intervention, perhaps even an imposed solution. Both have given up on negotiations as the sole mechanism for a political process. But the US administration is still trailing behind.
Even if the broker was honest, he doesn't have what it takes.
* The writer is dean of graduate studies at Birzeit University, Ramallah, and co-editor of After Oslo: New Realities, Old Problems (Pluto Press, 1998)
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