Prelude to the Accord: Likud, Labour and the Palestinians
Avi Shlaim
Journal of Palestine Studies, 23: 2, Winter 1994, 5-19.
The mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO and the Declaration
of Principles on Palestinian self-government in Gaza and Jericho,
signed in Washington on 13 September 1993, mark a historic breakthrough
in the century-old conflict over Palestine. The conflict was born
at the end of the last century as a result of the incompatible national
aspirations of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. It was a conflict
between two nations for one country. The neighbouring Arab states
became involved in this conflict in the 1930s and, with the exception
of Egypt, they are still involved today. But the clash between
Jewish and Palestinian nationalism has always been the heart of the
Arab-Israeli conflict. It is for this reason that relations with
the Palestinians is such a sensitive, complex and controversial issue
in Israeli politics. The aim of this article is to compare and
contrast the policies of the Likud bloc and of the Labour Party towards
the peace talks with the Palestinians which got under way at the Madrid
conference of October 1991.
In March 1990 the national unity government headed by Mr Yitzhak Shamir
collapsed over the issue of a dialogue with the Palestinians.
Following the departure of the Labour Party, Mr Shamir formed a
narrower government with the religious parties and three small
ultranationalist parties. This was the most rightwing government
in Israel’s entire history. Following Likud’s
crushing defeat at the polls on 23 June 1992, the Labour Party under
the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin formed another narrow government.
This one is probably the most dovish government in the country’s
history. Most Arabs believe that there is no significant
difference between the two parties. It might be instructive
therefore to examine the record of the Likud-led and the Labour-led
governments in the peace talks with the Palestinians in order to
determine whether this is indeed the case.
When the Labour Party emerged as the victor in the Israeli
general election in June 1992, a BBC correspondent asked an Arab
janitor in Jerusalem for his reaction. `Do you see my left
shoe,’ replied the Arab indifferently, `that is Yitzhak
Rabin. Do you see my right shoe, that is Yitzhak Shamir.
Two Yitzhaks, two shoes, so what’s the difference?’
This feeling that there is not much to choose between the leaders of
Israel’s two main parties is not confined to Arabs. When
Rabin served as defence minister in the national unity government
headed by Shamir from 1986 to 1990, there was a joke in Israel which
went as follows: what is the difference between a leftwing Likudnik and
a rightwing Likudnik? Answer: a leftwing Likudnik is a follower
of Yitzhak Shamir and a rightwing Likudnik is a follower of Yitzhak
Rabin.
The traditional foreign policies of the rival parties led by the two
Yitzhaks also display some striking similarities. The critic
William Hazlitt compared the Whig and the Tory parties in the early
nineteenth century to two rival coach companies that splash mud on one
another but go by the same route to the same destination. It is
tempting to apply the same analogy to the Labour and the Likud parties
which have dominated the Israeli political scene since 1948. But
to do so would be to take a simplistic view of Israeli politics.
No one would deny that Likud and Labour splash mud on one
another. It is true that both parties used to share a blind spot
regarding the Palestinians, preferring to treat the Arab-Israeli
conflict as an inter-state conflict. It is true that both parties
are deeply opposed to Palestinian nationalism and deny that the
Palestinians have a right to national self determination. The
notorious statement that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people
came not from the Likud but from that old Labour party battle-axe,
Golda Meir. It is also true that, until very recently, both
parties refused to negotiate with the PLO and that they remain
unconditionally opposed to the establishment of an independent
Palestinian state.
Yet the differences between the Likud and Labour are quite significant,
both in the realm of ideology and in the realm of practical
policy. The final destination of the two parties was different
and they sought to get to their respective destinations by different
routes. This is why the rise to power of the Likud in 1977
constituted such a sharp break in Israeli foreign policy as well as
ending three decades of uninterrupted Labour rule at home. And this is
why the Labour victory of June 1992 which ended a decade and a half of
Likud hegemony constitutes another watershed in Israel’s
relations with the Palestinians.
The Labour party traditionally had a pro-Hashemite orientation.
In 1947 its leaders reached an agreement with King Abdullah of Jordan,
the grandfather of the present King Hussein, to partition Palestine at
the expense of the Palestinians. The Palestinian state envisaged
in the UN partition plan of 29 November 1947 never saw the light of
day. What was left of Arab Palestine was annexed by Jordan.
After 1948, the Labour party leaders remained actively committed to the
survival of the Hashemite monarchy in Amman and to the suppression of
Palestinian nationalism. After the June War of 1967, the Labour
party adopted the so called `Jordanian option’. This
posited that there is no room for a Palestinian state west of the
Jordan river. The aim of the policy was to reach a settlement
with King Hussein of Jordan based on territorial compromise, on the
return of most but not all of the West Bank to Jordanian rule.
