Wye Sowing the Seeds of Future Trouble

By Paul Findley

Recent images on the television screens and in newspapers show immense change in how an Arab named Yasser Arafat is being treated. One image: the president of the United States warmly welcoming Arafat to the dais at a conference where 42 nations in the aggregate pledged over $3 billion to alleviate Palestinian poverty.

This is the same man Clinton’s administration had treated as an unwelcome “terrorist” in August 1993, then suddenly welcomed to the White House the next month for a signing ceremony on the White House lawn.

In the recent ceremony, Clinton pledged to double America’s Palestinian aid over the next five years. The U.S. government now provides about $100 million a year, and Clinton told Arafat he will ask Congress to add $400 million to be spread over the coming five years. It is of course a pittance contrasted with U.S. aid to Israel. He made the pledge in the State Department auditorium where other nations, led by the European Union, said they would pledge sums that could reach $4 billion. The European Union pledged $2 billion.

The Palestinian economy, now at slightly over $3 billion annually, has been in drastic decline since the so-called peace process began with the 1993 signing ceremony at the White House.

Domestic output last year was lower than in 1995, according to the World Bank. The financial institution attributed the decline mainly to closures of Palestine imposed for long periods by Israeli authorities, who say the closures are a necessary response to “terrorism.”

A Washington Post report summarizes the grim outlook: “Since Israel and the Palestinians reached mutual recognition in September 1993, every Palestinian economic indicator, from employment to per capita income, has crashed. Adjusted for inflation, the gross domestic product was smaller last year than in 1995.”

In a gross understatement that ignores the economic downslide, Clinton said that Palestinians have experienced “too little tangible improvement.” He added that “every economy needs a chance to breathe.”

In his remarks to the conference, Arafat complained of “continued siege” by Israel. He described the Israeli closure as “the primary and direct cause for the dangerous decline in the performance of the Palestinian economy over the past five years.”

Behind the Arab smiles must be serious concern.

An observer of the donor conference would assume that a bright new day has dawned for the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

Arafat, the former personification of evil, was welcomed to Washington and received an ovation from a large international audience. He and his delegation exuded jubilation. Amid much fanfare, an international airport in Gaza began to function. It was heralded as the first direct link for Palestinians to the outside world.

Behind the Arab smiles must be serious concern.

The aid, while welcome, provides only a slight pause for an economy that is expected subsequently to continue its downhill plunge. The closures of the occupied territories by Israel are still largely in place, and they constitute the principal factor that keeps the Palestinian economy from the “breathing” that Clinton cited as essential. There is no assurance the closures will cease.

The Oslo terms that Arafat accepted are ominous for the future and so is the possibility that U.S. missiles will again be launched against Iraq.

This raises the question whether Arabs, particularly Palestinians, are being treated as first-class human beings. Do Arabs really count in the U.S.-Israeli scheme of things?

On the military front, the U.S. missile attack on Iraq is unlikely to diminish Saddam Hussain’s power or lifestyle, nor will it inspire positive reforms. But it is certain it killed and maimed innocent Arab civilians.

And the network of superhighways in the West Bank soon to be financed by the U.S. taxpayers will strengthen Israel-style apartheid to the great disadvantage of Arabs.

The highways will serve two basic purposes, one mentioned and one kept in the Israeli closet. The announced purpose is to enable Jewish settlers and other Israelis to move freely among the settlements peppered throughout the occupied territories, as well as to and from Jerusalem. The other purpose is to create new concrete walls to give permanence to the subdivision of the Arab population. The highways will be reserved for Jews only. In both undertakings, Arabs emerge far below the status of their Jewish masters. So much for dignity, decency, fairness and equality regardless of race or religion.

There also is a dreadful bias in the apportionment of water between Jews and Arabs under the agreement known as Oslo II. The bias has been noted in a number of periodicals, but the most recent summary appears in the November-December issue of Report on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories, a highly respected research publication of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. The principal researcher and author is Geoffrey Aronson.

Unequal Distribution

Aronson writes: “According to the Oslo II agreement, of the 601 million cubic meters of water available annually in the three main West Bank aquifers, 56.6 percent is earmarked for use in Israel, and 23.8 percent for the use of the 170,000 West Bank settlers, not including those residing in East Jerusalem. This leaves 19.6 percent for the 1.2 million Palestinians living on the West Bank.”

Translated, this means each Jewish settler in the West Bank will receive, on the average, 841 cubic meters of water annually, while the allocation for each Arab is 98 cubic meters, about 90 percent less. Under the agreement, which arises from the grossly biased traditions already enforced by Israel in the allocation of water, each Jew gets nearly 10 times as much as each Arab. Water usage varies somewhat from place to place, but the anti-Arab bias is constant. Aronson’s study provides a breakdown on the amount of water allocated in 1997 to the 5,800 Jews living in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, contrasted with the water allocated to the 119,230 Arabs living in Hebron.

In February 1997, the Jewish settlers received 77 cubic meters per person, while Arabs received 21. In July 1997, Jewish daily use nearly doubled, while Arab use dropped. Jews averaged 547 liters per day. The data was published in the Hebrew newspaper, Ha’aretz.

Fadel Quawash, deputy director of the Palestinian water authority, has accused Israel of cutting the Arab water allocation for the Bethlehem-Hebron region by more than one-third in order to meet water demands for Jewish settlements.

Danny Naveh, spokesman for the Israeli government, put it bluntly in a comment to the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot: “The policy of the government is to enable Jews to live in all parts of the land of Israel and in Judea and Samaria [Jewish names for the West Bank].”

The terms of the two Oslo agreements are almost always cited in U.S. media as containing major concessions of land by Israel in the interest of accommodation and peace with Arabs. What is almost never mentioned is water policy: The fact that all water is to be controlled by Israel irrespective of provisions under which Arabs will gain limited control over land.

Politics is often defined as the art of the possible, and recognize that the terms accepted by Yasser Arafat may, in his view, be the best that can be attained. After all, the Palestinians are out-gunned in almost every aspect of existence. Israel is the Mideast military powerhouse, faithfully and uncritically backed by the world’s only superpower.

No doubt, Arafat views the terms of the Oslo agreements as the best the Palestinians can expect at this juncture. But do they provide the basis for a durable, just peace? Arafat’s answer surely must be no. The terms leave Arabs more completely under the Israeli thumb than ever before.

The deal now unfolding carries, I fear, the seeds of future trouble.

Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) is the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby and Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship, both of which are available from the AET Book Club.