Does Israel Want Comprehensive Peace, or All of Palestine?

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Only a comprehensive peace is the best solution to the tensions in Lebanon."

—U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Aug. 7, 1994

Once in a while a glimmer of truth shines through the smoke and mirrors of America's Israel-oriented Middle East policy. Such was the case as a discouraged Warren Christopher emerged from his August sessions in Damascus with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad.

In the wake of Israeli aerial attacks which had killed between 30 and 50 Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians in the preceding two months, a Hezbollah suicide car bombing in Buenos Aires in which nearly 100 Argentine Jews, Israelis and passersby were killed and another 200 wounded, and weekly shooting across the lines that separate Israel's "security zone" from the rest of southern Lebanon, Assad had asked the U.S. secretary of state about Israel's long-range intentions in Lebanon, from which Israel now is said to be surreptitiously drawing Litani River water.

Christopher's answer, quoted above, was the truth—but only part of it. A comprehensive and just peace is the best solution not only to the tensions in Lebanon, but to those in Israel-Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa as well. It also would be the single most effective means of containing the radical Islamists working to undermine moderate governments throughout the Middle East.

Has this objective been furthered by the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat handshake on the White House south lawn, the King Hussein-Rabin declaration on a White House balcony, or Warren Christopher's presence at a new border crossing between Eilat and Aqaba that neither Israelis nor Jordanians are permitted to use? Not noticeably, although these events have increased U.S. financial commitments to Israel, and to the Arab countries at peace with it, to more than $8 billion annually.

The Rabin-Arafat Declaration of Principles of peace, negotiated in Oslo to prevent Likud loyalists in the Clinton White House and State Department from leaking details to Rabin's domestic opponents, so far is only an agreement to negotiate a final agreement. The Hussein-Rabin declaration, negotiated directly between Israel and Jordan but to be paid for by U.S. taxpayers, also is just an agreement to negotiate. But, while the promised negotiating continues, some Israelis are working tirelessly to undermine the kind of peace with justice with the Palestinians that would open the way to a comprehensive peace with all of Israel's other Arab neighbors.

There is nothing in the Accord to prevent immediate negotiations on Jerusalem.

The Israeli government continues to build housing in the Jewish settlements that occupy 40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Under any settlement based upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, as is the Declaration of Principles, the Palestinians are supposed to take back those areas, comprising the remaining 22 percent of the Mandate of Palestine between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River that the U.N. voted in 1947 to partition between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. However, if the Israelis don't withdraw from the settlements, the Palestinians would be squeezed into less than 14 percent of that land. They could not accept those terms, so there would be no comprehensive settlement.

More ominous are Israeli moves in Jerusalem, where highways are being slashed through Palestinian neighborhoods, at the expense of Palestinian homes. But Palestinians are not allowed to replace the condemned houses with new ones nearby, or even to expand existing houses in the city. Instead, East Jerusalem's boundaries are being gerrymandered to exclude Arab neighborhoods while including West Bank land around them. On these formerly open lands, vast new apartment projects are being built for Jewish occupants. Already the Jewish population within the new boundaries of East Jerusalem, which is the part of the city that would go back to the Palestinians under U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, has risen to 160,000, while the hemmed-in population of Muslim and Christian Palestinians remains static at 140,000.

Alarmed by these moves, and even clearer evidence of Israeli bad faith in the "Washington Declaration" which acknowledges a "special role" for King Hussein in administration of Jerusalem's Muslim holy places, Arafat has demanded that the final status of Jerusalem be moved to the top of the negotiating agenda. Rabin rejected the Arafat demand with a "true lie," saying the Oslo Accord reserves Jerusalem for the final stages of negotiations to begin in 1996. In fact, the Accord specifies that final stage negotiations must begin no later than Sept. 13, 1996. There is nothing in the Accord to prevent the immediate negotiations on Jerusalem that Arafat is requesting.

Daily Deceptions

Israeli deceptions continue almost daily. Rabin has informed the Palestinians that they will not be allowed to carry out any government functions in East Jerusalem, although they have been meeting with foreign diplomats, including American diplomats, in Orient House there ever since the Middle East peace negotiations began in Madrid in October 1991. Rabin's threat to close this and other quasi-official Palestinian offices violates a promise made by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in writing to Norwegian Foreign Minister Jörgen Hölst, who was overseeing the secret Oslo negotiations, that the status of all Palestinian institutions functioning in East Jerusalem would remain unchanged.

So are "bad cop" Rabin and "good cop" Peres engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to sign final peace agreements with Jordan and Syria while stalling final agreements with the Palestinians and Lebanese in order to steal Palestinian land and Lebanese water? The evidence suggests so.

