January, 1994 Page 7

Special Report 

Al Awda: The Return From Which There is No Return

 By Richard H. Curtiss

 ''For decades, 'the return' has been a tortured dream, a mantra of self-affirmation, for thousands of exiled Palestinians. But the advent of limited Palestinian self rule in Gaza and part of the West Bank has transformed that fantasy into possibility, and the impending journey home is provoking a mixture of joy and anxiety. ''

—Correspondent Caryle Murphy, The Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1993

All Palestinian refugees, the 750,000 of 1948, the 250,000 of 1967, and their more than three million descendants in the Palestinian Diaspora have dreamed of Al Awda–the return. Some tried to turn their fantasies into reality. Daring teen-aged saboteurs slipped under fences into Israel, but died in a hail of gunfire. Thousands of young men enlisted in Palestinian guerrilla armies to fight their way back to the homeland, but most died defending their camps from Israeli aircraft, host country armies, or each other. Passive resisters talked of massing a million men, women and children along the east bank of the Jordan River and then, armed only with smiles, crossing simultaneously for a peaceable return to the homes from which they had fled or been driven. The Israelis set up machine gun emplacements.

In February 1988 Yasser Arafat assembled Palestinian exiles and international sympathizers in Cyprus to board an unarmed merchant vessel for the voyage to an Israeli port, facing Israel with the choice of letting the ship land, or sinking it with international celebrities aboard. The night before they were to board, Israeli Mossad agents killed three guards on the dock and blew up the ship. The ship that sank in Limassol harbor was named Al Awda.

Not one of the millions who had dreamed of the day could have envisioned the anticlimax of the actual return scheduled for Dec. 13 in Gaza. Palestinian flags flew from every building but, instead of battle scarred heroes, triumphant armies, massed passive resisters or Palestinian intellectuals linked arm-in-arm with the world's "beautiful people,'' the event was postponed.

Increasingly it appears that the first arrivals will be hastily recruited and trained Palestinian policemen and worried Palestine Liberation Organization bureaucrats, unpaid for months and hastily plucked from their offices in Tunis. When they arrive, they will be met not only by supporters, but also by Palestinian opponents of the Sept. 13 Declaration on Principles of Peace that made this return possible, and Israeli soldiers, still occupying sandbagged and barbed-wire rooftop outposts in "liberated" Gaza.

Palestinians at home and abroad are deeply divided over the Declaration. It ends the dream of return for 1948 refugees, because it makes the 1948 cease-fire lines the de facto borders of Israel. Those who once lived inside that "Green Line," or their descendants, can hope for generous compensation, but not for Al Awda.

For 1967 refugees it offers the hope of return for those who seek it, and perhaps compensation for those who don't. For West Bank Palestinians living under brutal Israeli military occupation outside Jericho it offers no immediate relief, but hope after mid-July 1994 for freedom from insatiable Israeli tax collectors, 40 percent unemployment, petty harassment and selective law enforcement by Israeli military occupation personnel, life-threatening terror at the hands of armed and fanatical Jewish "settlers," and unremitting land confiscation's under arbitrary military occupation rules from which there has been no realistic appeal.

For residents of the Gaza Strip and a still undefined area around Jericho, however, it offers immediate liberation and a future, however uncertain, that can only be better than the intolerable present. The Israeli "withdrawal," also called "redeployment" in the loosely worded accord, was to begin Dec. 13 and to be completed by April 13. Then, in mid-July 1994, the same procedure is to be extended to the rest of the West Bank.

Two years later (whether the starting point is Dec. 13, 1993 or April 13, 1994 is in dispute), negotiations are to begin on a permanent settlement for Gaza and the West Bank. Three years after that, either Dec. 13, 1998 or April 13, 1999, the permanent settlement takes effect.

Unresolved Issues 

Until then it is possible that there will be no agreement on the final form of Palestinian sovereignty, the final status of Jerusalem, and whether the occupied territories will be freed totally of Israeli economic exploitation and allowed to join an Arab world that has achieved remarkable prosperity during the 45 years since Palestinians in the occupied territories were cut off from it. Although no Palestinians are sanguine about the final results, most of those most immediately affected have concluded that something is better than nothing, and nothing is all they've had for 45 years.

"It is premature to level all this criticism against Arafat or the accord," says President Hanna Nasir of Bir Zeit University. "So far it is the Israelis who have failed to live up to the spirit of peace. They continue to expand Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, they still hold thousands of political prisoners, and, of the 1,800 people they expelled in the past 20 years,only 30–of whom I am one–have been allowed to return."

