America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,
1991-2001
8 November 2001
Major
wars have a habit of generating a peace agenda which goes beyond the immediate
security objectives of the campaign to outline a vision of a better world, of
international order based on universal values such as justice and morality.
This is particularly true of wars that are fought not by one country but by a
coalition of countries. The broader peace agenda is needed to keep the
coalition together and to justify the sacrifices that have to be made in the
course of fighting the war against the adversary.
Thus,
World War I was the war to end all wars. World War II was fought to free the
world from the scourge of fascism and to make it safe for democracy. On 16
January 1991,
George Bush Sr. stated that military action against Iraq would make possible a ‘New World
Order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the
conduct of nations.’ Similarly, George Bush Jr. embarked on the war against the
al-Qaeda organisation and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with the broader agenda of freeing the
world from the scourge of international terrorism.
There
are other striking parallels between the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. In the first place, on the American
side, some of the key positions today are held by veterans of the Gulf War,
including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell. Second, in both
conflicts the incumbent American president sought to build a broad
international coalition to confront the aggressor. Third, in both wars Israel was kept at arms’ length in order to
preserve the coalition. Fourth, in both cases a link was quickly establishes
between the conflict at hand and the Palestine problem.
In
1990 Saddam Hussein pioneered the concept of ‘linkage’ by making Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait conditional on Israel’s withdrawal from all the Arab lands
that it occupied in 1967. Thus, before threatening the mother of all battles if
Iraq was attacked, Saddam Hussein unleashed
the mother of all linkages. President Bush rejected the proposed linkage so as
not to appear to reward Saddam’s aggression, and in order to deflate his claim
to be the champion of the Palestinians. But Bush could not, without exposing
himself to the charge of double standards, insist that Iraq should comply immediately and
unconditionally with UN orders to withdraw from Kuwait without accepting that Israel should be made to comply with
strikingly similar UN resolutions that had been on the table since 1967. Bush’s
way round this problem was to intimate that America would address the
Arab-Israeli conflict as soon as Iraq pulled out of or was booted out of
Kuwait. In other words, while rejecting simultaneous linkage, Bush implicitly
accepted deferred linkage.
After
the guns fell silent in the Gulf, the Bush administration came up with a
five-point plan for the future of the Middle East. The elements of this plan, the ‘five pillars of wisdom’
as one observer dubbed them, were democracy, economic development, arms
control, Gulf security, and a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was a
sound and well thought-out plan but it simply fell by the wayside. The
much-vaunted New World Order turned out to be the old world order minus the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of victory, America, the sole surviving superpower, and
its Arab allies reverted to their bad old ways. (Arabic saying). No serious
attempt was made to introduce democracy to the Arab world, to promote greater
economic equality, to curb arms sales to the region, or to lay the foundations
for an independent system of Gulf security.
The
one element of the programme for post-war reconstruction that did receive
sustained attention was the Arab-Israeli conflict. The American-sponsored peace
process was launched with the conference in Madrid towards the end of October 1991. The
basis of the conference was UN resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of
land for peace that they incorporated. All the parties to the conflict were
there, including the Palestinians who presented their own case for the first
time at a major international gathering. In his opening speech, President Bush
was faultlessly even-handed: he gave a pledge to work for a settlement based on
security for Israel and justice for the Palestinians.
Two
tracks for bilateral negotiations were established at Madrid, an Israeli-Arab track and an
Israeli-Palestinian track. But as long as Itzhak Shamir, the leader of the
right-wing Likud party, remained in power, no real progress could be achieved
on either track. For Shamir, in line with the ideological position of the party
that he headed, was adamant that the West Bank was an integral part of the Land of Israel. Bush was equally insistent that the
project of Greater Israel had to be abandoned and that the building of new
Jewish settlements on the West
Bank had to
stop. A battle of wills ensued. By forcing Israelis to choose between US aid and continuing colonisation of the
West Bank, Bush contributed to Shamir’s
electoral defeat in June 1992 and to his replacement by a Labour government
headed by Itzhak Rabin. But the bruising battle was also a factor in George
Bush’s own defeat in the presidential elections later that year. Deferred
linkage did not materialize due to Israeli intransigence. Two years after the
liberation of Kuwait, the Palestinian problem remained
unresolved. George Bush failed to deliver on his pledge ‘to push the Israelis
into a solution.’
On
becoming President, Bill Clinton gave free rein to his pro-Israeli sympathies.
He abruptly reversed the even-handed policy of his predecessor and replaced it
with an ‘Israel-first’ policy reminiscent of the Reagan years. The new approach
was laid out by Martin Indyk, a senior official on the National Security
Council, in a speech he gave to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
on 18 May 1993. Two elements were listed by Indyk as central: Israel had to be kept strong while the peace
process continued, and Iraq and Iran had to be kept weak. The second
element was called ‘dual containment’ and one of its aims was to protect Israel on the Eastern front.
Regarding
the Middle East peace process, said Indyk, ‘our approach
to the negotiations will involve working with Israel, not against it. We are committed to
deepening our strategic partnership with Israel in the pursuit of peace and security.’
Major
wars have a habit of generating a peace agenda which goes beyond the immediate
security objectives of the campaign to outline a vision of a better world, of
international order based on universal values such as justice and morality.
This is particularly true of wars that are fought not by one country but by a
coalition of countries. The broader peace agenda is needed to keep the
coalition together and to justify the sacrifices that have to be made in the
course of fighting the war against the adversary.