After the Israeli-PLO accord, Rabin called upon Arab League countries to abandon their economic boycott of Israel. Saudi Arabia and others let it be known that they would agree if Israel would stop building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israelis did not stop. Instead they have inveigled the U.S. into joining them in brand-new demands that Jordan join in efforts to lift the Arab boycott as a further condition for forgiving Jordan's debt to the U.S. government. This amounts to duplicity not only by Israel but also by the U.S.

True, there have been two "psychological breakthroughs" toward a comprehensive peace. After spending years undermining Yasser Arafat, assassinating his most capable deputies and tolerating or actually trying to prop up his more radical Palestinian rivals, Israel's Labor government seems to have accepted him. Or has it?

Between the signing of the Sept. 13, 1993 accord and Arafat's July 1, 1994 arrival in Gaza, Israeli occupation authorities looked the other way as thousands of assault rifles and other firearms were smuggled into Gaza and sold to eager political extremists, apparently to fuel an anti-Arafat uprising. Ironically, those are the Kalashnikovs, M-16s, Uzis and Galil rifles now being wielded by Hamas militants against Israelis rather than against fellow Palestinians to undermine the Accord.

The second "psychological breakthrough" is that instead of openly working to bring down King Hussein by flooding his country with Palestinian refugees, as did Israel's Likud government, Israel's Labor government is negotiating with the Jordanian monarch. Where the Likud government tried to engineer Hussein's overthrow so that there would be "a Palestinian state in Jordan" to which all Palestinians remaining in Israel/Palestine could be "transferred," the Labor government instead seems to be trying to negotiate the "transfer" of Jerusalem's holy places to Hussein, so that all Palestinian political or territorial claims to the Holy City can be ignored.

None of these Israeli actions has jeopardized its lucrative relationship with the Clinton administration. But can any of them lead to the comprehensive peace that any Arab leader could sign without signing his own death warrant in the process?

The answer lies within Israel. And therein lies the problem. At present, Israel appears to have at least three governments in office and one in opposition, all with their own separate agendas.

First is that of Prime Minister Rabin, whose method of solving all problems with the Arabs is by bombing and rocketing them from the air, crushing them with tanks or "breaking their bones." He recognizes that Israel needs peace because it can't hold its new immigrants without it, and that it needs more water than it has even sooner than expected because of those new immigrants. His solution is to bribe the Syrians and Jordanians, break the bones of the Palestinians, and let the U.S. underwrite the process financially.

Second is Shimon Peres. His vision is a truly comprehensive land-for-peace agreements, entered into voluntarily by the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors. It would provide not only the water Israel needs, but an end to the Arab economic boycott and, eventually, economic integration of Israel into the oil-rich Middle East.

Israel's third "government" is that of its vast bureaucracy—corresponding to America's "military-industrial complex." Eager to avoid rationalizing Israel's socialistic economy, the semi-autonomous military, intelligence and bureaucratic components prefer the U.S.-funded "beleaguered garrison state" status quo to the risks of peace. Therefore Israel's army goes right on fighting Hamas extremists while protecting their extremist counterparts among the Jewish settlers; its Shabak secret policemen go right on bribing or blackmailing Palestinians into becoming informers; its brutal border police go right on killing, torturing and imprisoning Palestinians; and its Mossad agents go right on sowing dissension throughout the Middle East through disinformation to friends and enemies alike.

Finally, there's the Likud opposition, temporarily immobilized by venomous political rivalry between four would-be prime ministers. If and when the Labor government's "peace process" fails, however, one of those leaders will resume the Likud dream of a "Greater Israel," which "transfers" remaining Palestinians to a Jordan in which King Hussein accepts them or is deposed.

Unfortunately, the Clinton administration's role in these events is dictated solely by domestic political considerations. Whether its Middle East policy responds to the "pro-Israel" network of national U.S. Jewish organizations, composed largely of Likud supporters, or to Israel's Labor government itself is a matter of indifference both to President Clinton and Secretary Christopher. Their interest is solely to retain electoral support from America's Jewish community in 1996, and earn lenient treatment from Israel's sympathizers in the media in the meantime.

In the absence of an independent U.S. policy, no Arab leader can determine whether the future holds a "comprehensive peace" or only non-binding documents like the "Washington Declaration." The leaders of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians all are pledged not to sign final peace treaties with Israel until all outstanding Arab claims have been settled. It's a pledge none want or would dare to break.

What's clear is that the decision to pursue a comprehensive peace or continued struggle with its Arab neighbors lies with Israel's government. The question is, which Israeli government?