The Likud’s ideology can also be summed in two words - Greater
Israel. According to this ideology, Judea and Sameria, the
biblical terms for the West Bank, are an integral part of Eretz
Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The Likud categorically denies that
Jordan has any claim to sovereignty over this area. Equally
vehement is the Likud’s denial that the Palestinians have a right
to self determination in this area.
All that the Likud would offer the Palestinians is limited autonomy in
running their daily lives. The first Palestinian autonomy plan
was put forward by Menachen Begin in December 1977 when negotiating the
Camp David accords with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. It is
essential to understand that, then as now, autonomy, as conceived by
the Likud, applies only to the people of the occupied territories and
not to the land. Israel retains its claim to sovereignty over the
West Bank and Gaza under this plan. Yigal Allon, the late Labour
party leader, remarked about this plan that it is only in Mark
Chagall’s pictures that people float in mid-air free of the force
of gravity and that it is impossible to translate this artistic quirk
into any meaningful political reality. It was impossible then and
it remained impossible under Begin’s successor, Yitzhak Shamir,
who was actually opposed to the Camp David accords.
One way of summing up the Likud’s policy towards the Palestinians
is in terms of the three noes: no to negotiations with the PLO, no to a
Palestinian state, and no to swapping land for peace. And one way
of summing up the differences between the Likud and Labour is by
focussing on their attitude towards the principle of partition.
The Likud rejects partition as a basis for a settlement with either the
Palestinians or Jordan, laying a claim to the whole territory west of
the Jordan river. The Labour party, on the other hand, accepts
the principle of partition, the notion of trading land for peace, as a
basis for a settlement but has traditionally prefered Jordan to the
Palestinians as a partner.
Yitzhak Shamir himself remains something of an enigma despite his
prominence in public life during the decade that preceded his
crushing electoral defeat. Losing his family in the Nazi
holocaust was a formative experience which could only reinforce his
stark, Hobbsian view of the world. Although he rarely mentions
the holocaust in his public utterances, the experience seared itself on
his psyche and continues to colour his attitude to his people’s
other great adversary - the Arabs. In Shamir’s
monochromatic picture of the world, `the Arabs’ feature as a
monolithic and implacable enemy bent on the destruction of the state of
Israel and on throwing the Jews into the sea. Any signs of a
change of heart on the Arab side are habitually dismissed by Shamir as
the product of purely tactical considerations. `The Arabs are
still the same Arabs’, Shamir is fond of saying, `and the sea is
still the same sea’. A general disbelief in the possibility
of peace and refusal to pay any concrete price for it is part and
parcel of this deeply entrenched view of a hostile world, bad Arabs and
permanent danger.
On Shamir’s position vis-à-vis the Palestinians two rather
different interpretations used to be advanced. One
interpretation, popular among American Jews, was that Shamir is a tough
bargainer, but when the terms are right he would strike a deal and use
his impeccable nationalist credentials to push it through, as Begin had
done with Egypt. The other view was that on the Palestinian issue
Shamir was a hopeless case because his ideological commitment to the
Land of Israel ruled out any territorial compromise. As Avishai
Margalit put it Shamir is not a bargainer. Shamir is a
two-dimensional man. One dimension is the length of the Land of
Israel, the second, its width. Since Shamir’s historical
vision is measured in inches, he won’t give an inch. He
will not bargain about the Land of Israel or about any interim
agreement that would involve the least risk of losing control over the
occupied territories.[1]
While the Bush administration worked to convene the Middle East peace
conference in Madrid, Shamir continued the policy of building more
Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Shamir insisted, as a
condition for attending the Madrid conference, that the Palestinians
could not be represented by Yasser Arafat or any other PLO leader based
in Tunis or by residents of East Jerusalem but by local leaders from
the West Bank and Gaza who would form part of a joint
Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. It was one of those rare
international disputes in which one party chose not only its own team
for the match but also that of the other party.
Although he succeeded in imposing his own rules for Palestinian
representation, Shamir went to Madrid in a defiant and truculent
mood. The letters of invitation stated that the negotiations
would proceed on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 242 of 22
November 1967. This resolution incorporated the principle of
trading land for peace but Shamir would not explicitly accept either
the resolution or the principle as a basis for negotiation.
