Palestinians Question and Criticize Wye Agreement

By Maureen Meehan

The peace agreement reached last month between Israel and Palestine provoked immediate criticism from across the Palestinian political spectrum. Critics included traditional supporters of the Palestinian National Authority as well as political opponents of President Yasser Arafat who fear that the PNA and Israel may act together to silence opposition through serious and widespread human rights violations.

“This is strictly a security agreement for Israel…the Palestinians can’t possibly fulfill all the arrangements laid out in the agreement or there will be fighting among us,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, director of the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute.

“This is a terrible agreement that completely undermines the possibility of a Palestinian state—the only thing that will take shape under this accord are permanent bantustans,” added Barghouthi. “Netanyahu managed to cancel the fourth point of the Oslo accord which would have placed the Palestinians in charge of 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. This will never happen now.”

If all goes as planned and if interpretation of the accord does not differ drastically among the signators, the PNA may end up controlling about 40 percent of the West Bank while Israel retains control over the Jordan River valley along with key security infrastructure, transport, international borders, major roads and communications outlets. While Yasser Arafat may see this culminating in a Palestinian state, as he told the European Union following the Washington signing, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented the issue of land transfer and implementation of the accord to his people as conditional on Palestinian behavior.

One of the few differences, and certainly the most significant, between the Oslo and Wye accords is the open involvement of the CIA, which will assist in disarming, arresting, jailing and supervising court hearings of suspected Palestinian “terrorists.” The CIA, say Palestinian analysts, will also be useful in helping to increase Arafat’s political/security apparatus while waging a crackdown on his political opponents as well as those who reject the accord that some are calling a “blueprint for human rights violations.”

“In the face of growing criticism of [PNA] corruption, inefficiency, abuse of power and human rights violations, the accord comes in very handy for President Arafat,” said a ranking PLO/PNA official who asked not to be named. “The problem is that once its real results are felt, our president will have little remaining in the way of self-respect and popular support. We, as a revolutionary movement, have no business being involved with the CIA—an organization that has undermined every liberation struggle around the globe and has actively instructed repressive regimes in abuse and torture techniques.”

“We’re going to wake up one day and find we have a Lahad in our midst,” said Husam Khader, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, referring to the original leader of Israel’s proxy militia in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon.

“We are entering a very dangerous period as we find our leaders taking orders from the CIA and the Mossad,” Khader, PLC representative from Nablus, told the Washington Report. “Giving a green light to crush all opposition to the agreement will be a disaster for Palestinians who instinctively know the agreement is not in our favor.”

“We’re in very real danger of becoming a police state,” added Khader.

In addition to the expected, indeed required, crackdown on the opposition, the Washington accord creates a security superstructure which may also require the PNA to clamp down on all Palestinian opposition to the building of Jewish settlements, closure, and occupation in general.

Human rights groups fear that “zero tolerance” may include peaceful protestors, political figures, journalists and human rights activists. This so-called security superstructure will be overseen through bodies which have no clear rules concerning their deliberations nor standards by which they will operate, except to say the CIA will participate on these committees.

“As these forums govern matters of arrest, detention, imprisonment, censorship and military actions against groups and individuals, there is a clear danger that the human rights of suspects will be brushed aside in the shared enthusiasm to silence critics,” warns the Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (LAW), a Palestinian human rights group.

Before the ink was dry on the Wye accord, Palestinian Military Intelligence raided the Ramallah offices of the Fatah movement, Arafat’s political faction, in search of unlicensed weapons and to inspect files. The office was smashed and files were destroyed. The following day a protest demonstration turned violent and Palestinian policemen fired into the crowd with live ammunition, killing 16-year-old Fatah activist Wassim al-Tarifi.

Hanan Ashrawi, a former cabinet member, was present when the outburst began in Ramallah. She told the Washington Report the violence and repression was a result of an accord “that is putting too much emphasis on Israeli security at the expense of Palestinians. This is very dangerous. If it continues as such, we will surely face an internal breakdown.”

For several days following the disturbances, general strikes were observed throughout the entire West Bank. The events in Ramallah occurred almost simultaneously with an arrest campaign that included at least 30 political activists or suspected Hamas members, 12 journalists attempting to interview a Hamas leader in Gaza and the arrest of a leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Hamed al Bitawi, president of the Sharia Court of Appeals.

In Gaza, the journalists’ film and recordings were confiscated by the police and they were informed by the police that “no such interviews [with opposition leaders and activists] would be allowed unless prior permission from the police department has been obtained,” to which the reporters responded that they would not continue to cover PNA activities.

As Palestinians contemplate the Wye accord, and how little land and freedom it will ultimately give them, many have concluded that at the heart of the agreement is renewed U.S.-Israeli intelligence cooperation with the primary beneficiaries being the latter. In addition to CIA monitoring and guaranteeing PNA compliance to the security requirements laid out in the accord, Israel has access to American intelligence sources that it may not have had since the Jonathan Pollard spying affair threw cold water on their relationship.

Israel now has an intelligence-sharing agreement with the U.S. that it can manipulate to its advantage against the Palestinians as well as others in the region. The U.S. now has the burden of being held responsible by Israel for any security breakdown, which many feel is inevitable.

“Not only do we find our leader and security forces, whom we expected to defend us, admitting the CIA has penetrated our security apparatus and institutions, but now they have accepted an agreeement that requires them to acquiesce to the spy agency and follow its suggestions and even orders,” said the PNA official. “It’s almost too incredible to believe.”

Maureen Meehan is a free-lance journalist who covers the West Bank and Jerusalem.