Rabin Holds Out for a Palestinian Bantustan

By Rachelle Marshall

"What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore and then run ?

Or does it explode?"

Langston Hughes wrote these lines nearly 50 years ago about the struggle of Black Americans for racial equality. Today his question applies equally well to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, whose longing to be free has met continued frustration.

The peace accord signed last September between Israel and the PLO deferred consideration of Palestinian demands for statehood and a role in governing Jerusalem. However, it held out the promise that Israeli troops would begin withdrawing from Gaza and Jericho on Dec. 13 and complete the withdrawal by April 13.

Instead, after the Dec. 13 deadline passed without even a token gesture from Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared that "no dates are sacred." He announced that Israel would not carry out the provisions of the peace accord until the two sides agreed on three issues: the boundaries of Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho, control of border crossings, and security arrangements for Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.

Israel is willing to grant Palestinians control over only 19 square miles around Jericho, which would leave the agricultural lands and minerals of the Jordan Valley under Israeli rule. The Palestinians are asking instead for 80 square miles.

Israel also insists the peace accord calls for the "redeployment" of Israeli troops, not their withdrawal as the PLO claims, and that large numbers of Israeli troops must remain in the Jericho area and Gaza to guard Israeli settlements. Israel alone would control the borders between Gaza and Egypt and between the West Bank and Jordan, thus depriving the Palestinians of even the shred of sovereignty that joint control would provide.

Israel's stipulations, if carried out, would leave the Palestinians with nothing more than the authority to administer local functions in one small West Bank city and in the slums and refugee camps of Gaza, areas with plenty of people but few resources. Later the Palestinians might be allowed the same limited authority in other widely separated villages and towns in the West Bank. What this means is that Israel hopes to create bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza just as South Africa is dismantling its own as a relic of apartheid.

Some Palestinian economists view a peace agreement on Israel's terms as little more than a framework for cooperative arrangements between Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs that would produce considerable economic advantages for Israel but only crumbs for a majority of Palestinians. Such joint ventures would allow Israeli companies to join with Palestinian investors to produce goods labeled "Made in Palestine," and thus penetrate valuable Arab markets hitherto closed to Israel.

Economist Majed Sbeih of the Center for Labor Research in Ramallah maintains that as long as the West Bank and Gaza are not politically independent, and given the vast gulf between the highly developed Israeli economy and a Palestinian economy devastated by years of occupation, any form of economic cooperation between the two societies would take the form of neocolonialism. In other words, Israel would use low-paid Palestinian workers to produce high-tech, high-value goods, and only a handful of Palestinian capitalists would share the profits.

Many Israelis foresee even brighter prospects for Israel once a peace agreement is signed. In his recent book The New Middle East, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres envisions a powerful new Middle East common market, modeled on the European Community. Given Israel's highly developed industrial base, such a market would ensure Israel's economic dominance of the region for years to come.

After the tentative accord was announced last September, many Palestinians hoped it would be the first step toward statehood and that the process, once started, could not be reversed. Since then, Rabin has made it clear that as far as he is concerned those hopes are baseless.

In early January, when Palestinian negotiators balked at accepting Israel's terms and peace talks were temporarily suspended, Rabin announced that Israel would make no further concessions. The former defense minister, who once ordered Israeli troops to break the bones of young Palestinians, reminded the world that "We are ruling the territories," and therefore Israel could afford to let the Palestinians "sweat. "

His stonewalling is only partly a response to right-wing opposition to the peace agreement. Rabin himself is adamantly opposed to Palestinian independence.

He made his position clear shortly after the ceremonies in Washington. Instead of relaxing its occupation policies, the government launched a series of raids throughout Gaza and the West Bank and arrested scores of suspected militants.

On Oct. 2, a day on which a 70-yearold Palestinian woman was shot to death by settlers as she was picking figs, Israeli troops demolished 17 homes in Gaza and killed two Palestinians. Despite pleas by Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders, Israel has continued to hunt down Palestinians suspected of resistance activities.

Not surprisingly, killings by both sides have increased. By mid-December, 18 Israelis and at least 45 Palestinians had died in the reciprocal violence. At least five of the Palestinians were shot to death by Israeli undercover agents disguised as Arabs.

Many others were victims of Israel's indiscriminate response to Palestinian protest demonstrations. On Nov. 16, for instance, an Israeli army sniper in the West Bank town of El Bireh used a telescopic lens to fire on a group of boys who were throwing stones at an army van—from a distance. When 15-year-old Rami Al-Razawi went to the aid of one of the victims the sniper killed him too. Rami had been an active member of an Israeli-Palestinian youth group, Peace Now Youth, and was working to convince other Palestinians to support the- peace agreement.