Thus,
World War I was the war to end all wars. World War II was fought to free the
world from the scourge of fascism and to make it safe for democracy. On 16
January 1991,
George Bush Sr. stated that military action against Iraq would make possible a ‘New World
Order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the
conduct of nations.’ Similarly, George Bush Jr. embarked on the war against the
al-Qaeda organisation and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with the broader agenda of freeing the
world from the scourge of international terrorism.
There
are other striking parallels between the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. In the first place, on the American
side, some of the key positions today are held by veterans of the Gulf War,
including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell. Second, in both
conflicts the incumbent American president sought to build a broad
international coalition to confront the aggressor. Third, in both wars Israel was kept at arms’ length in order to
preserve the coalition. Fourth, in both cases a link was quickly establishes
between the conflict at hand and the Palestine problem.
In
1990 Saddam Hussein pioneered the concept of ‘linkage’ by making Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait conditional on Israel’s withdrawal from all the Arab lands
that it occupied in 1967. Thus, before threatening the mother of all battles if
Iraq was attacked, Saddam Hussein unleashed
the mother of all linkages. President Bush rejected the proposed linkage so as
not to appear to reward Saddam’s aggression, and in order to deflate his claim
to be the champion of the Palestinians. But Bush could not, without exposing
himself to the charge of double standards, insist that Iraq should comply immediately and
unconditionally with UN orders to withdraw from Kuwait without accepting that Israel should be made to comply with
strikingly similar UN resolutions that had been on the table since 1967. Bush’s
way round this problem was to intimate that America would address the
Arab-Israeli conflict as soon as Iraq pulled out of or was booted out of
Kuwait. In other words, while rejecting simultaneous linkage, Bush implicitly
accepted deferred linkage.
After
the guns fell silent in the Gulf, the Bush administration came up with a
five-point plan for the future of the Middle East. The elements of this plan, the ‘five pillars of wisdom’
as one observer dubbed them, were democracy, economic development, arms
control, Gulf security, and a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was a
sound and well thought-out plan but it simply fell by the wayside. The
much-vaunted New World Order turned out to be the old world order minus the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of victory, America, the sole surviving superpower, and
its Arab allies reverted to their bad old ways. (Arabic saying). No serious
attempt was made to introduce democracy to the Arab world, to promote greater
economic equality, to curb arms sales to the region, or to lay the foundations
for an independent system of Gulf security.
The
one element of the programme for post-war reconstruction that did receive
sustained attention was the Arab-Israeli conflict. The American-sponsored peace
process was launched with the conference in Madrid towards the end of October 1991. The
basis of the conference was UN resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of
land for peace that they incorporated. All the parties to the conflict were
there, including the Palestinians who presented their own case for the first
time at a major international gathering. In his opening speech, President Bush
was faultlessly even-handed: he gave a pledge to work for a settlement based on
security for Israel and justice for the Palestinians.
Two
tracks for bilateral negotiations were established at Madrid, an Israeli-Arab track and an
Israeli-Palestinian track. But as long as Itzhak Shamir, the leader of the
right-wing Likud party, remained in power, no real progress could be achieved
on either track. For Shamir, in line with the ideological position of the party
that he headed, was adamant that the West Bank was an integral part of the Land of Israel. Bush was equally insistent that the
project of Greater Israel had to be abandoned and that the building of new
Jewish settlements on the West
Bank had to
stop. A battle of wills ensued. By forcing Israelis to choose between US aid and continuing colonisation of the
West Bank, Bush contributed to Shamir’s
electoral defeat in June 1992 and to his replacement by a Labour government
headed by Itzhak Rabin. But the bruising battle was also a factor in George
Bush’s own defeat in the presidential elections later that year. Deferred
linkage did not materialize due to Israeli intransigence. Two years after the
liberation of Kuwait, the Palestinian problem remained
unresolved. George Bush failed to deliver on his pledge ‘to push the Israelis
into a solution.’
On
becoming President, Bill Clinton gave free rein to his pro-Israeli sympathies.
He abruptly reversed the even-handed policy of his predecessor and replaced it
with an ‘Israel-first’ policy reminiscent of the Reagan years. The new approach
was laid out by Martin Indyk, a senior official on the National Security
Council, in a speech he gave to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
on 18 May 1993. Two elements were listed by Indyk as central: Israel had to be kept strong while the peace
process continued, and Iraq and Iran had to be kept weak. The second
element was called ‘dual containment’ and one of its aims was to protect Israel on the Eastern front.
Regarding
the Middle East peace process, said Indyk, ‘our approach
to the negotiations will involve working with Israel, not against it. We are committed to
deepening our strategic partnership with Israel in the pursuit of peace and security.’
Withdrawing from territory, Indyk argued, involved risks to Israel’s security, and Israel would only take these risks if it knew
that the United
States
stood behind it. Real progress in the talks could only come with this kind of
special relationship between America and Israel. No similar pledge was made to work
with the Arabs or the Palestinians. As a result, America in effect abdicated its independent
role as the manager of the peace process and took the side of one of the
protagonists. After ten rounds, the bilateral negotiations in Washington reached a dead end.
The
breakthrough announced in September 1993 on the Palestinian track was made in Oslo not in Washington. The Declaration of Principles on
Palestinian self-government in Gaza and Jericho was negotiated directly between Israel and the PLO in the Norwegian capital
without American help or even knowledge. Israel recognised that the Palestinians have
national rights while the PLO renounced terrorism. Bill Clinton served
essentially as the master of ceremonies when the Oslo accord was signed on the White House
lawn and clinched with the hesitant hand-shake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser
Arafat. Clinton did recognise, however, the need for
an active American role in supporting the experiment in Palestinian
self-government. But while Israel continued to receive $3 billion a
year, as well as extra funds to finance its withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, only modest ‘seed money’ was advanced
to the Palestinian Authority.
