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Thanks
to the Intifada 2, the final deal for Israel and
Palestine is on the table
By JONATHAN
POWER
January 24, 2001
LONDON - Clinton is out of it and Bush is not yet into
it so the Palestinians and Israelis are on their own.
That is no bad thing. The meeting in Cairo is make or
break time. If they fail Prime Minister Ehud Barak of
Israel will surely be voted out in the election on
February 6th. If they succeed the euphoria unleashed
might save Barak, and save Israel too. A future Israel
under the leadership of Ariel Sharon can only be the
downward path for both Israel and the
Palestinians.
It is a future that goes nowhere. For the Israelis it
means more years as an occupying power that demands for
precarious survival a resort to increasingly brutal
tactics to survive, that debilitates Israel as least as
much as it does its antagonist. For the Palestinians it
means a future in which there is no possibility of
economic advance and a deferral of all their dreams for
the indefinite future. For their leader Yasser Arafat,
who is fighting off serious illness, it may mean
literally the end of the road. For the West it means the
inevitable radicalising of the Arab states and, not
least, their political rehabilitation of Saddam
Hussein.
It is, in short, a lose-lose situation. Yet this is
exactly what many commentators said after the failure of
Camp David last July. President Bill Clinton made it very
clear then that he blamed the breakdown of the talks on
the intransigence of Yasser Arafat. However, we can see
in retrospect Arafat was right not to close a deal. In a
short six months Barak has advanced the Israeli
negotiating position even further than the radical steps
he had taken before. Barak is now prepared to accept
Palestinian sovereignty over much of East Jerusalem whose
Arab neighbourhoods house over 200,000 people and an
equally weighted Palestinian authority over the sacred
ground of the historic basin which contains the holy
sites of the three monotheistic religions. In short,
contrary to the long held Israeli position, Jerusalem
will remain an open and undivided city. Not a bad result
for six months work!
Does this mean Intifada 2 was right? That the Israelis
only bend under the threat of violence? If so then Arafat
should continue until he gets ALL he wants - the right of
return to Israel of the refugees who were driven out of
Israel during the war of 1948 and a removal of Israeli
control of the roads that link up Jewish settlements on
the West Bank and so on.
Perhaps there would be an argument for this if General
Sharon were less than a month away. But he is all but
assured of victory if peace is not declared beforehand.
Yes, it is an almighty gamble if the Palestinians forsake
some of their demands and settle now. Sharon might still
win the election, such is the resentment among Jewish
voters caused by Intifada 2. Moreover, it means accepting
that a new Palestinian state has only 25% of the land the
Palestinians had before the 1948 war. Besides, you never
know, Sharon might be another Richard Nixon or Charles de
Gaulle and turn into a peacemaker once in power.
But measured by how far the Israelis have come since
the Oslo accords were first fashioned, the Palestinians
have gained far more than any expert observer said they
would. You cannot find one newspaper article in the West,
or one article in a mainstream academic journal that even
hinted at the possibility of the deal now on the table.
Arafat would be playing Russian Roulette if he doesn't
now work to clinch a deal.
So what remains to be settled? First and foremost the
vexing issue of the so-called Right To Return. The
Israelis must concede the principle of it, even as they
win the right to indefinite administrative delay for a
majority of the refugees. If the international community
plays its part with the necessary funding most of the
refugees settled in camps can be relocated outside of the
Israel that now exists; and most will want to be, once
the Palestinian leadership tells them bluntly that Israel
will always be Israel.
As to the land that the Palestinians have lost to the
three large Israeli group of settlements on the West Bank
that Israel is intent on keeping - an issue that
tragically and short-sightedly America never used its
muscle to forestall - a reasonable compromise is to give
to Palestine another part of Israel, as Barak has
suggested. But it cannot be any old piece of land. Israel
owes it to the Palestinians to compensate for its
land-grab policy to pay to make this new land a viable
economic entity, not to remain as some isolated piece of
underdeveloped desert scrub.
Yossi Beilin, the Israeli justice minister, who
initiated the Oslo accords on the Israeli side recently
said, "We do not need more time, nor do we need new
solutions. We need courage." That's it.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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