As the head of the Israeli delegation, Shamir used the platform to
deliver the first ever Israel Bonds speech in front on an Arab
audience. He portrayed Israel as the innocent victim of Arab
aggression and categorically denied that any change had taken place in
the Arab attitude to Israel. The presence in front of him of
high-ranking representatives of the Palestinians and of all the
neighbouring Arab states, including Egypt which had signed a peace
treaty with Israel back in 1979, was evidently devoid of any
significance in his eyes. The gist of his message was that the
Arabs are still the same Arabs and the sea is still the same sea.
The root cause of the conflict, he insisted, was not territory but the
Arab refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
Hence he was not prepared to trade territory for peace; all he
would offer was peace for peace.
Some observers chose to interpret Shamir’s speech as the opening
gambit in a protracted bargaining process. Concessions, they
said, would come only once the substantive negotiations got under
way. Subsequent events, however, were to prove that
Shamir’s opening speech in Madrid represented his basic,
inflexible and unchangeable position. For him Palestinian
autonomy in what was to be a transitional period of five years was
intended to foreclose all other options rather than to pave the way to
any further Israeli concessions.
Five rounds of bilateral talks were held in Washington following the
mother of all Middle East peace conferences in Madrid. Throughout
these five rounds, the Likud government continued to rule out the
swapping of land for peace. A good deal of time was taken up with
procedural wrangles and it as not until Israel agreed to negotiate
separately with the Palestinian and Jordanian delegations that the
substantive issues could be addressed. Even then the negotiations
proceeded at a snail’s pace and they ended in deadlock.
The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians only highlighted
the immense gap between them. The Palestinians started with the
assumption that they are a people with national rights and that the
interim arrangements under discussion were the precursor to
independence and should be shaped accordingly. The Israeli
government started with the assumption that the Palestinians are the
inhabitants of the territories with no national rights of any kind and
certainly no right to independence, not even after the end of the
transitional period.
At the fourth round of talks, towards the end of February 1992, the two
sides tabled incompatible plans for the interim period of
self-government. The Palestinian blueprint was for a Palestinian
Interim Self-Governing Authority or PISGA for short.
Israel’s counter proposal was for `interim self-government
arrangements.’ Behind the two names lurked irreconcilable
positions on the nature, scope, and purpose of `interim
self-government’.
Israel’s proposal for interim self-government was anchored
in the 1978 Camp David accords and it applied only to people, not to
territory. In some respects the proposal offered the Palestinians
less than Begin’s autonomy plan which they had rejected
scornfully at the time as power to `collect garbage and exterminate
mosquitoes.’
While Shamir’s proposal failed to meet the minimal expectations
of the Palestinians, it provoked his ultra-nationalist partners to quit
the coalition. With the departure of Tsomet and Tehia, the
countdown to the next election began. During the campaign Shamir
declared that the settlement drive in Judea and Samaria would continue
and that he himself would not be a party to any deal that placed this
drive at risk. Consequently, the June 1992 election became almost
a referendum on the peace issue. Israelis were asked to choose
between the territorial expansionism of the Likud and the policy of
peace based on territorial compromise offered by Labour.
To this difficult question, the Israeli electorate gave an
uncharacteristically clear-cut reply. It returned Labour to power
with a clear mandate to put its programme into action and it relegated
the Likud to the opposition. Labour increased its seats in the
Knesset from 39 to 44, while Likud fell from 40 to 32. One has to
go back to the 1977 election for a comparable landslide victory.
In defeat Shamir remained as unapologetic and unrepentant about his
ideological commitment to the Land of Israel as he had been in
power. Many observers considered this commitment to be
incompatible with his other declared aim of attaining peace with the
Palestinians and they concluded that the prime minister could not be
negotiating in good faith. The American sponsored peace process,
according to this view, served simply as a smokescreen for
consolidating Israel’s grip on the Golan Heights, the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. Shamir himself confirmed these suspicions in
an interview of blinding candour that he gave to the Israeli newspaper
Ma’ariv only three days after his electoral defeat. It was
the true confession of a stone-faced stone-waller.
In this interview Shamir stressed that in his view the Likud must be
guided by ideology because no political movement can survive unless it
is driven by an ideology. The centre-piece of his party’s
ideology, he said, is the Land of Israel and on this there could be no
compromise. `Moderation,’ he explained, `should relate to
the tactics but not to the goal. That is how I acted as prime
minister. In my political activity I know how to display the
tactics of moderation, but without conceding anything on the goal - the
integrity of the Land of Israel.’
Shamir disclosed that his secret agenda for the peace talks had been to
expand Jewish settlement and to complete the demographic revolution in
the Land of Israel. Without this demographic revolution, there
was the danger that autonomy will be turned into a Palestinian state.