The
rise to power in May 1996 of a Likud government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu
dealt a heavy blow to the Oslo peace process. Netanyahu was a bitter
opponent of the Oslo accord, viewing it as incompatible
both with Israel’s security and with its historic right
to the Biblical homeland. He spent his three years as prime minister in an
attempt to arrest the exchange of land for peace that lay at the heart of the Oslo accord. This Israeli retreat from the
historic compromise struck at Oslo called for a reassessment of the
American role but no real reassessment took place.
President
Clinton maintained an active personal involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks but he only achieved very modest results in the shape of the Hebron
Protocol of 15 January 1997 and the Wye River Memorandum of 23
October 1998.
Israeli foot-dragging was the primary cause of the loss of momentum on the road
to peace. But the redefinition of the American role, following Clinton’s entry into the White House,
inadvertently facilitated this foot-dragging. It left the Palestinians largely
to the tender mercies of a right-wing government which remained committed to
the old vision of Greater Israel.
The
electoral victory of Ehud Barak in May 1999 promised a fresh start in the
struggle towards comprehensive peace in the Middle East. It also provided an opening for Bill
Clinton to resume therole he had always wanted to play, that of helping Israel to assume the risks involved in
exchanging territory for peace. Like his mentor Itzhak Rabin, Barak was a
soldier who late in life turned to peace-making. Israel’s most decorated soldier, however, turned
out to be a hopelessly incompetent domestic politician and maladroit diplomat.
He approached diplomacy as the extension of war by other means. He was much
more interested in an agreement with Syria than with the Palestinians because Syria is a military power to be reckoned
with whereas the Palestinians are not. Accordingly, Barak concentrated almost
exclusively on the Syrian track during the first eight months of his
premiership but his efforts ended in failure. It was only after his policy of
‘Syria-first’ failed that Barak reluctantly turned to the Palestinian track.
Throughout this period, Clinton remained solidly behind Barak and made
no attempt to play an independent role in the management of the Middle East peace process.
The
critical point in the Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations was reached
at the Camp
David summit
in July 2000. On the causes of failure there are two radically different
versions. The Israeli version is that Barak presented a most generous package
at Camp David but Arafat rejected this out of hand
and chose to revert to violence. The Palestinian version is that Barak
laid a trap for Arafat and sought to
impose on him, with the help of the American ‘peace processors’, a fundamentally
unfair and unsound final status agreement. Historians will continue to debate
the relative merits of these two versions for many years to come. All I can do
here is to offer some comments on the American role, based largely on the
article published by Robert Mally and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of
Books on 9 August 2001 under the title ‘Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors.’
Three
points are reasonably clear. One, the idea of setting aside Israel’s interim obligations and tackling all
the issues together at a summit meeting was proposed by Barak to Clinton. Two, Arafat pleaded for additional
time to prepare the ground and warned Clinton of the danger that the summit would
explode in his face unless progress was made in narrowing the gap between the
two sides. Indeed, both the concept and the timing of the proposed summit
reinforced in Arafat’s mind the sense of an Israeli-American conspiracy. Three,
Clinton assured Arafat that he would not be blamed if the summit did not
succeed. ‘There will be no finger-pointing’, he promised. What is not clear is
why Clinton put all the blame on Arafat after the
failure of the summit. The answer suggested by Mally and Agha is that Camp David exemplified for Clinton the contrast between Barak’s political
courage and Arafat’s political passivity, between risk-taking on one side and
risk-aversion on the other side. But they also point to the complex and often
contradictory roles thatthe United States played at the summit: as principal
broker of the putative peace deal; as guardian of the peace process; as Israel’s strategic ally; and as its cultural
and political partner. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Clinton’s strong commitment to Israel undermined his credibility as an
honest broker and was therefore one of the factors that contributed to the
collapse of the Camp
David summit.
Clinton
himself seems to have drawn the right lessons from the failure at Camp David. On 23 December
2000, five
months after the meeting in Maryland and two months after the outbreak of
the second Palestinian intifada, he presented a detailed plan for the
resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The plan reflected the long
distance that Clinton had travelled towards meeting Palestinian expectations
since the American ‘bridging proposals’ tabled at Camp David. His plan
envisaged an independent Palestinian state on about 96 per cent of the West
Bank; Palestinian sovereignty over all the Arab parts of Jerusalem except for
the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and the Western Wall; and the right of the
Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in historic Palestine, subject
to Israel’s sovereign decision to absorb them in its own territory.
Considerable
progress towards a final status agreement was made by Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators at Taba, Egypt, in January 2001, on the basis of
these proposals or ‘parameters’. They basically accepted the parameters,
although each side had many outstanding doubts and reservations. But time ran
out on two of the main actors. On 20 January, Clinton was succeeded as President by George
W. Bush, and, on 6 February, Ehud Barak was defeated by Ariel Sharon in the
direct election of the prime minister. The new Republican President departed
from the approach of his Democratic predecessor in two respects. First, whereas
Clinton was prepared to devote as much of his
presidency as it took to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Bush Jr.
adopted a ‘hands-off’ attitude of leaving it to the two sides to sort out their
own differences. Second, whereas Clinton had a special bond with the leaders of
the Labour Party in Israel as well as with Yasser Arafat, Bush
cold-shouldered the Palestinian leader and established surprisingly warm
relations with the right-wing Israeli leader.
After
their first meeting at the White House, Bush commented on Sharon’s ‘marvellous sense of history.’ More
importantly, the Bush administration seemed receptive to the Sharon line that Yasser Arafat is a
terrorist, that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity, and that they
should be treated as such. Sharon’s refusal to resume the political
dialogue with the PA, until there is a complete cessation of violence, struck a
sympathetic chord in Washington. Vice-President Dick Cheney went as
far as to justify in public Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian
activists suspected of orchestrating the violence.
