JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Pages 6, 93-94

Special Report

For Palestinians Under a “Siege of Starvation,” There Is Still No Peace

by Rachelle Marshall

Like a shady contractor hoping a coat of paint will hide the cracks in the walls until he can sell the house, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is trying to convince Arab leaders, and the rest of the world, that peace between Israel and its neighbors is virtually an accomplished fact. The U.S. has eagerly cooperated in the charade, with the administration of President Bill Clinton urging Arab nations to reward Israel's peacemaking efforts by ending their boycott, and calling on the U.N. to repeal all resolutions directed against Israel. This year Congress again voted to give Israel more than a quarter of all U.S. foreign aid and President Clinton added some additional largess because, according to a State Department official, "We felt it was important to relieve Israel of some of the burden of implementing peace."

But the explosion of violence in Gaza on Nov. 18 in which Palestinian police killed 14 rioters and wounded some 200 others was bloody evidence that Israeli-Palestinian peace is still a mirage. The rioters were militant Palestinians who oppose the terms of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed by Israel and the PLO last September and who deeply resent PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for agreeing to those terms. But in a broader sense their protest expressed the rage of people who see their long struggle for independence ending in a sell-out to Israel that has left them even worse off than before.

In violation of the DOP, Israel has refused to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners or to withdraw its troops from West Bank cities and towns and allow Palestinian elections to be held. Collective punishment and the torture of Palestinian suspects continues. After the bus bombing in Tel Aviv last October by an Islamic militant, the government ordered even "more efficient" interrogation methods. That bombing and other acts of violence by Palestinians took the lives of scores of Israelis last year. Less publicized is the fact that during the same period at least 130 Palestinians, including 18 children, were killed by Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Because the borders of Gaza and the West Bank remain sealed for most Palestinians, the people of these areas live under what Palestinian leaders call "a siege of starvation." More than half of the working population in the occupied territories is unemployed. The government recently relaxed the blockade slightly to allow 23,000 Palestinian construction workers—all over 30 and married—to enter Israel, but that number is less than a third of the 70,000 Palestinians who until recently held jobs in Israel. The loss of these jobs, the forced closing of small businesses, and the failure of foreign donors to come through with promised funds have devastated the Palestinian economy.

Even worse, cholera has appeared in Gaza, where at least 15 people were stricken in November. Israel's response was to ban all food exports from Gaza, a move that has cost growers some $300,000 a day. Outbreaks of disease are almost certain to increase as long as 800,000 Gazans are forced to rely on scarce and contaminated water supplies while Israeli settlers are allocated, per capita, 16 times as much water as the Palestinian inhabitants.

Crippled Institutions

The continued closing of Jerusalem has also crippled major Palestinian educational and medical institutions, since most of their personnel live in the West Bank or Gaza. The headquarters of the U.N. relief agency, UNRWA, has lost 70 percent of its employees and, according to the Jerusalem Times, dozens of schools in Jerusalem are facing "complete paralysis." In a further effort to lessen the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, Rabin has asked the Knesset for a law allowing Israeli police to shut down Orient House, which has long been the center of Palestinian political activities.

As if the hardships imposed by the continuing occupation were not enough, Israel is attempting to deepen the rifts among Palestinians. The government that once tolerated Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank with the hope of fracturing the PLO resistance is now demanding that Arafat crush Hamas and other Palestinian opposition groups. To most Palestinians this would mean the Palestinian Authority would simply replace Israel as the oppressor. Rabin also insists that in the elections called for by the DOP, Palestinians be allowed to choose only a small executive council rather than the 100-member legislative body Palestinian negotiators are asking for. Rabin's plan would also forbid opponents of the agreement to run as candidates, yet such a prohibition would be unthinkable in Israel, where extremists who call the prime minister a "Nazi" for recognizing the PLO are not only free to run for office but are supplied with arms by the government.