`I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years,’ he said,
and meanwhile we would have reached half a million people in Judea and
Samaria.’ When reminded that, judging by the results of the
recent election, there is no majority for a Greater Land of Israel,
Shamir retorted bluntly: `I didn’t believe there was a majority
in favour of a Greater Land of Israel. But it can be attained
over time. This must be the historic direction. If we drop
this basis, there would be nothing to prevent the development of a
Palestinian state.’[2]
Shamir’s interview was widely reported in the international media
and caused outrage among Americans, Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis
alike. The comments angered some of Shamir’s ministerial
colleagues who felt they had been tainted by his confession. Some
of the peace negotiators also felt deceived by Shamir and said they
would not have participated in the talks if they had known that he was
not serious.
Under pressure from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which had been
inundated with protests, Shamir’s office expressed surprise at
the interpretation of his remarks and denied any lack of commitment to
the idea of Palestinian autonomy on his part. Shamir’s
remarks, it was claimed, referred only to the negotiations on the final
settlement and not to the negotiations on autonomy during the
transitional period. But this lame explanation could not erase
the impression that Shamir’s real aim had been to obstruct and
delay the peace process rather than to advance it. Arabs and
Palestinians now had it on the highest authority that, from the very
start, their partner had secretly hoped to ensure that the peace talks
would fail. This was the grim legacy left by Shamir to his Labour
successors.
To dissociate himself from this legacy, Yitzhak Rabin emphasised the
differences and downplayed the similarities between himself and his
predecessor. He presented the election results as marking a break
rather than continuity in the country’s approach to the peace
talks. `We inherited the framework of the Madrid conference from
the previous government,’ he told the Knesset on 13 July
1992. `But there is one significant change: the previous
government created the tools, but they never intended to use them in
order to achieve peace.’
The composition of the new government also underscored the sharp break
with the legacy of the Likud. Of Labour’s
eleven ministers, at least six may be counted as doves, foreign
minister Shimon Peres being the most prominent. Labour’s
chief coalition partner is Meretz, a left-of-centre party created
through a merger of the Citizens Rights Movement, Mapam and Shinui,
which won 12 seats in the Knesset. The other coalition partner is
Shas, a centrist religious party of mainly Oriental Jews which
increased its representation from five to six seats in the
Knesset. Although Rabin’s government commands only a narrow
majority of 62 in the 120-member Knesset, it can also count on
the support of the five Arab and communist MKs for a moderate foreign
policy. Rabin thus enjoys considerable latitude in the making of
foreign policy.
But Rabin is also the product of the last half-century of his
people’s history. He is the first Israeli-born prime
minister and, to a far greater extent than any of his predecessors, he
was personally involved at the sharp end of the conflict with the
Arabs. This direct involvement in the conflict between Israel and
the Arabs, first as a soldier and then as a diplomat and as a
politician, played a decisive part in shaping Rabin’s
world-view.
Suspicion of the Arabs and a deep sense of personal responsibility for
Israel’s security are the twin hallmarks of this
world-view. For Rabin the Arabs represent first and foremost a
military threat and, consequently, he tends to view all developments in
the region from the narrow perspective of Israel’s security
needs. A lifetime spent as a soldier inclines him to proceed with
caution, on the basis of `worst case analysis’, and makes him
reluctant to assume any political risks. Rabin is not endowed
with imagination or vision and he certainly has no empathy for the
other side in the conflict. Like a staff officer, he
concentrates on the practical side, examines alternative courses of
action and carefully weighs the costs and benefits of each. This
pragmatism is his greatest strength and greatest limitation as a
statesman.
Within the Labour Party Rabin has always belonged to the hawkish
wing. But his pragmatism is such that he is capable of changing
his mind even on basic tenets of party dogma. Nothing illustrates
this better than his attitude towards the Palestinian issue. To
begin with, Rabin was a firm believer in the Jordanian option. He
was no less devoted to reaching an agreement with Jordan than Shimon
Peres. He was even more outspoken than Peres in his opposition to
the idea of an independent Palestinian state.
On security issues Rabin was even more hard-line than the Likud
ministers. When the Palestinian uprising broke out in December
1987, Rabin was defence minster in the national unity government headed
by Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin was critical of Shamir for not using
force on a massive enough scale to crush the intifada. The
outbreak of intifada took Rabin himself by complete surprise and he
reacted angrily by ordering his soldiers to break the bones of the
Palestinians. This is what they did, literally, but to no
avail. The army commanders explained to him that this was a
political problem and that there is no simple military solution to
it. It was then that Rabin coined the phrase `marching with two
feet,’ the military foot and the political foot.[3]
This implied stepping up the use of force in order to arrive at the
negotiations from a position of strength. But it also implied
that Israel would have to negotiate directly with the Palestinians and
this amounted to a departure from his party’s hitherto exclusive
orientation on Amman. Rabin likes to think of himself as a great
strategist, like Henry Kissinger, combining the use of force and
diplomacy to achieve political ends. But his political thinking
is rather crude, his diplomatic style is unsubtle and his use of force
extremely heavy-handed.