The
terrorist attack of 11 September on America violently shook the kaleidoscope of
world politics. It had far-reaching consequences for almost all aspects of US foreign policy, including the
relations with Israel and the Palestinians. Many Israelis
hoped that the events of 11 September would engender greater sympathy and
support in America for their own war against Palestinian
militants. Ariel Sharon reportedly said to Colin Powell, ‘Everyone has his own
Bin Laden and Arafat is ours.’ Sharon also hoped to make common cause with America in the war against international
terrorism. All these hopes, however, were quickly dashed. Colin Powell made it
clear that ‘Israel will not be part of any anti-terror
military action.’ The attempt to demonise Yasser Arafat backfired. While Israel was firmly excluded from the emergent
anti-terror coalition, some of its enemies, such as Syria and Iran, were being considered for membership.
Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad were conspicuous in their absence from the
list of 27 terrorist organisations that had their assets frozen by Congress.
They were treated on this occasion as local movements fighting against
occupation, not as global terrorist networks like the one headed by Osama Bin
Laden. Far from gaining respectability, Israel felt that it was being treated almost
as a pariah and as an impediment to the American effort to build an anti-terror
coalition.
Worse
was to come. Two weeks after the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon,
President Bush issued the strongest statement yet endorsing an independent
Palestinian state with East
Jerusalem as
its capital. The Bush administration’s plan, which was said to have been in
preparation prior to 11 September, envisages the handing back of nearly all the
West Bank to Palestinian control. Departing from
its standard operating procedures, the State Department prepared its own plan
rather than forwarding Israeli proposals with minor modifications. The plan
itself was anathema to Mr Sharon. For he is committed to keeping the whole of
Jerusalem under Israeli control; he is reluctant to yield to the Palestinian
Authority more than the 42 per cent of the West Bank that it currently
controls; and he envisages a weak Palestinian entity made up of isolated
enclaves with no territorial contiguity.
Sharon reacted to America’s peace plan with an astonishing
outburst of anger which reflected his deep fear that America might abandon the strategic alliance
with Israel in favour of an alliance of
convenience with the Arab states and the Palestinians. He warned President Bush
not to repeat the mistake of Neville Chamberlain in 1938 of trying to appease
Nazi Germany by offering Hitler part of Czechoslovakia. ‘Do not try to appease the Arabs at
our expense,’ said Mr Sharon. ‘Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.’ The analogy
with Munich is preposterous: Israel is not Czechoslovakia but anoccupying power; the Palestinian
Authority is not Nazi Germany; and Yasser Arafat is no Adolf Hitler. After
being compared to Neville Chamberlain of all people, Bush must have regretted
his remark about Sharon’s marvellous sense of History. In any
case, the official American response reflected extreme displeasure. ‘The prime
minister’s comments are unacceptable,’ said Ari Fleischer, the White House
spokesman. ‘Israel has no stronger friend and ally in the
world than the United States. President Bush has been an especially
close friend of Israel. The Unites States has been working
for months to press the parties to end the violence and return to political
dialogue.
The
United
States
will continue to press both Israel and the Palestinians to move forward.’
Although Mr Sharon expressed regret for provoking this public row, his
allegation of appeasement and of treachery continued to rankle. Israel’s reaction to the assassination of
tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, in Jerusalem on 17 October, deepened the crisis in
the relations with America. The radical right and racist former
general, who advocated the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians from Palestine, was a personal friend of Ariel
Sharon. The assassination was a straightforward retaliation for Israel’s ‘targeted killing’ of the PFLP
leader, Abu Ali Mustapha in August. Sharon warned Arafat of ‘all- out war’ unless
he handed over the assassins. Without waiting for a reply, he ordered the IDF
to reoccupy six cities in area A on the West Bank in the most drastic assault on Yasser
Arafat’s authority since limited self-rule began seven years ago. The scale and
ferocity of the incursion shocked many Israelis, including Shimon Peres, the
foreign minister and leading advocate of the policy of negotiation as opposed
to the policy of retaliation. It appeared to serve the not-so-secret agenda of
the hardliners in the government and in the army of destroying the peace
process by banishing Arafat and bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian
Authority.
The
aggressive move against the PA placed Israel on a collision course with America. America denounced the move in
uncharacteristically blunt terms and called on Israel to quit the West Bank cities immediately and without
conditions. It also warned Sharon that the war against the Palestinians
threatens the fragile coalition against the Taliban regime and Osama Bin Laden.
Sharon flatly rejected the American demand in
a remarkable display of defiance towards an ally that gives his country $3
billion in aid every year. But he was forced to recognise his error in thinking
that the terrorist attack on America provided Israel with an opportunity to redefine the
rules of the game in the local conflict with the Palestinians. Having declared
that Israel will act unilaterally in defence of
its own interests, he was compelled to take American interests into account. A
gradual withdrawal from the West
Bank cities
was set in motion. America succeeded in yanking Israel back from the brink of all-out war.
The
pro-American Arab regimes, led by Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, viewed the escalation of violence in Palestine with mounting anguish and anxiety.