Rabin has also provoked divisiveness within the PLO itself by threatening to scuttle elections altogether unless the PLO first revokes portions of its charter declaring the state of Israel to be illegal. An amendment to the charter requires a two-thirds vote by the Palestine National Council, but a majority of the PLO executive committee has refused so far to urge such a vote until Israel first withdraws from the West Bank and Gaza.

According to Marwan Barghouti, vice-president of Fatah, Yasser Arafat's majority group within the PLO, what Israel wants is a "security partnership with the PLO," not an independent, democratic Palestine. In an interview published in the November-December issue of Middle East Report, Barghouti said, "We will only get genuine independence if we develop a national infrastructure for self-rule, and we can only develop an infrastructure if we have a democratic civil society...We must air differences democratically so that the people, not the gun, can judge." As Barghouti's statement suggests, by closing off legitimate channels of dissent, Rabin's stipulations on Palestinian elections are a recipe for future violence.

Rabin has tried to bolster Arafat against his growing opposition by promising the Palestinians limited control over West Bank tourism, welfare, taxes, and health. He also agreed to schedule early negotiations on elections and the redeployment of Israeli occupation forces that must precede them, but his insistence on a prior change in the PLO charter could make any settlement of these issues all but impossible. After the Nov. 18 riots in Gaza, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres proposed that Israel "advance" to the Palestinian National Authority $13 million from the taxes paid by Palestinian workers in Israel (and for which they receive no benefits). These meager concessions failed to convince Nabil Shaath, the PLO's chief negotiator, that Israel is committed to a just peace. Shaath, a successful businessman who for months expressed confidence in the peace process, finally vented his frustration with Israel's stalling tactics in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot on Nov. 8. "Rabin does not even try to hide how much he despises us," Shaath said. "If there won't be a miracle, the agreement between us will collapse."

Peace between Israel and its neighbors to the north also seems in need of a miracle. Israel has offered to withdraw from part of the Golan Heights mile by mile over the next three years in return for an immediate full peace with Syria. But Rabin also promised Israelis he would hold a popular referendum before any withdrawal could take place. Nor can he assure Syria that a Likud government will not come to power in two years and cancel the withdrawal agreement. Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad no longer demands an immediate return of the Golan but does insist that in exchange for "total peace" Israel must agree to withdraw entirely and remove its civilian settlement.

The standoff between the two nations may be long lasting, despite a U.S. offer to stop blocking World Bank and IMF loans to Syria if Assad accepts Israel's terms. David Clayman, Israel representative of the American Jewish Congress, said recently that Rabin is in no hurry to make peace with Syria until Israelis become convinced that return of the Golan would be safe. Clayman said Israel is likely to insist on additional security guarantees, including deep cuts in the Syrian military. Israel is also counting on the presence of U.S. peacekeeping forces in the Golan once Israeli troops start their withdrawal, but the Republican victory in the November elections may kill such a possibility. The new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, shares the views of Likud hard-liners. He calls Israeli-Syrian peace efforts "a fraud" and opposes any move to send American forces to the area.

Rabin's stipulations on Palestinian elections are a recipe for future violence.

Israel has shown no eagerness for a peace agreement with Lebanon. In early November, Lebanese President Elias Hrawi proposed that a joint committee negotiate a timetable for Israel's withdrawal from its nine-mile-wide occupation zone within six months. Hrawi, whose proposal clearly had Syria's backing, pledged that if Israel agreed to the timetable there would be no more attacks on Israeli troops by Hezbollah guerrillas. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rabin responded that "On Hrawi's promise alone we will not do anything." Like his predecessors, Rabin insists that the Lebanese army must disarm and disperse the Hezbollah fighters before any negotiations can take place and that Israel will not begin to withdraw until Syria first pulls out its 40,000 troops. Israel's conditions mean the present stalemate will continue, since it is doubtful that Lebanon could successfully disarm the resistance forces without the help of Syria's military.