Yitzhak Rabin’s victory thus inspired not only hope but doubts
too about the prospects of the peace talks. On the one hand, he
was ready to move the peace talks forward and to accelerate the
negotiations on Palestinian autonomy. On the other hand, given
his world-view and record, he was likely to act with great caution in
order to safeguard what he considers to be Israel’s overriding
security interests. In a sense, he replaced the ideology of
Greater Israel with another secular ideology based not on
territory but on national security.
Rabin presented his programme and his government in a major speech
before the Knesset on 13 July. He grouped the differences between
the outgoing government and the incoming government under three
headings: national priorities, the peace process, and Israel’s
place in the world. Whereas the outgoing government had lavished
money on the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, Rabin
promised to divert resources to the absorption of immigrants, social
and economic reforms, to the war against unemployment and to better
education. As far as the peace process was concerned, Rabin
proposed to move from `process’ to peace making and to give
priority to the talks on Palestinian autonomy, implying that Syria
would have to await its turn. Peace, however, could not come at
the expense of Israel’s security. `When it comes to
Israel’s security,’ he said, `we will concede not a
thing. From our standpoint, security takes precedence over
peace.’
But the most striking and unexpected part of Rabin’s speech
concerned Israel’s place in the world. Jewish history had
traditionally been presented as an endless chain of trials and
tribulations which reached its climax in the Nazi holocaust.
Likud leaders had assiduously cultivated the image of a small and
vulnerable Jewish state surrounded by a sea of Arab hostility.
Their answer to this sense of permanent threat was to build up Greater
Israel as a citadel for the entire Jewish people. Rabin not only
discarded this policy but directly challenged the thinking behind
it. `No longer are we necessarily “a people that dwells
alone,”’ he declared in his historic address to the
Knesset, `and no longer is it true that “the whole world is
against us.” We must overcome the sense of isolation that
has held us in its thrall for almost half a century.’[4]
These words constituted a sharp departure from what the American-Jewish
historian Saul Baron once called the lachrymose view of Jewish
history.
The effects of the new attitude in Jerusalem were felt immediately when
the sixth round of Middle East talks got under way in Washington on 24
August 1992. From the Israeli side came the suggestion of
continuous talks and this round was longer than any of the five
previous ones; it lasted a whole month with a recess of 10 days in the
middle. Before embarking on the talks, Israel volunteered a
number of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) like freeing Palestinian
detainees and rescinding deportation orders. The talks opened in
a positive atmosphere, with all sides reporting a new tone and a more
conciliatory attitude.
With so much at stake, Rabin took personal charge of the bilateral
talks, leaving his foreign minister in charge of much less critical
multilateral talks. At a fairly early stage in the bilateral
talks, a revolution occurred in Rabin’s thinking. Having
started the talks from a `Syria last’ position, he switched to a
`Syria first’ position and having planned to concentrate on
Palestinian autonomy first, he put the autonomy taks on the back
burner.
As the head of the Israeli delegation for the talks with the
Palestinians, Rabin retained Likud’s Eliakim Rubinstein.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, this suggested continuity in
Israeli policy. Nor were there any radically different ideas on
offer to counter this impression of continuity. Real dialogue
replaced sloganizing but the positions of the two parties remained wide
apart. On the nature of the Palestinian authority, the Israeli concept
remained essentially unchanged. Israel offered elections to a
15-member Palestinian administrative council while the Palestinians
demanded a 120-member parliament with real legislative authority.
Israel kept offering the delegation of tasks to the administrative
council while the Palestinians kept insisting on a transfer of
legislative authority. The Israelis hinted that if only agreement
could be reached on the concept of the Palestinian authority, all other
issues would become much easier to solve but they excluded so many key
areas of policy from the purview of this authority that no agreement
could be reached.
Both sides had their own explanation for the lack of progress.
The Israelis claimed that the Palestinian delegation was paralysed by
personal and factional conflicts, quite apart from the problems of
co-ordination with the PLO leadership in Tunis, and that this rendered
them incapable of responding in a reasonable manner to practical
proposals. The Palestinians claimed that Israel’s policy on
the ground as well as her negotiating position were intended to
perpetuate Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza. They also
suspected that Israel was seeking a separate peace with Syria.
But their chief complaint was that the Israeli autonomy proposals
applied only to people and not to the land and that they did not define
clearly the geographical boundaries of interim self-government.
