Peace Confounded
Avi Shlaim
Index on Censorship, 1 (2001), 50-55.
The signing of the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian
Self-Government, on 13 September 1993 at the White House, marked the
end of one chapter in the history of the Palestinians and the beginning
of another. By signing the agreement and shaking hands with Itzhak
Rabin, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat turned his back on the armed struggle
and embarked on the quest for a peaceful settlement to the hundred year
old conflict. Rabin, for his part, accepted the PLO as a partner to the
talks and acknowledged the Palestinians as a people with national
rights. Mutual denial was replaced by mutual recognition.
The historic reconciliation was based on a historic compromise:
acceptance of the principle of the partition of Palestine. Both sides
accepted territorial compromise as the basis for the settlement of
their long and bitter conflict. Each side resigned itself to parting
with territory it had previously regarded not only as its patrimony but
as a vital part of its national identity. For the Palestinians the
compromise they had to make was particularly painful. But by giving up
their claim to 78 per cent of mandatory Palestine they hoped to secure
an independent state over the rest. The two sides, by accepting the
principle of partition at the same time, seemed to be setting aside the
ideological dispute over who was the rightful owner of Palestine and to
be turning to the task of finding a practical solution to the problem
of sharing the cramped living space between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea.
The shape of the final settlement was not specified in the Declaration
of Principles but left to negotiations between the two parties during
the latter part of the transition period of five years. The declaration
was completely silent on such vital issues as the right of return of
the 1948 refugees, the borders of the Palestinian entity, the status of
Jerusalem, and the future of the Jewish settlements in the occupied
territories. Both sides took a calculated risk, realising that a great
deal would depend on the way the experiment in Palestinian
self-government worked out in practice. They assumed that the
experience of working together during the transition period would
generate the trust necessary to tackle the most difficult issues and to
forge a viable peace settlement. Although the Declaration of Principles
did not state specifically that there will be an independent
Palestinian state at the end of the interim period, this was the clear
intention of the leaders who signed it.
Not every one on the Palestinian side shared these optimistic
assumptions. Some Palestinian groups, secular as well as religious
ones, rejected the very idea of compromise with the Jewish state.
Others were more specific. Farouk Kaddumi, the ‘foreign
minister’ of the PLO, argued that the deal compromised the basic
national rights of the Palestinian people as well as the individual
rights of the 1948 refugees. Hanan Ashrawi’s first reaction was
one of shock. It was clear to her that the PLO officials who negotiated
the Oslo deal had not lived under occupation. She was deeply concerned
by the gaps in the accord, the ambiguities, and the lack of detail. She
drew attention to the fact that the accord did not commit Israel to
cease all settlement activity, that it postponed the question of
Jerusalem, and that it said nothing about human rights.
Edward Said, the leading Palestinian intellectual, lambasted Yasser
Arafat for unilaterally cancelling the intifada, for failing to
coordinate his moves with the Arab states, and for introducing
appalling disarray into the ranks of the PLO. ‘The PLO’,
wrote Said, ‘has transformed itself from a national liberation
movement into a kind of small-town government, with the same handful of
people still in command.’ For the deal itself, Said had nothing
but scorn. ‘All secret deals between a very strong and a very
weak partner necessarily involve concessions hidden in embarrassment by
the latter,’ he wrote. ‘The deal before us’, he
continued, ‘smacks of the PLO leadership’s exhaustion and
isolation, and of Israel’s shrewdness.’ ‘Gaza and
Jericho first ... and last’ was Mahmoud Darwish’s damning
verdict on the deal.
The Oslo accord was greeted with dismay in nationalist Arab quarters:
it was peace without justice or honour charged the critics. But it fell
to the Arab world’s most popular poet, Nizar Qabbani, to express
the wide-spread opposition to the agreement. He did so in a prose poem,
‘al-Muharwiluun’(those who rush or scurry) which he wrote
in London and published in 1995. Qabbani’s bitter disappointment,
and his anger with the PLO leaders who signed the accord, were given
free reign:
After this secret romance in Oslo
we came out barren.
They gave us a homeland
smaller than a single grain of wheat
a homeland to swallow without water
like aspirin pills.
Oh, we dreamed of a green peace
and a white crescent
and a blue sea.
Now we find ourselves
on a dung heap.
The history of the implementation of the Oslo accord has been one of
endless delays on the Israeli side and of bitter disappointment on the
Palestinian side. Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architects
of the accord, were sidelined after the signing ceremony. Their place
at the negotiating table was taken by army officers who were critical
of the security aspects of Oslo and who seemed intent not on ending the
occupation but on repackaging it. They were willing to redeploy their
troops from the big cities to the rural areas where resistance was more
difficult to organise and clashes were less likely. But they were
determined to retain as much control as possible for as long as
possible in the occupied territories. And they managed to impose their
own conception of the interim period: specific steps to transfer
limited powers to the Palestinian Authority without giving up
Israel’s overall responsibility for security.
An Interim Agreement was signed by Rabin and Arafat on 28 September
1995, popularly known as Oslo II. It provided for elections to a
Palestinian council, the transfer of legislative authority to this
council, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian centres
of population, and the division of the West Bank into three areas-- A,
B, and C. Area A was placed under exclusive Palestinian control,
area C under exclusive Israeli control, and in area B the Palestinian
Authority exercised civilian power while Israel continued to be in
charge of security. Area A amounted to only four per cent of the area
of the West Bank, area B to another 25 per cent and the rest was area C.