They had been shamed and discredited in the eyes of their own people by their
inability to help the Palestinians or to modify America’s blatant partiality towards Israel. Osama Bin Laden was quick to seize
the plight of the Palestinians as an additional stick with which to beat these
Arab regimes following the Anglo-American assault on Afghanistan: ‘Israeli
tanks are wreaking havoc in Palestine - in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah and Beit Jala
and other parts of the land of Islam, but no one raises his voice or bats an
eyelid.’ Like the Iraqi dictator, Bin Laden is exploiting the plight of the
Palestinians for his own ends. But his motives do not detract from the
centrality of the Palestine question. His plea struck a
sympathetic chord in much of the Arab and Islamic world. And by swearing that America will have no peace until Palestine is free, the besieged Bin Laden
succeeded in setting the agenda for Arab demands on Palestine.
Yasser
Arafat was the first Arab leader to denounce the horrific crime of 11
September. He had paid a heavy price for his support of Saddam Hussein
following the invasion of Kuwait, and he was not about to commit the
same mistake again. Arafat and his colleagues, and all thoughtful Palestinians,
sought to distance themselves from Bin Laden, the Lucifer of international
terrorism. His war against the West is a religious war whereas their struggle
against Israel is essentially a political and
national struggle although there is an undeniable religious dimension to it.
Palestinians also draw a firm distinction between the kind of unbridled
terrorism practised by Bin Laden and their own resort to violence in
self-defence. A further distinction they make is between Israeli violence which
they regard as illegitimate because its purpose is to perpetuate the occupation
of their land and their own resistance to Israeli occupation. America stands accused of double standards, of
subscribing to a definition of terrorism that, until very recently, suited only
Israel. Arab and Muslim groups have been
pressing for some time for a new definition of terrorism that excludes
movements resisting occupation. The lack of one helps to explain their lukewarm
response to the American-led coalition against it.
Clearly,
there is a link between the war in Afghanistan and the conflict in Palestine. For the majority of Arabs and
Muslims, Palestine is a central issue. Their attitude
towards America’s war in Afghanistan is determined to a large extent by its
stand on the Palestine question. And the dominant perception
is one of American double standards, of one standard applied to Israel and another standard to the
Palestinians. Consequently, America cannot count on unambiguous Arab
support in its long war against international terrorism unless it adopts a
position that satisfies the moderate Arab demands on Palestine. This means the Clinton parameters: a deal that would
establish the borders for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, allow
for the return of some refugees, and divide Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr Bush has
taken a critical step forward in invoking international justice to justify the
war in Afghanistan. To be consistent, he has to uphold
the same standard of justice for the Palestinians. Verbal commitments will not
carry much credibility this time round. His father promised justice for the
Palestinians after the Gulf War and failed to deliver. He himself will be
judged not by words but by actions. Moreover, the situation
has
changed in one significant respect. In 1990-91 the Arabs needed American
protection against Saddam Hussein. Today America badly needs the support of the Arab
world in the war against international terrorism.
From
this brief review of American policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
during the last decade, a number of conclusions emerge. First, on their own the
two sides are incapable of reaching a resolution of their 100 years-old
conflict. They came tantalisingly close at Taba in January but they did not get
there. Second, the policy of using US moral, material, and military support
to give Israel the confidence to go forward in the
peace process, has not achieved the desired results. The best proof is Bill
Clinton. He was, in the words of one Israeli newspaper, the last Zionist. Yet,
even he could not sweet talk Israel into a final settlement. If Clinton could not do it, nobody can. That
leaves only one possible path to progress: an externally-imposed solution.
An
externally-imposed solution sounds rather coercive and brutal towards Israel but it need not be. Indeed, if it is
brutal, it will backfire. The key to progress is to bring about a change in
Israeli public opinion in favour of ending the occupation and conceding to the
Palestinians the right to genuine national self-determination. Improbable as it
may look today, such a change is not inconceivable. The Israeli public has
never been as resistant to the idea of Palestinian statehood as the politicians
of the Right. At the last elections, Ariel Sharon promised peace with security
and has decidedly failed to deliver either. Today, Sharon does not have a plan with the remotest
chance of being acceptable to the other side and he knows it. Hence his
stubborn opposition to the resumption of the final status negotiations.At the
same time, he is being subjected to the most intense pressure by his partners
on the right and on the left of the political spectrum. His main aim is
survival and that precludes the option of voluntary withdrawal from the West Bank. So once again, as so often in the
past, the peace process is held hostage to domestic Israeli politics.
Only
America can break the deadlock in Israeli
politics. If America does not, no one else will. America’s credentials as a friend are impeccable.
Since 1967 America has given Israel more than $92 billion in aid and this
aid continues to the tune of $3 billion a year. America should involve the United Nations, European Union, Russia, and its Arab allies in a concerted
effort to generate internal pressure on Sharon to move forward on the political
front, but its own leadership role is crucial. The key point to drive home in
this educational campaign is that America remains committed to Israel’s
security and welfare, and that the country’s security will be enhanced rather
than put at risk by ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Arguably, America would be doing Sharon a favour by walking him into a peace
deal against which, given his ideological
provenance, he is bound to protest loudly in public. Moreover, a fair
number of sensible, level-headed Israelis would be grateful to America for liberating them from the 34
years-old colonial venture which has so disastrously distorted the Zionist
political project. In the end, it might be a question, as George Ball once put
it in an article in Foreign Affairs, of how to save Israel against itself.
Withdrawing from territory, Indyk argued, involved risks to Israel’s security, and Israel would only take these risks if it knew
that the United
States
stood behind it. Real progress in the talks could only come with this kind of
special relationship between America and Israel. No similar pledge was made to work
with the Arabs or the Palestinians. As a result, America in effect abdicated its independent
role as the manager of the peace process and took the side of one of the
protagonists. After ten rounds, the bilateral negotiations in Washington reached a dead end.