`You have to define territoriality,’ insisted Palestinian
spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi. `Even if the Israelis want to make us
garbage collectors, you have to define the area where you collect your
own garbage and where you dispose of your garbage.’
The real problem for the Palestinians is that while the negotiations
with the Arab states were intended to lead to final peace settlements,
their talks were only designed to produce an interim solution. To
get over this hurdle, they called for a direct link between the interim
phase of self-government and the final status of the occupied
territories. Israel, however, could not or would not clarify
which territories were to be under the jurisdiction of the proposed
Palestinian council and which territories were to be excluded.
Shimon Peres explained: `Instead of attempting to draw up a map of a
self-governing territory...we have suggested a definitive
timetable. While this proposal lacks the clarity of a map, it
provides the commitment of a calendar.’ For the Palestinian
negotiators this commitment was not enough.
During the seventh round in November 1992, the ambiguity which had
obscured the conceptual gap between the Israel and the Palestinian
positions since the beginning of the talks finally disappeared.
It proved impossible for the two sides to agree on a first step because
they were intent on marching in opposite directions. The
Palestinians wanted to end the occupation, the Israelis wanted to
retain as much control as possible for as long as possible. The
Palestinians tried to negotiate the establishment of a pre-state
Palestinian state. They insisted that the interim agreement
should permit and even lay the ground for the development of their
sovereign state. Israel was equally determined to prevent the
interim agreement from resembling the embryo of a Palestinian
state. It insisted on keeping sole control of the Jewish
settlements and the roads in the occupied territories during the
transition period and to share control only of state land.
Palestinians were outraged by this idea which, they said, would give
them control over only about a third of the West Bank and legalize the
Jewish settlements. Nabil Shaath, the co-ordinator between the
negotiating team in Washington and the PLO headquarters in Tunis,
protested that the Israeli model offered so little territorial and
functional integrity to the Palestinians that it was more like a Swiss
cheese - full of holes.[5]
The PLO experts regarded the Israeli model as not only unjust but so
complex as to be unworkable. Yasser Arafat dismissed it as a
non-starter and blamed Yitzhak Rabin for the deadlock. `So
far,’ protested the chairman of the PLO, `Rabin is refusing, like
Shamir, to accept that 242 is applicable to Palestinian land. He
says we can discuss it later. It seems he doesn’t want to
accept that these are occupied territories. He’s
undermining the basis of the peace process.’[6] Al Quds, a
Palestinian paper in East Jerusalem, all but gave up on the peace
process and took to calling it the `Penelope process’, after
Ulysses’s wife who unravelled at night what she wove by day.
When the eighth round opened in Washington on 7 December, in the
twilight of the Bush administration, the talks between Israel and the
Palestinians were virtually at a dead end. Negotiations about
interim self-government were resumed but Israel continued to focus
solely on the interim arrangements while the Palestinians tried,
without success, to shift the focus to self-government. To the
American sponsors it seemed that the Israeli concept of interim
self-government was fundamentally flawed. But in its dying days
the Bush administration was not well placed to persuade the Israelis
that interim self-government means precisely what it says - a stage
leading to full self-government.
Lack of concrete results from the peace process added to the
frustration of the Palestinians in the occupied territories and boosted
popular support for the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, which is
opposed to negotiations with the Jewish state. Round eight in the
talks was due to end on 17 December but it ended abruptly on the
previous day when Rabin announced his government’s decision to
deport 416 Hamas activists to Lebanon following the kidnap and murder
of an Israeli border policeman. All the Arab delegations angrily
suspended their participation in the peace talks and refused to set a
date for their resumption.
Rabin was widely condemmed but unrepentant. Government policy
towards the Palestinians, he said, was two-pronged: fighting violent
extremists while talking peace to the moderates. But his
deporation order was without precident and in flagrant violation of
international law. It outstripped the toughest measures of the
Likud and out-Shamired Shamir. None of the alleged Islamic
activists had been charged, tried or allowed to appeal before being
driven blind-folded into exile in Lebanon. This act was intended
to curb the rising influence of Hamas but it had the opposite
effect. It discredited the peace talks, strengthened the
extremists and weakened the moderates. It was worse than a crime,
it was a mistake.
The deportation exposed Rabin as an unreconstructed Arab-basher.