Meanwhile, living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza remain close to intolerable. Because travel restrictions prevent thousands of Palestinians from working in Israel, unemployment is currently above 50 percent. Others are unable to visit relatives, attend schools in East Jerusalem, or obtain much-needed medical care in Israeli hospitals. Although Rabin ordered the release of a few hundred women and children at the end of October, and another hundred in January, Israel's branch of Amnesty International estimates that 17,000 Palestinians are still in prison, many without a trial.

Palestinians are also vulnerable to attacks by heavily armed settlers. Israeli authorities respond to Palestinian violence with curfews and mass arrests, but have taken little or no action against Jewish militants who rampage through Palestinian cities and towns wrecking cars and shops and shooting at the inhabitants.

By late December, after settlers had killed at least five Palestinians, the government said the army could arrest settlers "in special cases."

According to one Israeli officer, however, "When we arrest a Jew he is brought before a judge who frees him."

Thanks to Rabin, the settler population is increasing steadily. According to the Israeli Council of Jewish Communities, their number rose by 7.3 percent in 1993, bringing the total to 136,415. Despite Rabin's assurances to Washington that Israel would build no new housing in the occupied territories, the government announced in late fall that it was constructing 13,000 more units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—areas claimed by the Palestinians and scheduled to be the topic of future negotiations.

Rabin's opposition to any step toward Palestinian government has provoked anger and a sense of betrayal among Palestinians, whose support for the peace proposal reportedly dropped from 65 percent last September to 41 percent in December. As stop-and-go negotiations drag on, growing fears and resentment on both sides threaten to dim any hope of peace.

Further hindering the peace process is a dispute within the PLO between local resistance leaders and the older bureaucrats in Tunis. In late December, some half dozen local activists resigned from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, complaining that he failed to follow democratic procedures in appointing senior officials. Shortly afterward, Dr. Haidar AbdelShafi, former head of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, traveled to Tunis with a petition signed by 118 prominent residents of the occupied territories criticizing Arafat for autocratic methods and calling for greater democracy.

Rabin has been quick to seize on the seeming disarray within the PLO, accusing the Palestinians of being unreliable and questioning Arafat's legitimacy as a negotiating partner. His accusation has a certain irony, since for nearly 20 years Israel has systematically crushed any move by Palestinians toward democratic self-rule.

The last time Palestinians under Israeli occupation were allowed to vote for local leaders was in 1976, and shortly afterward Israel ousted from office the mayors and council members who had been elected. Political activity is banned under the occupation and there is strict censorship of all publications. So it is hardly surprising that the Palestinians were caught unprepared to establish a full-fledged democracy.

Rabin Reaps the Benefits

Although Rabin refuses to honor the spirit of the September peace accords, he has been quick to harvest the benefits. Shortly after his grudging handshake with Arafat, the prime minister was on his way to China and Indonesia, where he completed lucrative arms deals.

Morocco has agreed to increase trade and other economic relations with Israel, and in December Saudi Arabia bought $10,000 worth of tickets to an American Jewish Congress dinner as a show of goodwill. Even the Vatican has abandoned its long-held position that Jerusalem must be an international city, and agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

But Washington has showered by far the greatest benefits on Israel. In mid-November President Bill Clinton assured Rabin that despite budget cuts there would be no reduction in U.S. aid to Israel, which already receives nearly a third of all U.S. foreign assistance. This year, in addition to U.S. loan guarantees and the regular aid grants of $4 billion, Israel will get an additional $250 million to help pay for roads and new military bases the government says it needs in Gaza and Jericho. Washington also will allow Israel to import previously classified U.S. computer technology and to buy advanced U.S. war planes.

No Reason to Budge

Having been guaranteed this largesse, Prime Minister Rabin may see no reason to budge from his narrow interpretation of the peace accords and make anything but token concessions to the Palestinians. Therefore, given the enormous disparity in strength between Israel and the Palestinians, the only way even a semblance of productive bargaining can take place is through U.S. intervention.

As Israel's chief benefactor and ally, the U.S. has the leverage to demand that Israel live up to the spirit as well as the letter of the peace accord. That document was welcomed around the world as a sign of Israel's willingness to accept eventual Palestinian independence, not as a means of turning the West Bank and Gaza into permanent bantustans.

Washington already has rewarded Israel for agreeing to enter peace talks with the PLO, and has repeatedly demonstrated its concern for Israel's security. Now the U.S. should insist that Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza and Jericho, disband the undercover squads that execute young Palestinians without arrest or trial, and free the thousands of Palestinians who are dying a slow death in Israeli prisons.

These are measures that should be taken immediately. But they are only a beginning. Barring a peace of the graveyard, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not end until the two sides agree to coexist as equals in two separate states. The longer such an agreement is delayed, the more blood will be spilled. Too much has been wasted already.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes on the Mideast.