Losing hope
Palestinians are steadily losing any faith they had in the Quartet's "road map" for peace with Israel, Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem
Publicly, Palestinian Authority (PA) officials are clinging to the "roadmap" blueprint for peace, based on the view that it is the only game in town, and that it would be disastrous for the Palestinians were they to be considered the ones seeking to thwart the plan.
However, privately, very few Palestinians, including many within the PA establishment, are inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.
The somber mood in the occupied territories attests to fading hopes that the administration of President George W Bush will move swiftly to implement the roadmap once the war on Iraq is over.
The bleak mood seems also to betray hopes voiced by some Arab and European officials in the past few days and weeks that the Bush administration will move earnestly to enforce the roadmap now that the war in Iraq is practically over.
And while the roadmap could still be pushed through, there are strong indications that President Bush might buckle under Jewish pressure and agree to further trim the plan to accede to Israeli objections.
This, the Palestinians say, will eviscerate the plan, rendering it indistinguishable from Ariel Sharon's own designs that Palestinians argue would perpetuate Israel's occupation of the Palestinian homeland.
Israel says it has as many as a hundred objections and "reservations" to the plan, including three perquisites to its implementation: disbanding Palestinian resistance groups, creating new security bodies that would deal with so-called terrorism and ruling out European or United Nations involvement in security arrangements.
First, the complete dismantling of what Israel calls the "terror infrastructure" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In real terms, this means that the new Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbass would have to completely decimate all resistance groups, such as Hamas, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and Islamic Jihad, along with their political and non-political -- that is charitable -- institutions. In short, the Israeli demand amounts to trying to foster strife among Palestinians before agreeing to move forward.
Second, Israel insists on receiving guarantees from the United States that no Palestinian state will be allowed to see light of day without Israeli consent. In other words, Israel is determined to have the right to veto a prospective state if and when it deems unacceptable any details pertaining to such a state.
Third, Israel insists that the obligations of each phase in the three-stage roadmap should be fulfilled before the sides move to the next phase.
Moreover, Israel rejects a key component in the roadmap, namely the demand for a complete freeze on Jewish settlement building and expansion, arguing that the settlements would only be discussed in final status negotiations.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who visited Washington earlier this month, sought and apparently succeeded in rallying opposition to the roadmap in Congress and the American Jewish community.
Shalom didn't forget to claim that Israel "accepts in principle" Bush's vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
However, he insisted that Israeli objections to the plan, which he euphemistically termed "reservations", ought to be accepted, otherwise Israel would walk away from any prospective talks with the Palestinians.
But in contrast to his public remarks, Shalom reportedly told a private meeting of American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) leaders about Israel's "discomfort" and "consternation" over the plan.
"The idea of the roadmap was brought here from Europe, so maybe it's not the same as the president's vision," said Shalom.
"It's no secret that [British PM] Tony Blair and the Europeans are pushing very hard, and the administration will have to decide what's in America's interests," said one of his aides.
Even before Shalom's return to Israel, Israeli demands for "a reformulation" of the roadmap became the rallying cry of AIPAC and Israel's powerful allies in Congress.
One of them reportedly warned "the Jews wouldn't agree to pay the price for Tony Blair's participation in the war on Iraq," an allusion to Blair's persistent demands that Bush release the roadmap as soon as possible and without any changes.
Such remarks by Israeli officials, along with Israel's unmitigated repression of the Palestinians, have prompted Palestinian officials to declare that Israel actually rejects the roadmap and is trying to subvert it.
"We know quite well that they don't accept it and that they are trying to abort it by introducing impossible demands that would render it unworkable and unacceptable to us," said Sa'eb Ureikat, Palestinian Authority minister of civil administration.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government and army seem to be doing everything possible to undermine and undercut the yet-to-be-born government of Mahmoud Abbass.
Last week, the Israeli army carried out what some Israeli sources described as "a rehearsal for transfer" (a reference to Israel's contemplated mass deportation of Palestinians from their homeland) in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
The Israeli army forced at gunpoint as many as 2,000 males between the age of 15 and 50 on board army trucks, which took them to an internment station several kilometres away where they were kept for three days, without food and with very little water, before they were finally allowed to return by foot to their homes at the Tulkarm refugee camp.
The "rehearsed transfer" may have been aimed at gauging international reactions to a mass expulsion of Palestinians.
An Israeli academic, Professor Illan Pappe of Haifa University, accused the Sharon government of using the war in Iraq as a cover to effect draconian measures against Palestinians, not unlike Israel's notorious methods used in the 1950s.
"Don't say you did not know; we must stop this evil state of ours from committing its daily crimes against humanity," said Pappe in his ethnic cleansing alert, published on several Israeli and Palestinian Web sites.
Following the shameful incidents in Tulkarm, the Israeli army renewed its incursions and attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, killing six more Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, bringing to at least 18 the number of Palestinians killed since onset of the Anglo- American invasion of Iraq.
Moreover, the Israeli government brushed aside an appeal from the US State Department not to allow Jewish settlers to take over additional Arab homes in the Ras Al-Amud neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.
In fact, in addition to moving the settlers to the heart of Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians say must become the capital of their prospective state, the Israeli government stepped up its demolition of Arab homes in the city, allegedly because they were constructed without the necessary building permits.
Palestinians argue convincingly that the destruction of their homes was a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing aimed at forcing them to emigrate.
They complain bitterly that Israeli authorities rarely grant them building permits, forcing them to build homes without the licenses they know they won't be granted.
Further seeking to undermine Abbass's government, Israeli officials have voiced "strong doubts" about his ability to lead the Palestinians to peace.
Last Monday, Foreign Minister Shalom reportedly Abbass's stance on the plight of the refugees "uncompromising" and "disappointing".
On the same day, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said he was in favour of "deporting Yasser Arafat" claiming there could be no progress in the "peace process" as long as Arafat remained in the West Bank.
Earlier, both Shalom and Mofaz strongly criticised the reported inclusion of a number of Arafat's loyalists in the next Palestinian cabinet, including Sa'eb Ureikat, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Sha'ath and Hani Al- Hassan.
All this, the Palestinians say, suggests that Israel is not actually interested in seeing the PA premier-designate succeed in his task.
That is unless "success" means succumbing to Israeli political dictates and abandoning, or at least compromising, the Palestinian goal of establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state encompassing the entire West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 17 - 23 April 2003 (Issue No. 634)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/634/re1.htm