When he returned last September, Dr. Nasir simply resumed the job held for him during the 15 years he spent in exile in Jordan. As his remarks above to The New York Times indicate, the Palestinians who remained in Israel and the occupied territories and those who did not have not mutated into two separate species.

Instead, thousands of Palestinians have left the occupied territories for a few years to work in the Arab states of the Gulf or in Europe and then returned to invest their savings in comfortable stone houses in Ramallah, El Bireh, Hebron or East Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of the 1948 and 1967 refugees and their children have taken U.S. or European citizenship and, protected by their passports, returned for extended visits with families who stayed behind. Most Palestinians, whether from watching the Israeli democracy that works for Jews, or from watching or participating in British, French, German or American democracy, are determined that resuming Palestinian nationality does not mean accepting an autocratic regime like so many others in the area.

Therefore, if the reactions of Palestinians to the agreement differ in direct proportion to what it offers them personally, in the long run it makes no difference. What does matter is precedent for the kind and quality of Palestinian rule that is set up in the next few months in the areas from which Israel withdraws.

"It's like someone who is expecting a baby and people start to say, 'What if the child fell ill, or broke his leg falling off the stairs, or contracted food poisoning?"' former Palestinian peace talk delegate Albert Aghazarian told a New York Times correspondent. "I say, first, let us have the baby, and then we will worry about it. I think we can handle it."

For this viewpoint, there is widespread support. As Palestinians emerge from their dreams of Al Awda to the realities of the coming struggle for economic freedom from Israel, statehood for Gaza and the West Bank, and equal access with Israelis to Jerusalem, all will come to realize that, from this accord, there is no turning back.

In 1979 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a land-for-peace agreement with Israel based upon solemn promises by U.S. President Jimmy Carter that Israel would freeze Jewish settlements while negotiating a similar withdrawal to its 1967 borders with the Palestinians.

Israel, however, resumed the settlements, and President Sadat was assassinated for signing his agreement with Israel. Nor was any land-for-peace agreement negotiated with the Palestinians until the one signed on Sept. 13, 1993. Nevertheless, Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak has never reneged upon its solemn obligations.

The lesson, for the Palestinians, is that in a democracy, which virtually all Palestinians support, an agreement signed by one elected leader is binding upon his successors. To renege upon an agreement signed by Palestine's principal leader for the past 25 years is unthinkable. Whatever Palestinians may think of the Declaration of Principles, or of Yasser Arafat for having negotiated it, they now must make it work, while making sure that the government that evolves on the newly liberated land is one worthy of their struggle.

Only a democracy will make it possible for Palestinians to choose, peacefully, among the leaders of their liberation movements returning from abroad, and the intifada leaders warily welcoming them. Proof that the return brought real democracy to Palestine may well be an election in which Yasser Arafat is replaced.

However great his devotion to Palestine, he capped a career of political misjudgments with the monumental blunder in 1990 of seeming to support Saddam Hussain in the Gulf war. This cost a half-million Palestinians their jobs in the Gulf and bankrupted the PLO, which had derived virtually all of its revenues from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

If, however, Arafat returns to set up a government so democratic and supportive of human rights that he risks being displaced in its first election, he will be remembered for that with even more gratitude by future generations in Palestine and the Arab world beyond than for all his risks and sacrifices in his country's long war for liberation.

That is the challenge of the return. If the Palestinians meet it successfully, setting a precedent for their country and an example for the entire Arab world, the Sept. 13 accord marks the beginning of Palestine. If they fail, the accord marks its end.

A Lingering Death for "Greater Israel"

"'A land without people for a people without land, 'an old Zionist slogan says. But the Arabs were here and still are, and neither they nor their national aspirations are about to disappear because some Jews insist that there are two dozen other Arab states that the Palestinians could as easily call home."

—Correspondent Clyde Haberrnan, New York Times, Dec. 12, 1993

Israelis see that Palestinians have no choice but to make the Arafat-Rabin accord work. What they seem not to understand is that they have no choice either. As Jewish settlers rampage through the West Bank, killing Palestinians at random on the roads, in their fields and even in their homes, they expect Palestinian extremists to respond in kind.

The object is to discredit the Declaration on Principles of Peace, bring down Yitzhak Rabin for approving it and Shimon Peres for signing it, and restore the Likud and its program of "Greater Israel" to power. What Likud leaders refuse to accept is that with the stroke of a pen on the White House south lawn, "Greater Israel," occupying all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, died just as surely as did the dream of a restored Palestine, occupying all of the same space.

