Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, Pages 47, 91

Special Report

If Peace Process Must Die, Let’s Not Forget Who Killed It

By Richard H. Curtiss

At this point Arabs and Muslims who still are debating the merits or demerits of the Oslo accords are wasting their breath, just as they did in the years before the Arab League accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which called for Israeli withdrawal from lands seized in the 1967 war in return for Arab acknowledgment of Israel's right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders.

After the Arab League finally accepted Resolution 242, it became apparent that a majority of Israelis and their leaders had no intention of withdrawing from East Jerusalem or the West Bank and perhaps not even from Gaza. Instead, while Western leaders urged Arab and Muslim leaders to be patient, the Israelis set out to build Jewish settlements in all of these territories, even though they did not have enough people to occupy them, and probably never will.

Next, Western leaders urged many of the same Arab leaders to accept the Oslo accords of 1993 and 1995 which were "premised upon Resolution 242." But now that virtually all of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, have accepted them, again nothing is happening. Instead of offering "land for peace," the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu is offering only "peace for peace."

And what exactly does that mean? Deputy editorial page editor Stephen Rosenfeld answered that question in the Aug. 15 Washington Post as follows: "Imagine that the Palestinians did everything the Israelis asked in the way of cracking down on terrorists—everything. They would get in return just a small, dependent misshapen territory carved up by Israeli roads and vulnerable to Israeli intervention the first time a kid threw a stone."

In short, the Palestinians would be shut out of Jerusalem entirely and in the West Bank they would be reduced to Bantustans, tiny economically dependent "homelands" which they could not leave except to work for Israeli employers, while the "Palestinian question" would be reduced to an Israelis-only dialogue in which Israel's Labor Party might opt to permit some Palestinians to remain for a time on their reservations as a source of cheap labor, while the Likud Party would argue instead for "transfer." That would involve making life impossible for all Palestinians in order to persuade as many as possible to leave voluntarily while waiting for the next major upheaval—or creating one—in Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon. When that upheaval occurs, a Likud government will put over the border at gunpoint as many Palestinians as possible until, eventually, all are gone, both from the "occupied territories" and from Israel itself.

It is Israel that has refused to carry out its Oslo responsibilities.

There is little the Palestinians alone can do to prevent either the Israeli Labor Party's "apartheid" scenario or Likud's ethnic cleansing solution from coming true, so long as Israel is backed, right or wrong, by the might of the United States—as it is at present. On the other hand, there are many things that can be done by outside supporters of the Palestinians to thwart Israeli plans.

The first and most obvious thing all Arabs and Muslims must do is make sure that Netanyahu does not get away with blaming the failure of the "peace process" on the Arabs. They must make sure that the world understands that Arab League member states, with the exception of Libya, accepted Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula. It was Israel that refused serious negotiations about withdrawing from the lands occupied in 1967.

Similarly, the majority of Arab states played positive roles in the "peace process" and the resulting Oslo accords. Virtually all participated in regional meetings that included Israeli delegates. Four, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Tunisia, permitted such meetings in their own countries and subsequently sent diplomats to Israel. Oman and Qatar permitted Israeli government liaison offices to open in Muscat and Doha.

Again it is Israel that has refused to carry out its Oslo responsibilities. Instead it has established new Jews-only settlements in both East Jerusalem and the West Bank, thickened old ones, declined to open a promised land corridor for safe passage of Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and refused to permit the Palestinians to open the airport and the seaport they have constructed in Gaza.

Most egregious of all are the frequent closures that have sealed off the seven Palestinian towns on the West Bank from their hinterlands, from each other, and from Jerusalem, and the refusal by Israeli authorities to turn over to the Palestinian National Authority all of the tax and customs receipts collected from Palestinian workers and Palestinian importers, even though the Israelis are obligated to do so under the Oslo accords.

Because of the closures, pregnant women, prematurely born infants, and sick and elderly Palestinians already have died for lack of medicines and medical treatment. If the frequent closures continue, Palestinian children may soon be dying of malnutrition. Without the funds the Israelis are holding, the Palestinian Authority will not be able to pay its employees or its bills and will soon be unable to perform even the most rudimentary governmental responsibilities.

Bargaining Chips?

Whether this is what Netanyahu wants, or whether he plans to use gradual liftings of the closures and partial releases of the funds as bargaining chips in lieu of the territorial withdrawals he was supposed to have made in March and September of this year, is not yet clear. However, it soon will be.

The next thing Arabs and Muslims must do is remind themselves that even with the U.S. government backing Israel has enjoyed so far, and the U.S. media backing that may be even stronger than that of the U.S. government, Israel's present course is suicidal. There are 22 Arab League members, all but a handful with larger populations than that of Israel. The idea that the Israeli state, with a claimed population of 5.5 million, of whom, at most, 3.5 million are Jewish, can wage permanent war with more than 200 million Arabs, backed by another one billion Muslims and an ever-increasing number of Christians, is sheer madness.

But that is the course Israel's present Likud government, backed by about 60 percent of Israel's Jewish voters, has chosen. It is a course so self-destructive that even the United States, seemingly intoxicated by its own self-styled role as "the world's only remaining superpower," eventually will have to leave Israel to pursue by itself. And then, but only then, the Israelis will have to choose whether to come to their senses, or to proceed to a Masada-like destiny—again.

Meanwhile leaders of the Arab states, and to a lesser extent the rest of the Muslim world, are going to be compelled by public opinion to unite to help the Palestinians, who at present are in a wholly untenable position. This should proceed without recriminations as to who bears the most responsibility for the present catastrophe, and instead concentrate on exposing the insanity of Netanyahu's schemes. (And very likely those of Ehud Barak, Netanyahu's Labor Party rival, who is much closer ideologically to Netanyahu than to previous Labor Party Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who did dream of an Israel at peace with its Arab neighbors.)

The peace process is moribund at present but it still could be resuscitated by the world's only remaining superpower. Present indications are that whatever Madeleine Albright might like to do, Bill Clinton will not allow her to attract the wrath of Israel's powerful U.S. lobby to his administration.

If that is so, both the Oslo accords and the peace process are dead. Therefore it's important to make sure that over coming months the media do not subtly alter the record as to which of the two parties to the Oslo accords, the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority, killed them.

It is Israel's Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and not Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat who, by violating his government's solemn treaty commitments made at the White House in September 1993 and again in September 1995, ended the peace process that has been the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy for the past six years. Americans must not forget it.