The
breakthrough announced in September 1993 on the Palestinian track was made in Oslo not in Washington. The Declaration of Principles on
Palestinian self-government in Gaza and Jericho was negotiated directly between Israel and the PLO in the Norwegian capital
without American help or even knowledge. Israel recognised that the Palestinians have
national rights while the PLO renounced terrorism. Bill Clinton served
essentially as the master of ceremonies when the Oslo accord was signed on the White House
lawn and clinched with the hesitant hand-shake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser
Arafat. Clinton did recognise, however, the need for
an active American role in supporting the experiment in Palestinian
self-government. But while Israel continued to receive $3 billion a
year, as well as extra funds to finance its withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, only modest ‘seed money’ was advanced
to the Palestinian Authority.
The
rise to power in May 1996 of a Likud government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu
dealt a heavy blow to the Oslo peace process. Netanyahu was a bitter
opponent of the Oslo accord, viewing it as incompatible
both with Israel’s security and with its historic right
to the Biblical homeland. He spent his three years as prime minister in an
attempt to arrest the exchange of land for peace that lay at the heart of the Oslo accord. This Israeli retreat from the
historic compromise struck at Oslo called for a reassessment of the
American role but no real reassessment took place.
President
Clinton maintained an active personal involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks but he only achieved very modest results in the shape of the Hebron
Protocol of 15 January 1997 and the Wye River Memorandum of 23
October 1998.
Israeli foot-dragging was the primary cause of the loss of momentum on the road
to peace. But the redefinition of the American role, following Clinton’s entry into the White House,
inadvertently facilitated this foot-dragging. It left the Palestinians largely
to the tender mercies of a right-wing government which remained committed to
the old vision of Greater Israel.
The
electoral victory of Ehud Barak in May 1999 promised a fresh start in the
struggle towards comprehensive peace in the Middle East. It also provided an opening for Bill
Clinton to resume therole he had always wanted to play, that of helping Israel to assume the risks involved in
exchanging territory for peace. Like his mentor Itzhak Rabin, Barak was a
soldier who late in life turned to peace-making. Israel’s most decorated soldier, however, turned
out to be a hopelessly incompetent domestic politician and maladroit diplomat.
He approached diplomacy as the extension of war by other means. He was much
more interested in an agreement with Syria than with the Palestinians because Syria is a military power to be reckoned
with whereas the Palestinians are not. Accordingly, Barak concentrated almost
exclusively on the Syrian track during the first eight months of his
premiership but his efforts ended in failure. It was only after his policy of
‘Syria-first’ failed that Barak reluctantly turned to the Palestinian track.
Throughout this period, Clinton remained solidly behind Barak and made
no attempt to play an independent role in the management of the Middle East peace process.
The
critical point in the Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations was reached
at the Camp
David summit
in July 2000. On the causes of failure there are two radically different
versions. The Israeli version is that Barak presented a most generous package
at Camp David but Arafat rejected this out of hand
and chose to revert to violence. The Palestinian version is that Barak
laid a trap for Arafat and sought to
impose on him, with the help of the American ‘peace processors’, a fundamentally
unfair and unsound final status agreement. Historians will continue to debate
the relative merits of these two versions for many years to come. All I can do
here is to offer some comments on the American role, based largely on the
article published by Robert Mally and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of
Books on 9 August 2001 under the title ‘Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors.’
Three
points are reasonably clear. One, the idea of setting aside Israel’s interim obligations and tackling all
the issues together at a summit meeting was proposed by Barak to Clinton. Two, Arafat pleaded for additional
time to prepare the ground and warned Clinton of the danger that the summit would
explode in his face unless progress was made in narrowing the gap between the
two sides. Indeed, both the concept and the timing of the proposed summit
reinforced in Arafat’s mind the sense of an Israeli-American conspiracy. Three,
Clinton assured Arafat that he would not be blamed if the summit did not
succeed. ‘There will be no finger-pointing’, he promised. What is not clear is
why Clinton put all the blame on Arafat after the
failure of the summit. The answer suggested by Mally and Agha is that Camp David exemplified for Clinton the contrast between Barak’s political
courage and Arafat’s political passivity, between risk-taking on one side and
risk-aversion on the other side. But they also point to the complex and often
contradictory roles thatthe United States played at the summit: as principal
broker of the putative peace deal; as guardian of the peace process; as Israel’s strategic ally; and as its cultural
and political partner. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Clinton’s strong commitment to Israel undermined his credibility as an
honest broker and was therefore one of the factors that contributed to the
collapse of the Camp
David summit.
Clinton
himself seems to have drawn the right lessons from the failure at Camp David. On 23 December
2000, five
months after the meeting in Maryland and two months after the outbreak of
the second Palestinian intifada, he presented a detailed plan for the
resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The plan reflected the long
distance that Clinton had travelled towards meeting Palestinian expectations
since the American ‘bridging proposals’ tabled at Camp David. His plan
envisaged an independent Palestinian state on about 96 per cent of the West
Bank; Palestinian sovereignty over all the Arab parts of Jerusalem except for
the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and the Western Wall; and the right of the
Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in historic Palestine, subject
to Israel’s sovereign decision to absorb them in its own territory.
Considerable
progress towards a final status agreement was made by Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators at Taba, Egypt, in January 2001, on the basis of
these proposals or ‘parameters’. They basically accepted the parameters,
although each side had many outstanding doubts and reservations. But time ran
out on two of the main actors. On 20 January, Clinton was succeeded as President by George
W. Bush, and, on 6 February, Ehud Barak was defeated by Ariel Sharon in the
direct election of the prime minister. The new Republican President departed
from the approach of his Democratic predecessor in two respects. First, whereas
Clinton was prepared to devote as much of his
presidency as it took to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Bush Jr.
adopted a ‘hands-off’ attitude of leaving it to the two sides to sort out their
own differences. Second, whereas Clinton had a special bond with the leaders of
the Labour Party in Israel as well as with Yasser Arafat, Bush
cold-shouldered the Palestinian leader and established surprisingly warm
relations with the right-wing Israeli leader.
