While Barak Talks Peace, He Tightens Israel’s Grip on The West Bank, Hints at Further Negotiation Delays

By Rachelle Marshall

The Middle East peace process undergoes constant change. Israeli prime ministers come and go, relations between the two sides change from hot to cold and back again, and new peace agreements are signed every two or three years. What does not change is life for most Palestinians. Instead of bringing progress, each successive agreement is followed by more settlement construction, more house demolitions, and more restrictions on freedom.

“It is like a mirage in the desert,” West Bank resident Muhammad Shihadeh said of the peace process after his home near Jerusalem was demolished. “You think it is an oasis. You run to it. You find it is nothing.”

Shihadeh holds a land registration deed written in Turkish and dated 1870, but that did not help him when the Israeli bulldozers arrived in his village last September. The Oslo agreement divided the West Bank into areas A, B, and C, with Israel having full control over C and partial control over B. Areas B and C comprise nearly 70 percent of the West Bank. The Shihadehs live in area C, so they and their neighbors are losing their homes to make way for Jewish settlements and the bypass roads that speed the settlers’ way to Jerusalem. The Shihadehs speed nowhere. They need a permit even to visit their relatives who live a few hundred meters away in a part of the village that is in area B.

The peace process has left the city of Bethlehem in even worse straits. Bypass roads and settlements built since Oslo hem in the city on all sides. Shops and hotels designed to draw tourists from Bethlehem are going up in the nearby Jewish settlement of Har Homa, and a massive new checkpoint on the expanded border of Jerusalem will funnel travelers through the city directly to Rachel’s Tomb, which Israel now controls. Residents of Bethlehem depend for their livelihood on tourism or jobs in Israel. The new checkpoint will make both more difficult.

Despite successive peace agreements and cordial handshakes between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the unchanging reality is that Israel, and Israel alone, calls the shots. According to Peace Now, the Israeli peace activist organization, construction of new settlement housing has accelerated since Barak took office.

Under the previous Likud government, Israel built 3,000 new apartments a year in the occupied territories. In just its first three months, the Barak government authorized 2,600 new housing units that will add at least 10,000 Jewish settlers to the West Bank.

The prime minister also has promised residents of Ma’ale Adumim, a large West Bank settlement just outside of Jerusalem, that they would not only remain forever under Israeli sovereignty but that their numbers would be doubled. In mid-October Barak angered Palestinians and many Israelis when he ordered the dismantling of only 10 of the 42 outposts established on West Bank hilltops last year by Israeli settlers seeking to forestall the return of land to the Palestinians. An additional 5 would be “frozen.”

An editorial in Ha’aretz sharply criticized Barak’s refusal to dismantle all of the makeshift settlements, arguing that “the outposts are an obstacle to achieving a permanent agreement and that is precisely why they were put up in the first place.” Minister of Culture and Information Yasser Abed Rabbo called Barak’s decision “demagogic and deceptive.”

Moderate Israelis as well as Palestinians have protested Barak’s settlement policy, calling it a war on the peace process itself. Nevertheless, on Oct. 4 the government extended Israel’s presence in the West Bank by closing off for Israeli use 20,000 acres east of Hebron, and thousands of acres near Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Jericho. According to the human rights organization LAW, the closures affect land belonging to more than 79 Palestinian villages.

In early September Israel finally began fulfilling its commitments under the renegotiated Wye agreement by relinquishing partial control of 7 percent of the West Bank, an area consisting mostly of sparsely inhabited hills. The opening of a safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank was to have followed immediately but, as they have in the past, the Israelis balked, insisting that Israel have sole control over permits to use the road, and freedom to arrest Palestinians traveling between the territories.

Israeli negotiators claimed Israel’s security was at stake, but some Palestinians worried that Israel would use the permits to recruit collaborators. Others, such as bank officer Khaled Kader, asked, “How can it be free if Israelis have the right to define who can use it?”

After extended negotiations the two sides agreed to a compromise. Distribution of permits will be supervised by both Palestinian and Israeli officials, but Israeli checkpoints at either end will conduct security checks. No Palestinian will be arrested en route.

A similar arrangement of shared security control at the Gaza airport has not prevented Israel from delaying flights and holding passengers for extended questioning. The same may happen when some Palestinians use the new passage. An aide to Security Minister Shlomo BenAmi said the majority would have no problem, “But if there is a suspicion of a car with a bomb or somebody who wants to make an explosion, we have the right to stop these people.”

The relatives of Palestinian prisoners endured a more agonizing delay on Oct. 8, when Israel was supposed to release an additional 151 prisoners under the terms of the interim agreement signed on Sept. 4. The release was held up when Israel insisted on freeing only those whose terms were nearly ended and refused to include 47 long-term prisoners as the Palestinians had demanded. Many of the latter are veterans of the intifada who carried out what most Palestinians regard as legitimate acts of resistance.

