An Israeli-Palestinian Agreement That Won't Bring Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

On July 24, the day before still another much publicized deadline slipped by with no agreement signed between Israel and the PLO, the New York Times carried a four-column headline that read: "Israeli-PLO Talks Grind on Despite Deadlines." A reader might ask, "So what else is new?"

In letting deadlines come and go, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is using a negotiating tactic that has worked again and again for Israeli leaders over the past 46 years: agree to enter peace talks, stubbornly resist making concessions, and while the talks drag on and deadlines come and go, establish facts on the grounds until there is little left to negotiate.

The formula worked in 1949, when Israeli delegates went to Lausanne to discuss with Arab leaders the return of land Israel had seized beyond the territory granted by the U.N. partition plan, and the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled or been forced from their homes by Israeli forces. Despite his promise to negotiate, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion refused to budge on either issue. Meanwhile the Israeli army tightened its hold on the additional territory it had captured. After a few months the Lausanne talks ended in failure, with Israel ever afterwards maintaining that it was the Arabs who had refused to make peace.

In 1978 Menachem Begin, under pressure from President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, agreed to enter negotiations leading to Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza. But before negotiations could take place, Begin announced that he would immediately increase the number of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. The news came as a blow to Carter, who later declared that Begin had promised him a moratorium on settlements until an agreement was reached on the future of the occupied territories. In any event, because Begin's notion of autonomy consisted of letting the Palestinians collect their own garbage while Israel seized more and more of their land, the negotiations predictably went nowhere. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements begun in 1978 eventually resulted in Israel's takeover of more than two-thirds of the arable land in the West Bank.

The latest Israeli-Palestinian talks have followed a similar pattern. After nearly two years, they now resemble the final hours of a 1930s dance marathon, with the exhausted contestants going through the motions only to avoid having to come away empty-handed. For the Palestinians, as the current marathon drags on from Cairo to Geneva to the Dead Sea and back, the chance of coming away with a prize steadily diminishes.

When the talks began in early 1994 there was reason to hope that an end to the Israeli occupation was in sight. Israel promised to evacuate the center of Jericho and part of Gaza, and in May of that year agreed to release at least half of the 9,000 Palestinians then in prison. The Israeli army was scheduled to begin withdrawing from Palestinian towns and villages the following July, so that elections could be held in the fall of 1994. The elections would make possible the extension of Palestinian rule throughout the occupied territories.

But neither dates nor promises are sacred to Rabin when he is dealing with Palestinians. (Only Israel's 1996 election day is a "holy day" to the prime minister, said one Israeli critic.) Israel finally allowed some 2,000 Palestinians to move from prison to detention centers in Jericho after they pledged to support the Oslo accords. But at least 6,000 remain behind bars, the number increasing with new arrests. Rabin recently offered to release an additional 600 to 1,000 prisoners, but only after the PLO signs a peace agreement acceptable to Israel. On June 17, prisoners taking part in a widespread hunger strike issued a statement calling Rabin's offer an attempt at "manipulation and blackmail." The protesters vowed that if the PLO negotiators sign an agreement with Israel and schedule a vote while thousands remain in jail, "we will call on our people everywhere to boycott the elections until all the prisoners are released."

According to an editorial in the left-wing Israeli magazine Challenge, "In the Palestinian street, the prisoners' fate is the barometer by which people gauge Israeli intentions in the peace process." Palestinians undoubtedly resent the fact that Israel is holding thousands of their relatives hostage to the permanent signing away of their rights—which is the most likely outcome of the present negotiations. A July poll reported by the Jerusalem Post news service found that Palestinian support for the Oslo accords had dropped from 66 to 56 percent, with 80 percent of those polled saying they don't trust Israel.

The results are understandable in view of Israel's effort since Oslo to make a future West Bank state impossible by carving Palestinian territory into separate enclaves, isolated from one another by highways that will connect Jewish settlements with Jerusalem. An Israeli plan to fence off Palestinian towns close to the Israeli settlements will add to what one Associated Press reporter called a "bewildering mesh of sectors." Work also is underway to wall off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, effectively barring Palestinians from the center of their religious, economic, and cultural life. Last May, Israel announced plans to build 30,000 new apartments in Jerusalem over the next five years, with construction already started on 6,500 units between Um Tuba and Beit Sahour just south of the city. According to the July report of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, "When these estates are completed, Palestinian neighborhoods throughout East Jerusalem will have been cut off from the West Bank by a ring of settlements housing more than 200,000 Israelis."

