In the face of reason
Ibrahim Nafie charts possible ways to end the spiral of violence in the occupied territories
The Palestinians and other Arab and international parties are doing their utmost to reach a formula for restoring calm to the Palestinian territories preparatory to resuming the reforms of the PA and direct negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Meanwhile, the government of Ariel Sharon is visiting new crimes on the Palestinian people with every passing day in what appears to be a determined drive to hamper all Arab efforts to restore peace and to undermine the pleas and arguments of all parties calling for self-restraint.
The current wave of aggression by the Sharon government against the Palestinians threatens to jettison yet another opportunity to halt the cycle of violence in the region. In his "Message of Peace" delivered on Laylat Al- Qadr -- the night in Ramadan commemorating the revelation of the Qur'an -- President Mubarak appealed to the Israeli people and leadership to work for peace in the region before it was too late. His message could not have been more clear: Israeli occupation forces must stop their acts of murder and terrorism against the Palestinian people and the restoration of calm must be a mutual process in which both sides practically demonstrate their resolve to sustain the calm.
History tells us that direct negotiations between the parties involved in a conflict offer the most direct avenue to peace. Similarly, it tells us that major regional and international powers must undertake that vital role of creating the climate conducive to successful direct negotiations.
In a previous article, I suggested that Arab countries should offer a collective guarantee for maintaining calm on the Palestinian side and that the US should offer a similar commitment, guaranteeing a halt to the violence perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people. When I proposed this idea, the PA had already begun negotiations with Hamas, among other measures aimed at bringing a halt to violence. However, it was obvious that such actions on their side must coincide with a halt to all acts of aggression by Israeli occupation forces and the gangs of armed settlers if a cease-fire is to stand any chance of lasting.
Unfortunately, developments in the Palestinian territories since then have made it abundantly clear that the Israeli government is bent on thwarting the PA's efforts to restore calm. It is a tall order to convince their people not to respond when Israeli forces step up their assassination campaigns against the rank and file of various Palestinian organisations and persist in their policy of collective punishment. A recent case in point was the slaughter that took place in Berij refugee camp last Friday, claiming ten dead, among whom were two UNRWA employees. In the face of this horrible crime, international figures could not help but emerge from their long silence over events in Palestine. Condemning Israel's action in the camp, a spokesman for Kofi Annan said that the UN secretary-general "would like to remind the government of Israel of its obligation as an occupying power to protect civilians and urges it to ensure that Israeli occupation forces act with greater self-restraint and order in keeping with international humanitarian law."
The UN official's statement put the issue in its proper perspective, of which many seem to have lost sight. The case in the Palestinian territories is that of an indigenous population under direct occupation by a foreign power, which should be bound by certain restrictions and obligations under the UN Charter and international law. It was from this perspective, too, that the EU harshly censured Israel for "recourse to excessive use of force against innocent civilians".
One would have hoped that Washington, Israel's foremost ally and the primary sponsor of peace in the region, would have emerged with a similarly unequivocal condemnation of the slaughter in Berij. Instead, it adopted its customary kid gloves with Israel. Secretary of State spokesman Richard Boucher declared, "The Israelis must realise the consequences of their actions. We have been very clear about our concerns with regard to Israeli activities and especially with regard to the civilian casualties resulting from many Israeli actions."
"Actions", "activities" -- what circumlocution, what timidity in calling things by their true names. Then, on top of this, the spokesman re-iterated that all-too-familiar "Washington understands Israel's need to defend itself."
Naturally Sharon views such indulgence as a green light to persist in his atrocities against the Palestinian people, heedless of the exhortations and censure of all other international parties so long as he continues to receive the nod, directly or indirectly, from Washington. Certainly, Israel accords little weight to the UN, which has had to back down on more than one occasion against Israel's refusal to implement the resolutions that voice the will of the international community.
One of the most blatant instances of this dynamic was the UN resolution to form a fact- finding committee to investigate events in Jenin and Nablus, a resolution that was first watered down, after which Sharon contested the composition of the committee, then refused it permission to enter the locations in question. Against Israel's defiance of a UN Security Council resolution, the US prevailed upon the Security Council not to bring it up again, the secretary-general dissolved the committee and business resumed as usual as though nothing had ever happened. According to UN rules and procedures, the Security Council should have convened to examine ways to compel the "concerned party" -- Israel -- to implement the pertinent resolution, a process that was so adamantly pursued in the case of Iraq.
