Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 9-10

Special Report

In the Aftermath of Wye, Israelis “Grab More Hills”

By Rachelle Marshall

As the Israeli government dragged its feet last fall on the troop withdrawals called for in the Wye agreement, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon urged Jewish settlers on the West Bank to “grab more hills” from the Palestinians. “We’ll expand the area,” he declared. “Whatever is seized will be ours, whatever we don’t will be theirs.” It was advice Israel’s founders would wholeheartedly endorse. How else but by seizing more territory and holding on to it could the future Israelis have started in 1947 with 56 percent of the land covered by the U.N partition plan and less than half the population, and end up 20 years later in possession of all of Palestine plus parts of Syria and Lebanon?

Israel’s more recent tactic, use of the peace process to strengthen its control of captured territory, has been equally successful. A graph of the Palestinians’ progress since the Madrid Conference toward building an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza would show a line headed downhill until it dropped off the page with the signing of the Wye agreement. Although “premised” on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, in effect the Oslo accords legitimized Israel’s permanent presence in the West Bank and Gaza. With the Wye agreement, an independent Palestinian state has become a more distant dream than ever.

Instead the West Bank will be composed of a growing Jewish population connected to Israel by a road network that bypasses Palestinian towns and villages, and cuts them off from one another and from Jerusalem. Palestinian police will share with Israel the job of keeping the Palestinian population in check, while Israel retains ultimate control of the borders, most of the land, and all of the water. For the 4 million Palestinian refugees waiting to be allowed to return or at least given compensation, Wye provided nothing.

Nevertheless, seldom has a head of state demonstrated such distaste for a peace agreement he has just signed as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Using two suicide bombing attempts as pretexts for delay, he waited four weeks before asking the Knesset to approve the Wye accords. When the Knesset did give its approval, thanks to Labor Party votes, Netanyahu glumly declared, “This is not a day of jubilation.” Meanwhile he was insisting that the Palestinians fulfill additional conditions that had not been included in the agreement. Among his demands were that they arrest 30 fugitives Israel claims have attacked Israelis, and that the 670 members of the Palestine National Council meet in order to delete from the Palestinian charter clauses calling for Israel’s destruction—even though the Council amended the charter in 1996 to the previous Israeli government’s satisfaction.

Wye calls for three Israeli troop withdrawals from West Bank territory phased over 12 weeks, but Netanyahu later declared that each withdrawal would have to be approved by the cabinet, after ministers determined that the Palestinians were living up to their security obligations. Given the bitter opposition of many cabinet members to any Israeli withdrawal, this means the process could be delayed indefinitely or perhaps stymied altogether. Netanyahu also threatened that if Yasser Arafat declared Palestinian statehood on May 4 as he has promised, Israel would annex large portions of the West Bank and cancel the Wye agreement. Finally, Netanyahu said his government reserved the right to apply Israeli law not only to all of Jerusalem and the settlements, but to “all other things that are accepted as vital interests of Israel”—a statement that in effect asserts Israel’s right to send its security forces into any areas it chooses, regardless of the withdrawals.

Only after Arafat ordered the surrender of unauthorized weapons and outlawed “incitement” against Israel, did the cabinet vote 7 to 5 to approve the first phase of the Wye agreement. The next day, Nov. 19, Israel relinquished sole control of an area between Jenin and Nablus that constitutes 2 percent of the West Bank and includes the city of Qabatiya. The area will now be under joint Israeli-Palestinian jurisdiction. After a second withdrawal in December another 7 percent, now administered jointly by both sides, will be added to the 3 percent of territory under full Palestinian control. By the end of January, if all goes according to schedule, the Palestinians will have sole jurisdiction over about 18 percent of the West Bank—hardly the basis for an independent state.

The cabinet also gave the go-ahead to the agreed-upon release of Palestinian prisoners and the opening of the Gaza airport, but as usual the Palestinians got far less than they expected. The Wye agreement requires that Israel release, in three phases, 750 of the 3,700 Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons. But of the first 250 prisoners that Israel released, most were car thieves and drug dealers, not the political activists the Palestinians had hoped for.

The Gaza International Airport officially opened on Nov. 24 with bagpipes, brass bands, and cheers from Gazans who have been confined for 30 years to a tiny strip of land and see the airport as their first link to the outside world. Before it can operate at night, however, the Palestinians must come up with the $644,000 Israel is demanding in storage fees for the air traffic and radar equipment now stuck at an Israeli port. The equipment had to be stored because for two years Israel refused to allow the airport to open. When Gaza International is in full operation, Israel will still control security, flight schedules and routes, which means Palestinian passengers and cargo could still be delayed at the whim of the Israelis.

The minimal gains the Palestinians made at Wye may be offset by their losses. Article V of the agreement stipulates that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in accordance with the Interim Agreement.” But as is his habit, Netanyahu treated the agreement he had just signed as so much worthless paper. On arriving back in Israel he immediately gave the green light to the confiscation of more Palestinian land for construction of thousands of new housing units on the West Bank, including 200 apartments at Kiryat Arba, a notoriously right-wing settlement on a hill above Hebron. Its residents maintain an elaborate shrine dedicated to Baruch Goldstein, the man who machine-gunned 29 Muslims as they knelt in prayer in February 1994.