Oslo II, like Oslo I, was based on the assumption that the enmity
between the two warring tribes would subside during the transition
period, paving the way to an equitable final settlement. This did not
happen. On the contrary, the extremists on both sides did everything in
their power to undermine the agreement. There was a serious drop in
living standards on the West Bank and Gaza, partly as a result of
frequent Israeli border closures. Moreover, there was no significant
gain in human rights to compensate for the rise in unemployment,
poverty, and material hardship. Human rights were continually
sacrificed in the name of ‘security’ by both Israel and the
PA. Worst of all, Jewish settlements continued to be built on
Palestinian land in palpable violation of the spirit, if not the
letter, of the Oslo accord.
In the Gaza Strip, home to just over 5,000 Jewish settlers, Israel
controlled a third of the land and most of the water resources
desperately needed by its one million Palestinian inhabitants. In the
West Bank, Israel retained control over the water resources and the
lion’s share of the land. The building of settlements throughout
the West Bank and especially around East Jerusalem continued unabated,
and a network of bypass roads seemed designed to preempt the
possibility of Palestinian statehood. In all these different ways, the
Oslo process actually worsened the situation in the occupied
territories and confounded Palestinian aspirations to a state of their
own.
Disappointment with Oslo and distrust of Israel deepened in the wake of
the Likud’s electoral victory in May 1996. For Binyamin
Netanyahu, the new prime minister, was an ardent Jewish nationalist and
an unreconstructed proponent of the strategy of the iron wall.
Netanyahu was fiercely opposed to the Oslo accord because it recognised
the PLO, because it conceded that the Palestinian people had a
legitimate right to self-government, and because it began the process
of partitioning western Palestine. In the lead-up to the election,
opinion polls showed that the majority of Israelis continued to support
the policy of gradual and controlled withdrawal from the occupied
territories, and that they were much less troubled by the prospect of a
Palestinian state alongside Israel than the politicians of the right.
Consequently, Netanyahu promised that, if elected, he would not renege
on any of the country’s international commitments.
But this was precisely what Netanyahu did after being elected by the
narrowest of margins. His three years in power consisted largely of
broken promise, deception, shabby maneouvers, provocative acts like the
opening of the tunnel under the al-Aqsa Mosque and the building of
housing units on Arab land at Jabal Abu Ghrneim (Har Homa), and endless
delays. Netanyahu kept lecturing to the Palestinians about reciprocity
and acting unilaterally. He treated the Palestinian Authority not as an
equal partner but as a sub-contractor that was failing in its duty to
uphold Israel’s security. Most galling of all to the Palestinians
was Netanyahu’s failure to transfer to the PA 13 per cent from
Area C in accordance with the Wye River Memorandum that he himself had
signed on 22 October 1998. The one message that came across loud and
clear was that the Likud government was not prepared to end the
occupation and that it could not be trusted to keep agreements.
Ehud Barak won a decisive victory in the May 1999 election and with it
went a clear mandate to resume and continue the peace process with the
Palestinians. But the difficulties and delays on the Palestinian track
persisted. Barak did not end Israeli violations of the Oslo accords.
Under his leadership, settlement activity was intensified, especially
around Jersualem. Palestinian prisoners were not released as agreed.
The airport at Gaza and the so-called ‘safe passage’
between Gaza and the West Bank were opened but under strict and
intrusive Israeli control. Jerusalem remains closed to most
Palestinians and travel between Palestinian towns is restricted by
Israeli checkpoints. Seven years after the Oslo accord was signed,
Israel retains full control over 61 per cent of the West Bank and 20
per cent of Gaza.
Negotiations on final status resumed but all the deadlines agreed by
Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat fell by the wayside. The basic problem was
Barak’s reluctance to proceed to a final status agreement in
small steps, as envisaged at Oslo, and his preference for dealing with
all the issues in one fell swoop. This is what Barak set out to achieve
at the Camp David summit which Bill Clinton convened in July 2000 at
his request. At the summit Barak presented Arafat with a package which
included a demilitarised Palestinian state on 90 per cent of the West
Bank and Gaza, nominal concessions on the refugee issue, and
Palestinian sovereignty over certain parts of East Jerusalem. Arafat
rejected the package because the price tag attached to it was a formal
renunciation of any outstanding Palestinian claims against the State of
Israel. Arafat did not have the authority to accept this package even
if he had wanted to. Thus, by insisting on a formal end to the dispute
on terms that did not satisfy Palestinian national aspirations, Barak
himself caused the collapse of the Camp David summit.
The collapse of the Camp David summit put the two sides on a collision
course. Palestinian bitterness and frustration steadily mounted.
Boycotts and closures of the Palestinian territories meant rising
unemployment with disastrous social and economic consequences. Ariel
Sharon’s tour of Haram al-Sharif in the Old City of Jerusalem, on
28 September 2000, put the match to the barrel of gunpowder. By
allowing this provocative tour against the advice of his security
chiefs, Barak also assumed responsibility for the consequences. The
most immediate consequence was violent clashes between Palestinian
demonstrators and Israeli troops. In its first ten weeks, the al-Aqsa
intifada resulted in about 280 Palestinian dead and over 8,000 wounded.
The peace process may not be dead and buried as some observers claim,
but it is certainly on hold until the guns fall silent.
It is not difficult to see why disenchantment with Oslo is so prevalent
among Palestinians. Nor is it difficult to appreciate why, in
retrospect, so many Palestinians feel that Arafat made a bad deal at
Oslo. Arafat has made many mistakes, the most serious of which was the
failure to make negotiations conditional on the cessation of settlement
activity. But it is wrong to conclude, as some prominent Palestinians
have done, that Oslo is the problem, not the solution. Oslo, for all
its limitations, provided a framework for resolving the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The framework was based on a PLO
commitment to put an end to the violence and an Israeli commitment to
gradual withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO kept its side
of the bargain. Israel did not. That is the real reason for the
breakdown of the peace process.