The agreement now being negotiated provides that Israeli troops gradually will withdraw from four Palestinian towns and several hundred villages, but will remain in Hebron, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, and will continue to guard the more than 130 Jewish settlements located throughout the West Bank and parts of Gaza. The withdrawing Israeli soldiers will be replaced by Palestinian security forces, who have already won praise from Israeli and U.S. leaders, if not from human rights advocates, for their zealous surveillance and sweeping arrests of Hamas members and other militants. The Israelis will retain "freedom of action" to return to any areas they vacate in order to pursue suspects.

The arrangement is ideal for Israel, whose soldiers will no longer have to dodge stones as they patrol through Palestinian villages. Israel won't even have to pay its new surrogate police force but will count on foreign donors to pick up the tab as a show of support for the "peace process." But there still could be obstacles in the way of redeployment. Yasser Arafat reportedly is being asked to agree that if the PLO does not repeal the anti-Israeli provisions of its charter within 60 days after Palestinian elections, troop withdrawals will be delayed indefinitely. Another problem is that the turnover of security arrangements to the Palestinians won't be completed until mid-1996.

By then the Likud party may be in power, and its leaders say they feel no obligation to abide by the Labor government's promises. Likud's attitude is baffling, since right-wing Israelis should hail Rabin as a hero for wresting an agreement from the Palestinians that relieves Israel of the burden of poverty-stricken Gaza but leaves it firmly in control of the West Bank without the headache and expense of policing its remote areas. The document likely to be signed by the two sides will not prevent Israel from closing the borders whenever it wishes or from seizing Palestinian land for "security" and other purposes.

Decisions will be deferred on the four issues most important to Palestinians—
water rights, the status of Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the future of Jewish settlements. Rabin has vowed never to yield on the first two and is unlikely to dismantle any settlements until after the 1996 election. (Rabin is so concerned about the election that just as negotiations with Syria were about to resume in late July he told the Knesset he would delay any agreement until after it takes place.)

The Palestinians currently are allowed only about 18 percent of the water from three West Bank acquifers, one near Hebron, one near Jenin and the third in the Jordan Valley. Israel takes the rest for use in settlements and across the Green Line. Israeli negotiators have offered to increase the quantity of water allocated to the Palestinians to as much as 25 percent but insist that Israel never will give up, or even share that control through a joint monitoring commission, as Israeli economist Gershon Baskin recommends.

A recent editorial in the Jerusalem Times, which steadfastly has supported the peace process, warned that Israeli insistence on total control of West Bank water could bring the present negotiations to a dead end. "How can a Palestinian negotiator agree to sign away the natural rights of his people with a clear conscience?" the editorial asks. "Do the Israelis want peace or not? There is hardly a more aggressive act than attempting to control the water belonging to another and none more brazen than suggesting that the owners of the water be allocated enough water merely to keep them alive, if only barely."

The seeming carrot for Palestinians in the new agreement is a provision that gives the Palestinian National Authority jurisdiction over local functions such as agriculture, health, industry and commerce, and insurance. But jurisdiction over agriculture and industry is a sham as long as Israel controls the water supply and producers are threatened by border closings and roadblocks. Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, recognized this problem at a recent conference in Tel Aviv, when he warned, "Unless there is a redistribution of land and water, no permanent solution will lead to peace."

Independence or Surrender

Although the agreement will be more a document of surrender than a step toward independence, it may still offer Palestinians a shred of hope by providing them with the opportunity to develop a democratic political movement. A crucial issue still to be decided is what kind of governing body they will be asked to elect if and when elections are held. Israel insists that it must be an administrative council, with no more than 35 members, while Palestinian negotiators are demanding a much larger legislative assembly. The reasons behind the opposing positions are clear. Israel wants an administrative council controlled by PLO leaders who will carry out day-to-day operations while keeping Palestinians in line. A legislature, on the other hand, would include representatives of the competing factions in Palestinian society, and provide a forum for free and open debate. It could be the source of a new, more popular leadership that would reinvigorate the movement to end the occupation and build an independent Palestinian state.

Because once again the Israelis have strung out the negotiating process and conceded so little, only a renewed political struggle will lead to an end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless, expect some major trumpet blowing from the White House whenever Rabin and Arafat sign yet another piece of paper.

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