Washington's connivance with Israel has encouraged the Sharon government to greater levels of intransigence and extremism, as is evidenced by the fact that Israeli occupation forces no longer recoil from training their sights on UN employees and buildings in the occupied territories. Only recently, on 22 November, these forces shot and killed British citizen and UN employee, Iain Hook, and subsequently demolished a warehouse in Gaza belonging to the World Food Programme, in what was clearly another bid to force the Palestinians to their knees. The situation is such that 64 foreigners working for the UN in the West Bank and Gaza felt compelled to sign a petition condemning the acts of terror being perpetrated by Israeli forces in the occupied territories. UN officials in Palestine also called for the prosecution of the Israeli soldier who killed their British colleague, to which the Israeli commander of the central zone responded that he supported the soldier in question and would not take action against him.
Moreover, the arrogance of the Israeli government has reached the degree of accusing UNRWA of supporting "Palestinian terrorism". In a recent report, Israeli security officials charged that the international organisation was "engaged in activities in support of Palestinian terrorism and sheltering Palestinian saboteurs in its buildings". The implications of the report are obvious and fearful that Israel may deliberately target more other UN employees, the agency issued a statement denying the accusations and expressing its concern for the safety of its personnel in Palestinian territories.
In its escalating attacks and charges against UN personnel Israel clearly seeks to eliminate an international presence that has helped to alleviate some of the suffering in the occupied territories. Israel is conscious, too, that this presence bears constant witness to its crimes against the Palestinian people and that such testimony may one day come back to haunt it in international courts.
In spite of the expanding scope of repression, and the daily rising death toll of innocent children, women, and the elderly at the hands of Israeli tanks and bullets, one of Sharon's advisers had the audacity to appear before television cameras and issue a statement threatening more acts of murder and terror.
And, against the scenes of carnage, the Israeli prime minister comes up with a proposal for a Palestinian state on no more than 40 per cent of the West Bank and 75 per cent of Gaza. Specifically, he said, "Israel agrees, within the framework delineated by US President George Bush, to the creation of a Palestinian state within borders equivalent to zones A and B subject to the Palestinian Authority."
This proposal is absurd. What Sharon is offering is a Palestinian state on less than 10 per cent of the original land of Palestine, whereas the 1948 UN partition resolution stipulated a state on 44 per cent of this land. Israel occupied half of that 44 per cent in 1948, leaving it 22 per cent, consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel occupied in 1967. Now Sharon thinks it acceptable to create a Palestinian state on less than half of that. Can he seriously think that such proposals help generate a climate conducive to the restoration of calm and lure the Arabs back to the negotiating table?
Like the daily violence of the occupation forces, such proposals only serve to strengthen the arguments and credibility of those organisations calling for the continuation of armed resistance on all of historic Palestine. In addition, they further undermine the voices of moderation appealing for a resolution to the conflict through negotiations and deepen the mistrust of international powers, especially the US in its capacity as sponsor of the Arab-Israeli peace process.
In their summit in Beirut last March, the Arabs put forward a reasonable and viable proposal for comprehensive peace in the region. The Israeli response was to mount an all-out offensive in PA territories. That Washington made no attempt to restrain Israeli aggression on that and other occasions greatly tarnished its image among the Arab public.
Today, with the prospect of war looming over Iraq and Israeli public opinion shifting further to the right, the situation in the region appears bleaker than ever. In spite of the general pessimism, however, we have proposed a comprehensive plan for leading the region back to the prospect of true peace. This plan entails three interrelated courses of action: the restoration of calm, reform of the PA and the resumption of direct negotiations. As mentioned above, the first step must be reciprocal and backed up by Arab and US guarantees to sustain calm on the Palestinian and Israeli sides, respectively, for a period of six months.
At the same time we must caution Israel and the US against interpreting Arab appeals for the restoration of calm as a sign of weakness. Arab peace initiatives emanate from a clear commitment to the restoration of Arab rights and a sincere faith in the value of a negotiated settlement. To interpret them otherwise can have potentially dangerous consequences, the most serious of which would be to erode Arab confidence in the negotiating process, sap the spirit that has given rise to so many peace initiatives and encourage the rise of extremist forces and their potential grip over public opinion. President Mubarak's recent proposals for a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict stemmed from his conviction in the principles that must be observed to bring lasting peace and stability to the whole region. Will Israel take advantage of this opportunity and will the US exercise its responsibilities in an appropriate manner? Or will they propel the region further towards the brink?