Acting on their own but with full government support, Israeli settlers elsewhere on the West Bank seized five strategic hilltops near Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Qalquilya and Tulkarim, and set up makeshift settlements that they intend to make permanent. The army has not only allowed the land seizures to take place, but is providing protection for the squatters.

Netanyahu’s most defiant move, taken two weeks after the Wye meetings, was to open bidding on construction of a huge housing development on Mt. Abu Ghneim, or Har Homa, north of Bethlehem. In doing so he again outraged many Palestinians, who regard the area as part of occupied East Jerusalem, which they hope will be the capital of a Palestinian state. When Israel first announced the new settlement a year and a half ago, the Palestinians halted negotiations in protest and the U.N. immediately adopted a resolution condemning it.

For many Palestinians the most damaging aftermath of the Wye agreement came when the Israeli cabinet accompanied its endorsement of the agreement with an authorization for 12 new roads on the West Bank that will bypass Palestinian communities and connect settlements with highways to Jerusalem.

Bulldozers immediately began cutting broad swaths through Palestinian land, crushing vines and uprooting orchards that have provided a living to neighboring families for generations. When angry villagers turn out to protest, Israeli soldiers drive them off with tear gas and rubber bullets.

“If the new agreement means taking our land and making us servants of the Israelis, then we don’t want it,” one landowner said as he watched a new road being built. A New York Times report on Nov. 19 described what was happening in the aftermath of Wye: “The bypasses almost invariably involve expropriations of Palestinian property, followed quickly by home demolitions, and the forcible expulsion of local residents, followed by angry street protests.”

An Even Higher Bill

With unbelievable chutzpah, Netanyahu is asking the United States to finance these wrecking operations by giving Israel $1.2 billion, on top of the military and economic aid it normally receives, to pay for the bypass roads and for fortifying Israeli settlements. In his eagerness to secure adoption of the Wye agreement, Clinton promised that the United States would upgrade its military cooperation with Israel and provide additional financial aid to both sides. The bill to taxpayers may be high.

Arafat is expected to ask for $500 million, but judging by past actions of Congress he will probably get only a fraction of that. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is certain to get a hefty increase in aid. The new congressional leaders are not as slavishly pro-Israel as the departing Newt Gingrich, but with only a narrow Republican majority they will be reluctant to offend the pro-Israel lobby. As a result, Americans may find themselves in the position of giving a large handout to a country with a per capita income equal to Italy’s, for the purpose of building roads meant for the exclusive use of Israelis, on land seized from the Palestinians. Even in the darkest days of apartheid, South Africa did not build roads for whites only.

An additional irony is that Washington is willing to subsidize a nuclear-armed Israel that violates international law and defies U.N. Security Council resolutions, while standing ready to bomb a crippled Iraq into further oblivion and kill up to 10,000 civilians because, despite eight years of U.N. inspections, Iraq’s dictator is suspected of hiding dangerous weapons.

The built-in danger of the Wye agreement is that at any time, using any excuse, the Israelis can declare that the Palestinians are not living up to their security obligations under the agreement and cancel the withdrawals. Israel is demanding that the Palestinians outlaw both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, something they can hardly do without further violating human rights and arousing protest. If Arafat shuts down the schools, medical clinics, women’s groups and youth clubs run by Hamas, he would deprive thousands of Palestinians of needed services they can get nowhere else. If he allows them to remain open, Israel can claim he is allowing terrorist groups to operate.

Arafat’s dilemma grows directly out of the Wye agreement and the pressure put on him by Clinton and Netanyahu to crack down on militants. A week after the agreement was signed Arafat’s security forces rounded up several hundred Hamas members, put its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest, and detained nearly a dozen journalists who tried to interview the Hamas leader.

Arafat also agreed to arrest 30 Palestinians Israel considers wanted fugitives. Palestinian security forces that already have a reputation for violating human rights will now be encouraged to use even more brutal methods. Bassam Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, has pointed out that “It is extremely difficult to build institutions of democracy or civil society under current Israeli demands.” Eid’s warning gained added weight when Arafat agreed to outlaw “incitement,” a move that is certain to have a chilling effect on Palestinian speech and press.

Palestinians will have gained nothing from the peace process if in the end it means trading one set of oppressors for another. Nor will imposing more restrictions on the Palestinians make Israelis any safer.

If Palestinians are forced to live in a virtual police state while Israel turns more and more of their land into fortresses for nationalist and religious zealots, their opposition to peace with Israel is bound to grow. On the other hand, potential terrorists will be isolated when Palestinians can see real benefits from the peace process, including freedom, self-determination and economic progress. At that point they will have too much to lose from violence. So Israelis continue to face the choice they were offered 50 years ago, between living in peace and security with their neighbors or grabbing more hills. Whether an Israeli society deeply divided along ethnic, religious and political lines can make the wise decision is now the question on which the future of both peoples depends.