Remittances from the U.S., Germany other countries of Europe and the Jewish Diaspora have provided the subsidies that, for the past 45 years, have made Israel's inefficient government-owned industries and wasteful kibbutz and moshav agriculture possible. Even Israel's major foreign currency-earning industry, selling arms and military technology to unsavory regimes that cannot buy arms from the West, is made possible solely by U.S. government willingness to wink at violations of its own laws and treaties.

If, after a time, the Labor government falls and the Likud government declares "Palestinian autonomy" a failure, Israel's hopes of integrating economically into the oil-rich Middle East will die with Palestinian hopes for sovereignty. So will Israel's hold on the United States.

The American public is sick to death of Israel's unending quarrels with its neighbors; its flouting of international rules, from the Geneva conventions to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement; and its unwillingness until Sept. 13 to grant a million and a half Palestinians living under Israeli occupation either the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship, or the right to govern themselves.

Members of Congress, traditionally Israel's best, and perhaps only, friends in Washington, are equally sick of the carrots and sticks of Israel's mean-spirited lobby, which demeans every legislator who accepts its campaign donations in return for rubber-stamping ever-growing Israeli "entitlements" from the U.S. Treasury, which now have reached an annual total of more than $6 billion in grants and credits. Even many American Jews would welcome an excuse to turn their backs, once and for all, on the Israeli mendicancy that impels them to put aside their personal convictions and become one-issue voters, time and again, for U.S. taxpayer aid to Israel.

Unilaterally tearing up the accord and turning Israel's back on the Sept. 13 "handshake seen round the world" live on CNN and BBC television from the White House south lawn is no more a viable option for Israel than would be Egypt's denouncing the "cold peace" with Israel it signed almost 15 years ago on the White House north lawn.

Syria: Not in Any Hurry

"President Hafez Al-Assad of Syria, who single-handedly could blow it all apart, signaled last week that he would not be a spoiler, by agreeing to end the boycott of his own talks with Israel .... SO, after all the dust has settled, the prospects for Israelis and Palestinians reaching still more agreement next month would seem better than fair. "

—Correspondent Clyde Haberman, The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1993

Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, with whom Israel has labored hard throughout the U.S.-brokered peace talks to reach a separate agreement, has good reason to feel betrayed by Yasser Arafat. Israel's goal was to eliminate the only remaining military threat among its neighbors, and thus remove the necessity for making difficult concessions to the Palestinians. The offer was "full withdrawal" of Israeli forces from Syria's Golan Heights in return for "full peace" between the two countries. Syria's president made it clear that the terms were satisfactory, but that there would be no deal until Israel agreed to full withdrawal as well from occupied Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese lands.

So, rather than luring Syria into a separate peace, the Israelis lured Arafat instead. Although Hafez Al-Assad now might feel vindicated in reaching a separate deal, he probably won't. If he holds firm, seemingly more solicitous of the interests of the Palestinians than their own leader, he can look to other Arab countries to make up the extra costs to his country. If he gives in prematurely, he looks no better than President Anwar Sadat, whom he attacked so bitterly for reaching a separate about $20 billion. peace 15 years ago, or Yasser Arafat, with whom he has feuded intermittently for a generation.

Peace also would have its downside for an Alawite Muslim leader of an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country, who has used the real Israeli threat as justification for police-state rule, and acquisition of tanks and military aircraft to back it up.

Warren Christopher's zeal in trying to bully or bribe the Syrian leader into an immediate settlement, with the five-year countdown on Palestinian independence barely underway, is misplaced. To Syrians, Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab and Islamic world, it looks suspiciously like an Israeli ploy to remove the last necessity to make concessions on Palestinian sovereignty and on Jerusalem in order to normalize relations with the Arab world.

Jordan: Unable to Settle Alone

"Jordan has carried all the burdens of all the mistakes, of all the misjudgments, of all the disasters that impacted on this area–particularly in the Palestinian dimension. . . So I hope and pray that with removal of the root cause of instability and misunderstanding–the Arab-Israeli struggle and the Palestinian-Israeli problem– the results would be positive ones and would be far-reaching beyond this region. "

—King Hussein of Jordan, quoted in The New York Times, Dec. 1O, 1993

King Hussein has granted Jordanian nationality to all Palestinians living on its territory, and many who do not. Up to 70 percent of his subjects are of Palestinian origin, and the fate of his kingdom rests precariously on a solution that enables those who wish to return to do so, and compels those who wish to stay in Jordan to come to terms with the duties as well as privileges of Jordanian nationality.

His territorial and economic problems with Israel could be settled over a weekend. But there will be no separate peace with Israel without Syria, and probably none before the Israelis reach a final agreement with the Palestinians as well. There is little security for the Kingdom of Jordan so long as Palestinians feel victimized by Israel. There would be none at all if Palestinians felt betrayed by King Hussein.

