The final-status agreement is top priority these days for PM Ehud
Barak. He does not like the Wye Memorandum he inherited. Of the little
territory he is willing to give up, he wants to keep all he can before
negotiating the permanent arrangement, so that he will have some left to
use in the last stages of bargaining. For that matter, his predecessor
did not like Wye either. He too wanted to leap straight into the final
talks. On him, however, Washington put the screws; it forced him to agree
on yielding up 13% of the West Bank before taking a seat to discuss ultimate
things. (Wye cost him that seat.) The logic of both PM's is clear: to give
up as little as possible before the final round. The Palestinians follow
the same logic in reverse: to get as much as they can today, for who knows
what may happen tomorrow?
In the current talks, the issues are two: the release of prisoners
and the schedule for Israeli withdrawals. The differences are inconsequential:
Barak, in the end, will have to deliver what was agreed on at Wye. He is
trying, however, to connect the last Wye withdrawal with the final arrangement
– thus minimizing the damage. Here is the timing he prefers:
Concerning the implementation of Wye, there is a territorial difference
between Barak and his predecessor. Benjamin Netanyahu felt the settlers
breathing down his neck. In order to minimize their ire, he insisted that
part of the 13% should be a piece of the so-called Judaean desert (far
away from most of them). This piece was to be a nature reserve: the Palestinians
would not be permitted to build there. Barak, on the other hand, has inherited
Labor's "Allon Plan", in which the (less densely populated) eastern flank
of the West Bank is to serve as an Israeli buffer zone. Barak would take
the whole 13%, therefore, from the central highland region. His advisers
point out to the Palestinians that this is "quality" land, which will give
them territorial contiguity – and with no restrictions on development.
As for the security prisoners, the debate is centered on the number
to be released. The Palestinians hold that there are still 650 who await
their freedom under Wye. (Tricky Bibi released 250, but half were criminal
offenders – not what Wye meant at all.) Barak, at this point, is prepared
to release 300.
Beneath the current debate over timing and prisoners, there is a deeper
issue of principle. Barak does not want to finish the Wye pullbacks only
to find himself facing new demands based on UN Resolution 242 (which calls
for the return of territories conquered in 1967). By the time he gets to
the last phase of the Wye withdrawals, he wants to have a final-status
framework which both sides interpret – in a legally binding agreement with
ironclad international backing – as the fulfillment of Resolution 242.
This principle has now been accepted. On September 1, Aluf Ben wrote in
Ha’aretz: “Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed that the achievement
of the permanent arrangement between them will be considered as the implementation
of UN Resolution 242. …What this means is that after signing the permanent-status
agreement, the sides will not be able to make additional claims.”
Arafat's insistence on the implementation of Wye is by no means gratuitous.
It will give him about 42% of the West Bank, dispelling a part of the uncertainty
that riddles his regime. So much remains "up in the air"! The territory
of the Palestinian Authority (PA) still consists of land-bound islands.
The government is chaotic. The dozen or so security forces resemble Mafiosi.
Rivalry continues between the group that came from Tunis in 1994 and those
who were already here. The PA's international legal status remains unclear.
Arafat requires a definite territory over which he can throw his aegis,
a place he can tax and rule. The continuing uncertainty shakes his authority.
The people live in a kind of vacuum, unclear to whom they belong. They
relate to the PA as to an iffy proposition, a "state on condition".
When Arafat agreed not to discuss certain issues during the interim
negotiations – namely Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees – in effect,
he gave up on them. He knew he would not have enough cards later to impose
his will. But he did not give up on the notion of having a definite territory.
That is his dividend in the deal: a well-defined regime in a well-defined
space. From the beginning, he went to Oslo with a feeling of defeat: given
the international situation, he believed that anything he got out of Israel
would be in the nature of a miracle – not by right, the fruit of struggle.
As a result, although the permanent arrangement may indeed define borders,
other topics will likely remain open. According to a Palestinian source
–one close to the refugee issue – Arafat will never agree to cancel the
right of return, or accede to Israel's demand that the refugees receive
citizenship in the Arab lands where they reside. He will not give up the
claim to Jerusalem either; instead, he will prefer to accept some sort
of temporary arrangement.
It is not at all clear, therefore, that the final agreement will be
one of "historical reconciliation" (i.e., surrender), such as Israel dreams
of – one which signifies, at long last, Palestinian acceptance of Zionist
rule over the greater part of the country. The agreement will consist,
rather, of what Arafat is able and willing to sell to his people in his
lifetime. Knowing that this time may be short, he will take care to avoid
the stigma of Anwar Sadat, remembered today in the Arab world as the man
who sold himself and his country to America.
The "question of Palestine" will remain a question. At Oslo Israel
showed its preference for all of Palestine (de facto), rather than a fair
(albeit still unjust) partition. Here it missed a rare opportunity to heal,
at a small cost, the enormous injustice it inflicted on the Palestinian
people midway through the century. On the other hand, no Palestinian organization
has offered an alternative to the grotesque distortion of the national
vision that has taken place under Arafat. The question of Palestine will
not find a solution, therefore, until new social forces rise up to vanquish
a global order that imposes Zionism.
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