A week later both sides agreed that Israel would release inmates who had killed Palestinian collaborators, and Hamas members convicted of minor crimes, but Palestinians who had killed or maimed Israelis would remain in prison. It does not take an Einstein to figure out the relative value to Israelis of Palestinian and Israeli lives.

Barak may also be hedging on another promise, one he made before the election, when he said he would withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon within a year. Those who hoped this would mean peace with Lebanon and an end to the bloodshed are certain to be disappointed. Barak, the former army chief of staff, has reduced ground attacks by Israeli soldiers but intensified the bombing. “What we are doing is introducing technologies that partially substitute for the physical presence of soldiers,” Deputy Defense Minister Ephrem Sneh explained on Oct. 6 just after Israel had carried out six consecutive air attacks on southern Lebanon in one 24-hour period. “We can stave off the guerrillas from our borders at a lower price.” Sneh meant, of course, a lower price to Israeli soldiers, not to the Lebanese civilians who will be the chief victims of the new strategy.

In November and January Israel is scheduled to conduct two more troop withdrawals to complete its turnover of the 13 percent of the land promised under Wye. Fulfillment of the agreement will give the Palestinians control over 40 percent of the West Bank. Since the West Bank is 22 percent of the former Mandate of Palestine, this means Israel will retain 91.2 percent of Palestine, leaving the Palestinian Authority in charge of 8.8 percent.

“Four Principles”

Meanwhile, talks began in early September on final status issues such as Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees. Israel’s position, laid down at the start by Foreign Minister David Levy, is based on “four principles”: no return to the 1967 borders, no shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, no Palestinian army, and all Jewish settlements to remain part of Israel. According to a report in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin of Sept. 17, some Israeli officials are suggesting that instead of tackling the most difficult issues, negotiators settle for another interim or partial agreement, saying the issue of Jerusalem alone could take decades to settle.

Interim agreements have been used by Israel in the past to avoid fulfilling the promise contained in the original Declaration of Principles drawn up in Oslo that “the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.” Negotiations on interim agreements have almost always resulted in the whittling down of Israel’s obligations to the Palestinians, and often require further negotiations to secure Israel’s compliance. Israel carried out part of its commitments under Wye only after a year’s delay and another round of negotiations, and has never fully implemented agreements on such issues as the release of prisoners or the allocation of water.

With Israel still in control of two-thirds of the land on the West Bank and all of the water, as well as the economy on which most Palestinians depend, the Israelis can afford to wait indefinitely. But this time the Palestinians may have a helpful ally in Jordan’s King Abdullah, who warned in a recent interview with The New York Times that any delay in solving the Palestinian question would cost Israel the potential warming of relations with Arab countries.

Relations between Israel and Jordan became strained on Oct. 9 after a visit by a Jordanian delegation to the Ibrahim mosque in Hebron. When the Jordanians refused to be searched by guards at the entrance Jewish settlers shouted insults and pounded on their cars. Jordan has refused to receive Israeli officials until the incident is investigated.

Despite their weakness, the Palestinians cannot afford to make too many concessions. An editorial by Ghassan Khatib in Palestine Report, of Sept. 22 pointed out that the Arab world would never accept a compromise on Jerusalem, since that is not a Palestinian issue alone but an Arab and Islamic one. Nor can Palestinian negotiators compromise on the refugees, since they will continue to demand their rights of return or compensation as provided by U.N. Resolution 194. (According to a New York Times report of Oct. 11, some refugees in the West Bank and Gaza are arming themselves in preparation for a confrontation if Arafat trades their rights away.) Finally, the Palestinian leadership cannot risk losing popular support by agreeing to a compromise the Palestinian people won’t accept.

Pressure on Barak comes from the left as well as the right. Members of his own government such as Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg believe the only way Israelis can achieve true security is to accept a Palestinian state with sufficient territory and economic power to allow it to survive. Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, wrote in a recent article in the Jerusalem Times that peace requires the removal from Palestinian territory of Israel’s entire “matrix of control,” including settlements, bypass roads, and checkpoints.

Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun and an ardent Zionist, urged in the magazine’s September-October issue that Israelis abandon “the role of conqueror doling out minor concessions” and adopt a new spirit of respect and reconciliation. “Short of that fundamental change in spirit,” Lerner maintained, “no peace agreement with the Palestinians will be worth the paper it’s written on.” With negotiations now at their most crucial and difficult stage, Palestinians and Israelis can only hope their leaders listen to such voices and recognize that peace between the two peoples is impossible as long as one side enjoys neither justice nor equality.

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.