Lebanon: No "Separate Peace"

"Lebanon, which seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to help repair the damage, is bearing the brunt of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even as it faces the disastrous consequences of 15 years of a civil war whose repair bill now totals

—Correspondent Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10, 1993

Lebanon's civil war was a direct outgrowth of the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Lebanon in 1948. The largely Muslim refugee population permanently destabilized the delicate half Christian, half-Muslim confessional balance of Lebanon's three million citizens. Twenty-seven years later, with Lebanese Christians clearly in the minority, some of their leaders entered into a conspiracy with Israel to drive the Palestinian refugees, or at least militant Palestinian leaders, out of the country. It was one cause of the civil war that devastated what had been the Middle East's freest and most prosperous country.

Belatedly, all Lebanese realize there will be no security for their country, nor even any withdrawal of the foreign forces that frighten away the investors and hamper the return of Lebanon's entrepreneurial class from Europe and the United States, until there is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

With the 45-year Israeli-Palestinian war ended, Israel would lose the rationale for its "security zone" in south Lebanon, which Lebanese feel is motivated more by a desire for Lebanese water resources than by fear of rocket attacks by the Iranian funded Hezbollah. With Israeli forces leaving, Syria would lose the rationale for maintaining its own occupation of Lebanon. And with their Syrian protectors gone, the Hezbollah would be forced to lay down their arms, as have the other sectarian militias including Amal, Hezbollah's larger rival within the Shi'i community.

No country would benefit more immediately from a peace agreement with Israel, but every country must make its own deal before Lebanon can. In remarks published in the Dec. 10 Los Angeles Times, Lebanese political commentator Tawfiq Mishlawi explained: "If we can make progress, let's do it. We don't need to move side by side with the Syrians. But there are no Lebanese who say, 'Let's have a separate peace treaty.'"

A Time for Generosity

"I think if we have our national rights, our own independent state, yes, we can forgive. But me, as a person, no, I cannot forgive. Because I hurt too much. I don't want any woman or mother to experience what I did "

—Intissar Wazir,widow of PLO armed forces commander Khalil Wazir, quoted in The Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1993

Intissar Al Wazir, whose first-born son was killed in an accident during the bitter exile in Beirut, and whose husband was assassinated before her eyes by an Israeli hit squad in their home in exile in Tunis, believes that although she personally can never forgive the Israelis, her people can. The caveat, however, is a just peace, returning the nationality, if not all of the territory, of which the Palestinians have been deprived.

There are those who say that the animosities built up over 45 years of warfare, preceded by an equal period of intermittent hostilities and growing hatred, can never be overcome. Harmonious relations between Germany and Japan on the one hand, and the Western allies who defeated them in history's bloodiest war, refute that notion.

The peace with Germany and Japan is based, however, upon the perception on both sides that it was just. Germany and Japan bore a heavy burden of reparations payments, but they were able to deal with it because the conquerors, particularly the United States, supported rather than obstructed their economic recovery.

Israel's future in the Middle East depends upon the magnanimity of the settlement. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967 set out the terms of a land-for-peace agreement in which Israel would withdraw from the lands it seized in the 1967 war in return for acknowledgment by its Arab neighbors of Israel's "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries." All parties to Middle East peace have at one time or another accepted these terms.

Israelis can haggle over whether withdrawal "from territories occupied in the recent conflict" means all or almost all of those lands. But the worst thing that could happen to Israel would be to win that argument. Then Israel would achieve only a "cold peace," no better than that it has reached with Egypt. There are no Egyptian laws against buying Israeli products. There are no rules against Egyptians traveling to Israel. But few Egyptians do either. Nor will they ever until the Palestinians are granted the promised terms on the basis of which Anwar Sadat made his peace with Israel.

To not share Jerusalem, or not withdraw completely to the 1967 borders, would be the worst mistake Israel could make. A generous peace with a totally sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state means that, with the passage of time, Israel will find its place in the Middle East. A stingy, mean-spirited peace means that Israel never will gain the acceptance it needs.

Whether the Sept. 13 accord leads to an Israeli-Palestinian settlement depends upon Palestinians dealing forcefully with the obstructionists and terrorists in their midst. They will when they assume control.

Nor will the accord work unless the Israeli government deals decisively with its settler obstructionists and terrorists. So far, it has not.

Whether a final settlement with the Palestinians five years from now leads to Israel's acceptance in the Middle East therefore depends largely upon Israel, not the Arabs. If either the Declaration on Principles fails, or the five-year implementation of those principles fails, the Israelis will have only themselves to blame.

Richard N. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.