Having recognized the need to march with both feet, the military foot
and the political foot, he reverted to his old habit of kicking only
with the military foot. Far from demonstrating that the only
language that the Palestinians understand is force, his action revealed
that force is the language he himself instinctively resorts to in
dealing with the Palestinians. Rabin had plainly stated that for
him security takes precedence over peace and in this sense he was true
to his word. The problem about his notion of security is that it
denied the basic human rights of the Palestinians. This was a
major reason for the lack of progress in the peace talks. During
the election campaign, Rabin ran as a candidate who would conclude an
agreement on Palestinian autonomy within six to nine months. Yet
six months after taking office he dealt a body blow to the entire peace
process by his savage treatment of the Palestinians.
The deporations boosted Rabin’s domestic popularity but they did
not stem the tide of violence. In March 1993 thirteen Israelis
were murdered by knife-wielding fanatics. Rabin’s response
was one of massive retaliation. On 30 March, he ordered the
closure of Israel’s pre-1967 border to workers from the occupied
territories. Nearly 120,000 families were punished for the deeds
of a handful of killers. The closure achieved its immediate aim
of reducing the incidence of violence but it also had much deeper
significance. It served Rabin’s new aim of bringing about
Israel’s disengagement from the occupied territories. It
re-created the 1967 border and led to the economic and social
separation of the Jewish and Palestinian communities. The message
was not lost on the Palestinian negotiators. Israeli
disengagement could be the prelude to Palestinian autonomy in the
occupied territories.
The ninth round of bilateral talks opened in Washington on 27 April,
after a hiatus which lasted four and a half months. To get the
talks re-started, Israel made two significant concessions: acceptance
of Faisal Husseini, despite his residence in East Jerusalem, as a
negotiator and approval in principle for a Palestinian police force in
the territories. There was also evidence of greater Israeli
flexibility on fundamentals. The Israelis were now willing to
admit a link between the interim and the final phase of Palestinian
self-government. They indicated that the body elected to govern
the Palestinians for the five-year interim period could have some
legislative powers. And they affirmed that negotiations on the
final status of the occupied territories would be based on UN Security
Council resolution 242. Having derided Israel’s previous
proposals for self-government as Swiss cheese, the Palestinians now had
something to chew on. Having previously refused to discuss
details before establishing an overall framework for a settlement, they
now formed three working groups with the Israelis to discuss
self-government, land and water, and human rights.
Despite this auspicious beginning, a document presented by the
Palestinian delegation in response to the Israeli proposals revealed
persistent divergence on three fundamental issues: the application of
resolution 242, the relationship between the interim phase and the
final phase, and the nature and powers of the interim Palestinian
authority. Firstly, the Palestinian document treated resolution
242 as a holy writ, valid at all stages and requiring total Israeli
withdrawal from the territories captured in 1967, including East
Jerusalem and the settlements. Israel, on the other hand, saw 242
as relevant only to the negotiations on final status and ruled out any
withdrawal during the interim phase. Secondly, while Israel
admitted a link between the first stage of the agreement and the second
stage but insisted on keeping all the options open, the Palestinians
tried to extract a declaration of intent, making it clear that, when
the time comes, Israel will withdraw from all the occupied
territories. Thirdly, the two sides could not agree on the powers
of the Palestinian authority during the interim stage. The
Israeli version envisaged an executive council with limited legislative
powers. The Palestinian version envisaged an elected council
which would assume all the powers exercised by the Israeli
administration.[7]
In an attempt to move the peace talks off dead centre, the recently
elected Clinton administration stepped up its involvement. It
formulated and presented to the Palestinians a working paper which
proposed new terms of reference for the talks. The Palestinian
delegates, however, detected Israel’s thumb prints all over the
American paper. Reversing a 26-year old American policy, the
paper accepted the Israeli claim that East Jerusalem and the rest of
the West Bank and Gaza are disputed - not occupied - territories.
The Palestinian delegation pointed out that the paper deviated from the
terms of reference under which the talks were initiated and was
therefore unsuitable even as a starting point for talks.
American intervention failed to move the talks off dead centre.
The 10th round, which lasted from 15 June until 1 July, ended in
failure. Little was expected and nothing was achieved. In
Israel the Rabin government began to attract criticism for its failure
to deliver on its promise of agreement on Palestinian autonomy.
One critic accused it of missing a rare opportunity for settlement by
clinging to its five noes: no to a Palestinian state, no to a return to
the 1967 borders with only minor modifications, no to discussion of the
permanent settlement, no to withdrawal from the Jordan Valley and the
Etzion bloc, and no to negotiations with the PLO.[8] Government
spokesmen tried to evade responsibility for the deadlock by placing all
the blame at the door of the Palestinians. At least one thing was
clear at the end of the 20 months and 10 rounds of Arab-Israeli peace
talks: the Madrid formula was not capable of ushering in a new era of
peace in the Middle East and a new formula had to be found.