After
their first meeting at the White House, Bush commented on Sharon’s ‘marvellous sense of history.’ More
importantly, the Bush administration seemed receptive to the Sharon line that Yasser Arafat is a
terrorist, that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity, and that they
should be treated as such. Sharon’s refusal to resume the political
dialogue with the PA, until there is a complete cessation of violence, struck a
sympathetic chord in Washington. Vice-President Dick Cheney went as
far as to justify in public Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian
activists suspected of orchestrating the violence.
The
terrorist attack of 11 September on America violently shook the kaleidoscope of
world politics. It had far-reaching consequences for almost all aspects of US foreign policy, including the
relations with Israel and the Palestinians. Many Israelis
hoped that the events of 11 September would engender greater sympathy and
support in America for their own war against Palestinian
militants. Ariel Sharon reportedly said to Colin Powell, ‘Everyone has his own
Bin Laden and Arafat is ours.’ Sharon also hoped to make common cause with America in the war against international
terrorism. All these hopes, however, were quickly dashed. Colin Powell made it
clear that ‘Israel will not be part of any anti-terror
military action.’ The attempt to demonise Yasser Arafat backfired. While Israel was firmly excluded from the emergent
anti-terror coalition, some of its enemies, such as Syria and Iran, were being considered for membership.
Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad were conspicuous in their absence from the
list of 27 terrorist organisations that had their assets frozen by Congress.
They were treated on this occasion as local movements fighting against
occupation, not as global terrorist networks like the one headed by Osama Bin
Laden. Far from gaining respectability, Israel felt that it was being treated almost
as a pariah and as an impediment to the American effort to build an anti-terror
coalition.
Worse
was to come. Two weeks after the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon,
President Bush issued the strongest statement yet endorsing an independent
Palestinian state with East
Jerusalem as
its capital. The Bush administration’s plan, which was said to have been in
preparation prior to 11 September, envisages the handing back of nearly all the
West Bank to Palestinian control. Departing from
its standard operating procedures, the State Department prepared its own plan
rather than forwarding Israeli proposals with minor modifications. The plan
itself was anathema to Mr Sharon. For he is committed to keeping the whole of
Jerusalem under Israeli control; he is reluctant to yield to the Palestinian
Authority more than the 42 per cent of the West Bank that it currently
controls; and he envisages a weak Palestinian entity made up of isolated
enclaves with no territorial contiguity.
Sharon reacted to America’s peace plan with an astonishing
outburst of anger which reflected his deep fear that America might abandon the strategic alliance
with Israel in favour of an alliance of
convenience with the Arab states and the Palestinians. He warned President Bush
not to repeat the mistake of Neville Chamberlain in 1938 of trying to appease
Nazi Germany by offering Hitler part of Czechoslovakia. ‘Do not try to appease the Arabs at
our expense,’ said Mr Sharon. ‘Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.’ The analogy
with Munich is preposterous: Israel is not Czechoslovakia but anoccupying power; the Palestinian
Authority is not Nazi Germany; and Yasser Arafat is no Adolf Hitler. After
being compared to Neville Chamberlain of all people, Bush must have regretted
his remark about Sharon’s marvellous sense of History. In any
case, the official American response reflected extreme displeasure. ‘The prime
minister’s comments are unacceptable,’ said Ari Fleischer, the White House
spokesman. ‘Israel has no stronger friend and ally in the
world than the United States. President Bush has been an especially
close friend of Israel. The Unites States has been working
for months to press the parties to end the violence and return to political
dialogue.
The
United
States
will continue to press both Israel and the Palestinians to move forward.’
Although Mr Sharon expressed regret for provoking this public row, his
allegation of appeasement and of treachery continued to rankle. Israel’s reaction to the assassination of
tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, in Jerusalem on 17 October, deepened the crisis in
the relations with America. The radical right and racist former
general, who advocated the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians from Palestine, was a personal friend of Ariel
Sharon. The assassination was a straightforward retaliation for Israel’s ‘targeted killing’ of the PFLP
leader, Abu Ali Mustapha in August. Sharon warned Arafat of ‘all- out war’ unless
he handed over the assassins. Without waiting for a reply, he ordered the IDF
to reoccupy six cities in area A on the West Bank in the most drastic assault on Yasser
Arafat’s authority since limited self-rule began seven years ago. The scale and
ferocity of the incursion shocked many Israelis, including Shimon Peres, the
foreign minister and leading advocate of the policy of negotiation as opposed
to the policy of retaliation. It appeared to serve the not-so-secret agenda of
the hardliners in the government and in the army of destroying the peace
process by banishing Arafat and bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian
Authority.
The
aggressive move against the PA placed Israel on a collision course with America. America denounced the move in
uncharacteristically blunt terms and called on Israel to quit the West Bank cities immediately and without
conditions. It also warned Sharon that the war against the Palestinians
threatens the fragile coalition against the Taliban regime and Osama Bin Laden.
Sharon flatly rejected the American demand in
a remarkable display of defiance towards an ally that gives his country $3
billion in aid every year. But he was forced to recognise his error in thinking
that the terrorist attack on America provided Israel with an opportunity to redefine the
rules of the game in the local conflict with the Palestinians. Having declared
that Israel will act unilaterally in defence of
its own interests, he was compelled to take American interests into account. A
gradual withdrawal from the West
Bank cities
was set in motion. America succeeded in yanking Israel back from the brink of all-out war.
