The Palestinians—Who Needs Them?

By Rachelle Marshall

The Declaration of Principles framed in Oslo and signed by Israel and the PLO on Sept. 13, 1993 occasioned an outburst of euphoria in the West hardly equalled since the Apollo moon landing. The handshake between a reluctant Yitzhak Rabin and a grinning Yasser Arafat was immediately tagged "historic." Only spoilsports dared suggest that peace between Israel and the Palestinians was not yet at hand. Before long, however, even the most fervent optimists recognized that nothing had changed for the Palestinians. Moderate Palestinians who once hailed the Oslo accords as a step toward independence now regard the agreement signed by Arafat as a document of surrender.

Armed Jewish settlers in Hebron and other West Bank towns continue to terrorize the Palestinians they live among. The Israeli government has accelerated the confiscation of Palestinian land for new settlements, is systematically reducing the Arab population of East Jerusalem, and is building a system of new highways designed to isolate West Bank Palestinians in separate cantons.

Gaza, theoretically enjoying "self-rule," now is surrounded by an electrified fence, with joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols guarding the heavily fortified crossing points. The former occupiers are able to punish the 800,000 inhabitants at will simply by sealing the exits and cutting off their access to jobs and markets in Israel. A young Gaza resident told The New York Times after one recent border closing: "The Israelis made us totally dependent on working for them and now they pull out of Gaza but lock us in here...This is progress?"

Hope springs eternal, however, especially among those who equate the caving in of Israel's weaker adversaries with the arrival of permanent peace. Consequently there again was jubilation in Washington and five-column banner headlines in the press when King Hussein and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed on July 25 to call off the state of war that has existed between their two countries since 1948. "Another Mideast Triumph," announced a San Francisco Chronicle headline on July 26.

The agreement signed by the two men was not exactly a peace treaty, although in fact there has been little cross-border violence since Hussein ousted the PLO from Jordan in 1970. Still to be settled are such issues as sharing the water from the Yarmuk River, which runs along the Jordanian border, and Israel's continued control of 145 square miles of Jordanian territory between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

But meanwhile Israel has gained one of its chief objectives: Jordan's agreement to help end the Arab economic boycott against Israel. Jordan, for its part, gained only the promise of partial relief of its $700 million debt to the U.S., and of renewed U.S. military assistance. Other provisions of the agreement are more modest. Jordan and Israel will link their telephone and electric grid systems, open an international air corridor, and cooperate in combatting drug smuggling and other crimes.

The document ignores the Palestinians. One provision calls for the opening of two new border crossings between Jordan and Israel to provide free access for tourists, but presumably the phrase "free access" does not apply to Palestinians, who endure humiliating searches and day-long waits whenever they cross into Israel. Now the long lines of Palestinian families waiting in the hot sun will be largely invisible to international travelers, since tourists who use the new crossing points will never see them.

But the agreement delivered a far more serious snub to the Palestinians by referring to Jordan's "historic role" in administering Muslim holy places in Jerusalem and by giving "high priority to that role" in negotiations on the city's future. The wording amounts to a rejection of Arafat's claim to Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state and gives the Palestinians only a back seat in future negotiations on its final status.

A revealing hint of the Palestinians' future role as envisioned by the leaders of Israel and Jordan was contained in their verbal agreement, reported in The New York Times of July 25, to cooperate in creating a "theme park." The idea has infinite possibilities. If the experts at Walt Disney studios can produce a lifelike Abe Lincoln that talks and moves, surely they can construct convincing facsimiles of the ruins at Petra and Jarash, thus saving tourists hours of time-consuming travel. With enough plaster and paint, craftsmen could also build replicas of Al Aqsa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the town square in Bethlehem, and a typical souk from the Old City—and locate them all in one place, conveniently close to the first-class hotels that are sure to spring up around the park.

The theme park would be a boon to hundreds of Palestinians who, dressed in colorful native costume, would be hired to staff the falafel booths, sell souvenirs, and collect trash. In addition, two or three of the Bedouin families recently transferred from their traditional grazing lands in the Negev into urban communities could be installed, along with their tents and a few goats, as living exhibits of a way of life that is fast disappearing as Israel brings "the benefits of civilization" to its Arab inhabitants.

The theme park would also be helpful to visiting Americans, who now spend long hours listening to tour guides explain the official history of Israel. Video tapes could show the whole story in a few minutes: Early Jewish pioneers arrive in a land without a people only to face unprovoked attacks from resentful Arabs who sneaked in from somewhere else. The Jewish settlers, tall, blond, and wearing shorts, fight them off heroically, establish the state of Israel, and with their bare hands build a modern nation where before there had been only olive orchards and orange groves—a virtual desert. Then, in self-defense against potential aggressors, Israelis liberate parts of Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Palestine. As a result, today more than two million Palestinian Arabs live under the benevolent guardianship of "the Middle East's only democracy."

After absorbing so much information, visitors would need some diversion. So one exciting feature of the theme park could be a shooting gallery. Armed with real Uzis, tourists would shoot at rapidly moving cardboard figures of small Palestinian boys carrying fistfuls of stones. The tourists would quickly learn that trying to hit an 11-year-old running at top speed isn't as easy as it sounds. They would come away with new respect for the Israeli soldiers who face this challenge every day.

But by far the most important function of the theme park would be to eliminate the problem of what to do about the Palestinians. After replicating the most colorful examples of Palestinian culture, the Israelis could simply ignore the people themselves. This would not be difficult. Most Palestinians today are either in exile or sealed off in Gaza or the West Bank, forbidden to enter Israel except under special circumstances and invisible to most Israelis. Their supporters in the U.S. can hardly compete with the pro-Israel lobby and its sizable bankroll. So, no matter how legitimate the Palestinians' claims to an independent state, who needs them?

Behind all the hooplah, this was the clear message of the recent love-fest between King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin, and the real reason for the resulting jubilation in Washington and Jerusalem. As the Israeli-U.S. scenario for achieving Middle East peace unfolds, the Palestinians and their aspirations are fast becoming irrelevant.

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