Meanwhile, the low-level war in southern Lebanon increasingly resembles the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, as Israeli artillery and air attacks kill growing numbers of civilians, and Lebanese fighters continue to pick off Israeli soldiers. In late October the U.N. condemned Israel for using tank shells packed with steel darts in an attack near Nabatya that killed seven villagers. The anti-personnel shells, which were used by the U.S. in Vietnam, are banned as excessively cruel by the Geneva conventions on warfare because their barbed darts leave multiple wounds and are almost impossible to remove.

The gloom hanging over the stalled peace talks lifted briefly, but with much fanfare, on Oct. 26, when Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement after being technically at war for 46 years. Although more than half a million Palestinians live in Jordan, Arafat was not invited to the ceremony. President Clinton was, however, and made it clear that Jordan had earned the goodwill of the U.S., if not any immediate tangible benefits. In signing the treaty, King Hussein may also have gained the assurance that no future Israeli government will impose by force the long-held dictum of Israeli hard-liners that "Jordan is Palestine."

Dubious Rights

Israel agreed to return 120 square miles of contested territory and provide Jordan with some 50 million cubic meters of water a year from the Yarmuk River. But Israel is giving away water to which it has only dubious rights. The Yarmuk is the boundary between Syria and Jordan, touching on Israel only as it flows past the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the Sea of Galilee. In the past Israel has blocked efforts by Syria and Jordan to divert for their own use some of the waters of the Yarmuk and Jordan rivers. When Syria began building dams on the tributaries of these rivers in 1965, Israeli fighter planes destroyed the working sites. Since capturing the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967, Israel has controlled almost all of the water in the Jordan River basin.

According to myth, Israelis not only "made the desert bloom" but did so using ingenious water-saving methods. A chart published in the New York Times of Oct. 18 shows, however, that Israel not only uses twice as much water as Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza combined, but its annual per capita consumption is greater than that of the U.S. An Israeli uses on average 380 cubic meters a year, an American 232. By contrast, a Palestinian on the West Bank, from which Israel takes 80 percent of the available water, uses only 90 cubic meters. (And has to pay more for it. Last September the Jerusalem Water Authority accused the Israeli Civil Administration of charging Israeli settlers one cent for a cubic meter of water but making Palestinians pay five cents, discriminatory pricing that has cost the Palestinian economy millions of dollars.)

With U.S. help, Israel rushed to capitalize on its peace treaty with Jordan. Less than a week after the signing ceremony, Rabin and half the Israeli cabinet met in Casablanca with hundreds of business executives and public officials from most of the Arab world. The conference was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. The objective of the conference, according to New York Timescorrespondent Youssef Ibrahim, was "to construct a network of private-sector projects and investments binding Israel's economy to that of the Arab world surrounding it." In keeping with this aim, the U.S. reiterated its plea for an immediate end to the Arab boycott of Israel. In an opening speech, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher also called for the establishment of a multibillion dollar regional bank that would finance new businesses in Israel and the West Bank. Conveniently, the Israeli delegation included several dozen businessmen carrying some 150 proposals for joint ventures with the Arab countries.

But the Arab nations were not buying—at least for the present. Saudi Arabia and other countries rejected the idea of a development bank, saying that because of low oil prices it would be difficult for them to put up the necessary money. Some Arab officials pointed out that the area already had an abundance of banks and what was needed was some way of activating the available funds. In the end, however, it was the jerry-built peace process that caused the meeting to fizzle. Arab delegates insisted that a more solid foundation be built before full cooperation with Israel could take place. "We cannot put the cart before the horse," said Esmat Abdel Meguid, secretary of the Arab League, in a speech to Israeli officials and potential investors. "A durable peace must be based on a just solution of land-for-peace and on the successful end of all Arab-Israeli talks."

The Casablanca Declaration that emerged from the meeting was even more pointed. It urged Israel to keep open the borders of the Palestinian territories "for labor, tourism, and trade, to allow the Palestinian Authority, in partnership with its neighbors, the opportunity to build a viable economy in peace." The message of the conference could not have been clearer: Israel cannot reap the benefits of peace without first making a credible commitment to achieve it.