Although the Madrid formula involved Israel in indirect negotiations
with the PLO, Rabin resisted for a whole year the calls for formal
recognition of the PLO. He saw Yasser Arafat as the main obstacle
to a deal on Palestinian autonomy and did his best to marginalize him,
pinning his hopes on the local leaders from the occupied territories
whom he considered more moderate and more pragmatic. Experience
taught him, however, that the local leaders could not act independently
of the PLO chairman in Tunis and that, consequently, if he wanted a
deal, he would have to cut it with his arch enemy.
The failure of the official talks on the Palestinian track in
Washington left Rabin with two alternatives: a deal with President
Hafez al-Asad of Syria which entailed complete withdrawal and the
dismantling of Jewish settlements on the Golan Heights and a deal with
the PLO on interim self-government which did not entail an immediate
commitment to withdraw from the West Bank or to dismantle Jewish
settlements. He opted for the second alternative.
Rabin knew that Shimon Peres, his foreign minister and erstwhile
opponent, had established a secret channel for informal talks with PLO
officials in Norway back in January. At first Rabin showed little
interest but in the course of the summer the talks made considerable
progress. It became clear that the PLO was bankrupt, divided an
on the verge of collapse and therefore ready to settle for considerably
less than the official negotiators in Washington. Negotiations
now began in earnest with Rabin and Peres directing the secret talks
from Jerusalem and Arafat from Tunis. Altogether 15 sessions were
held over an eight-month period until an agreement was reached on
mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO and limited Palestinian
self-government in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.
This accord, despite all its limitations, defects and ambiguities,
marks a major watershed in Israel’s relations with the
Palestinians. It represents the beginning of the end of the
movement towards Greater Israel. This is why it would have been
utterly inconceivable had Yitzhak Shamir remained in power. At
the signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, Rabin
declared: `I tell you Palestinians: we are doomed, you and we, to live
together on the same plot of land, in the same country.’ It
is equally inconceivable that Shamir would have uttered these
words. True, the two Yitzhaks are both hawks but there is an
important difference: Yitzhak Shamir is an ideological hawk while
Yitzhak Rabin is a security hawk. The Israel-PLO deal compromises
the ideology of Greater Israel; it does not compromise Israel’s
security.
There is historic irony in the fact that it took a leader of
Rabin’s renowned hawkishness on security, to bring the Labour
Party back to the path of political moderation. Historically, the
Labour Party had been the party of humane and liberal Zionism, of
political moderation, of reconciliation and compromise. Under
Golda Meir’s leadership, however, it veered towards messianic
nationalism and territorial maximalism. By reaching an agreement
on Palestinian self-government, however limited in scope, Rabin carried
his party back to its original acceptance of the principle of
partition. By officially recognizing the Palestinian people and
the PLO as its representative, he took the first step towards
correcting the tragic mistake to which his party succumbed in the
aftermath of the 1967 victory. By starting the withdrawal from
occupied Arab territory, Rabin is not leading Israel to commit suicide,
as his critics on the right claim, but laying the only secure
foundation for peaceful co-existence between Israel and the
Palestinians.
The very fact that Rabin reached an accord with the PLO demolishes the
notion, so prevalent and persistent among Palestinians, that there is
no real difference between the Labour Party and the Likud. If the
history of the peace talks began at Madrid teaches us anything, it is
that the Labour Party is pragmatic in its approach to the Palestinian
question whereas the Likud is not. Indeed, the Israel-PLO accord
represents the triumph of pragmatism on both sides. After a
hundred years of conflict and bloodshed, the two principal protagonists
have put behind them the ideological dispute as to who is the rightful
owner of Palestine and turned to addressing the practical problem of
how to share the small piece of territory on which they are doomed to
live together.
Notes:
[1] Avishai Margalit, `The Violent Life of YitzhakShamir,'
The New York Review of Books, 14 May 1992.
[2] Interview with Joseph Harif in
Ma'ariv, 26 June 1992.
[3] Avishai Margalit, `The General's Main Chance,'
The New York Review of Books, 11 June 1992.
[4] Divrei Haknesset (Proceedings of the Knesset), 13 July 1992.
[5] Yezid Sayigh, `Israel and the Palestinians: Reinstating Occupation, Legalizing Annexation',
Middle East International, No. 440, 8 December 1992.
[6] Interview with Ian Black,
The Guardian, 7 December 1992.
[7] Dani Rubinstein, `Significant Gap Regarding the Nature of the Settlement',
Ha'aretz, 13 June 1993
[8] Shmuel Toledano, `The Illusion Celebrates',
Ha'aretz, 9 July 1993.
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