The
pro-American Arab regimes, led by Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, viewed the escalation of violence in Palestine with mounting anguish and anxiety.
They had been shamed and discredited in the eyes of their own people by their
inability to help the Palestinians or to modify America’s blatant partiality towards Israel. Osama Bin Laden was quick to seize
the plight of the Palestinians as an additional stick with which to beat these
Arab regimes following the Anglo-American assault on Afghanistan: ‘Israeli
tanks are wreaking havoc in Palestine - in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah and Beit Jala
and other parts of the land of Islam, but no one raises his voice or bats an
eyelid.’ Like the Iraqi dictator, Bin Laden is exploiting the plight of the
Palestinians for his own ends. But his motives do not detract from the
centrality of the Palestine question. His plea struck a
sympathetic chord in much of the Arab and Islamic world. And by swearing that America will have no peace until Palestine is free, the besieged Bin Laden
succeeded in setting the agenda for Arab demands on Palestine.
Yasser
Arafat was the first Arab leader to denounce the horrific crime of 11
September. He had paid a heavy price for his support of Saddam Hussein
following the invasion of Kuwait, and he was not about to commit the
same mistake again. Arafat and his colleagues, and all thoughtful Palestinians,
sought to distance themselves from Bin Laden, the Lucifer of international
terrorism. His war against the West is a religious war whereas their struggle
against Israel is essentially a political and
national struggle although there is an undeniable religious dimension to it.
Palestinians also draw a firm distinction between the kind of unbridled
terrorism practised by Bin Laden and their own resort to violence in
self-defence. A further distinction they make is between Israeli violence which
they regard as illegitimate because its purpose is to perpetuate the occupation
of their land and their own resistance to Israeli occupation. America stands accused of double standards, of
subscribing to a definition of terrorism that, until very recently, suited only
Israel. Arab and Muslim groups have been
pressing for some time for a new definition of terrorism that excludes
movements resisting occupation. The lack of one helps to explain their lukewarm
response to the American-led coalition against it.
Clearly,
there is a link between the war in Afghanistan and the conflict in Palestine. For the majority of Arabs and
Muslims, Palestine is a central issue. Their attitude
towards America’s war in Afghanistan is determined to a large extent by its
stand on the Palestine question. And the dominant perception
is one of American double standards, of one standard applied to Israel and another standard to the
Palestinians. Consequently, America cannot count on unambiguous Arab
support in its long war against international terrorism unless it adopts a
position that satisfies the moderate Arab demands on Palestine. This means the Clinton parameters: a deal that would
establish the borders for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, allow
for the return of some refugees, and divide Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr Bush has
taken a critical step forward in invoking international justice to justify the
war in Afghanistan. To be consistent, he has to uphold
the same standard of justice for the Palestinians. Verbal commitments will not
carry much credibility this time round. His father promised justice for the
Palestinians after the Gulf War and failed to deliver. He himself will be
judged not by words but by actions. Moreover, the situation
has
changed in one significant respect. In 1990-91 the Arabs needed American
protection against Saddam Hussein. Today America badly needs the support of the Arab
world in the war against international terrorism.
From
this brief review of American policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
during the last decade, a number of conclusions emerge. First, on their own the
two sides are incapable of reaching a resolution of their 100 years-old
conflict. They came tantalisingly close at Taba in January but they did not get
there. Second, the policy of using US moral, material, and military support
to give Israel the confidence to go forward in the
peace process, has not achieved the desired results. The best proof is Bill
Clinton. He was, in the words of one Israeli newspaper, the last Zionist. Yet,
even he could not sweet talk Israel into a final settlement. If Clinton could not do it, nobody can. That
leaves only one possible path to progress: an externally-imposed solution.
An
externally-imposed solution sounds rather coercive and brutal towards Israel but it need not be. Indeed, if it is
brutal, it will backfire. The key to progress is to bring about a change in
Israeli public opinion in favour of ending the occupation and conceding to the
Palestinians the right to genuine national self-determination. Improbable as it
may look today, such a change is not inconceivable. The Israeli public has
never been as resistant to the idea of Palestinian statehood as the politicians
of the Right. At the last elections, Ariel Sharon promised peace with security
and has decidedly failed to deliver either. Today, Sharon does not have a plan with the remotest
chance of being acceptable to the other side and he knows it. Hence his
stubborn opposition to the resumption of the final status negotiations.At the
same time, he is being subjected to the most intense pressure by his partners
on the right and on the left of the political spectrum. His main aim is
survival and that precludes the option of voluntary withdrawal from the West Bank. So once again, as so often in the
past, the peace process is held hostage to domestic Israeli politics.
Only
America can break the deadlock in Israeli
politics. If America does not, no one else will. America’s credentials as a friend are impeccable.
Since 1967 America has given Israel more than $92 billion in aid and this
aid continues to the tune of $3 billion a year. America should involve the United Nations, European Union, Russia, and its Arab allies in a concerted
effort to generate internal pressure on Sharon to move forward on the political
front, but its own leadership role is crucial. The key point to drive home in
this educational campaign is that America remains committed to Israel’s
security and welfare, and that the country’s security will be enhanced rather
than put at risk by ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Arguably, America would be doing Sharon a favour by walking him into a peace
deal against which, given his ideological
provenance, he is bound to protest loudly in public. Moreover, a fair
number of sensible, level-headed Israelis would be grateful to America for liberating them from the 34
years-old colonial venture which has so disastrously distorted the Zionist
political project. In the end, it might be a question, as George Ball once put
it in an article in Foreign Affairs, of how to save Israel against itself.
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