In these times, as our own local “Bin Laden” frequently holds friendly meetings with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s son Omri, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat has become the darling of the anti-terror alliance. This calls to mind a certain historical anecdote from the mid-nineteenth century, when the Russian Czar invited Otto von Bismarck, the then Prussian ambassador to Russia, to become Russia’s foreign minister. In those days, politicians and diplomats formed a sort of international trade union, all belonging to the same cultural, social and economic class. National consciousness was still of relatively secondary importance.
That is all a thing of the past. Today, however, most of the leaders of the proximate circle, consisting of Egypt, Syria, the Palestinians, Israel and Jordan, belong to the same school of rational politicians, acting on the basis of reason decisions, and guided by a well-defined strategy, who function within the framework of external political constraints and internal power struggles.
Leaders on both sides are pursuing a successful attempt to demonize the other side in the eyes of their own public, by presenting the dispute in unilateral dimensions. That, for example, was what former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and her Egyptian counterpart President Anwar Saadat did to one another. Saadat was depicted, in the Israeli media, and for pre-Yom Kippur war public consumption, as a hostile fool sympathetic to Nazism. Yet, in the years following the terrible war of 1973, he became, for Israel, the wise, sensitive peace strategist, who ultimately sacrificed his life for peace. The same dynamic is at work between Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, as well as between Sharon and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Anyone examining the facts realistically will find that both parties have fairly circumspect professional political leaderships, each in dispassionate, sophisticated, sometimes harsh and cruel, pursuit of its strategic goals. For example, at the Paris talks, was Palestinian representative Abu Ala really so different, in terms of goals, temperament and realistic outlook, from Israeli delegate Avraham Shochat? Would [former Ministry of Finance director general] David Brodet, [former tax commissioner] Aryeh Zeif or I have conducted the talks so very differently from [economist] Dr. Taha Jabir al Alwani and the late Hassan Taboub [of the Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs]? Can anyone point to any material differences between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, on the one hand, and [Arafat advisor] Abu Mazen and [PA Minister of Local Governance Dr. Saeb] Erekat on the other? Was [IDF Chief of General Staff] Shaul Mofaz and Major General Yom-Tov Samia’s conduct of military tactics so different from that of [Palestinian Preventive Security head in Gaza Mohammad] Dahlan or [Palestinian Preventive Security head] Jibril Rajoub?
I hope I have not offended any of the above-named, but it would seem that they are all trying to faithfully represent the interests of their own nations, subject to the objective limitations with which each of the parties has to cope. There may come a day when such an individual is awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and later earns international condemnation.
It is in light of the various documents, talks and moves dating from the Oslo and Paris accords to the present day, that the political and economic strategy and tactics pursued by each of the parties, the Israeli and the Palestinian, should be analysed. Such analysis, however, will not contain any psychological, cultural, historical or conspiratorial theories, for which, while they may be valid, no factual underpinnings are to be found in the shared arena.
Palestinian tactics and strategy
The declared strategic goal of the Palestinian – avowed consistently throughout Oslo, Paris and Camp David, as well as Taba - has been quite clear: A final peace to be achieved between the parties only after Israel reverts to the frontier lines of June 4, 1967, with limited exchanges of territory in the region of Jerusalem and surroundings, and with Israeli enclaves in the Territories; East Jerusalem, including Temple Mount, to be under Palestinian sovereignty, except for the Western Wall and the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, which Israel will retain.
The Palestinians’ principal economic goal is that, under the permanent settlement, as in the interim settlement reached in Paris, the two nations, Palestine and Israel, would maintain almost total economic integration, the boundaries being primarily political rather than economic. [PLC speaker] Abu Ala made this perfectly clear to Shochat as early as 1994, when he said that economic separation was tantamount to war against the Palestinians. Arafat emissary Maher al Kurd reiterated the principle of economic integration in unofficial talks and in the 1998 agreement (these talks were held under the auspices of the Norwegian government, with the United States weighing in with its support after the fact).
No political evidence exists to support any “stage-by-stage” theory as allegedly developed by the Palestinians. Their preference is for a complete permanent settlement rather than a stage-by-stage approach, which was why they balked at the proposals advanced by Sharon’s predecessor, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Nor is there any real indication that the subject of the refugees and the ‘right of return’ constituted the stumbling block over which the Camp David talks tripped and fell. The formulations on these topics, very nearly agreed upon at Taba, attest, in my opinion, that this was not a pivotal clause in the differences of opinion.
The Palestinians assume that they will succeed in achieving their goals, in the long term, by virtue of the sweeping international support they have garnered (but to which the United States and Israel do not subscribe), for the principle of peace in return for territories. It is in the light of this concept that they construe pertinent UN resolutions (242 and 338), as well as the Oslo accord.
The intensive preparations that preceded the second Intifada commenced once the Palestinians realised that they had no real chance of attaining their goals (during Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership). The final decision was reached following Camp David, when it became apparent to them that Israel was offering them “only” 91% of the territory, a leasehold on the Beqaa Valley, the persistence of Jewish settlement blocs that would divide the Palestinian state, and a challenge to their sovereignty over Temple Mount (site of the mosques of Omar and al-Aqsa).
The Taba talks did, in fact, result in considerable rapprochement between the parties, but it was obvious to all concerned that the Clinton-Barak era was, by then, history and that agreements reached on the subject had no chance of being implemented. The Palestinians had, throughout all this (and at least since the Netanyahu era), reserved the option of violence, to be deployed by two principal means: the reinforcement and intensive arming of their regular and irregular forces, and the preservation of a given level of incitement against Israel.
Today, the Palestinians are keeping the Intifada going at a gradated and controlled level of violence, in the deployment of which moral considerations play no part, but with a eye to certain specific goals and military, political, international and regional constraints (for example, the ceasefire achieved in Gilo in order to prevent an Israeli invasion). In any event, the strategic decision comes clearly through: there will be no real ceasefire until some significant political achievement is recorded.
The Israeli position
Israel's strategic, political and economic position is by no means clear. Greater transparency and clarity attaches to its tactical moves.
The initiators of the 1993 Oslo accord did not put their minds to the essential nature of the forthcoming final settlement between us and our neighbours (even though they were aware of the other side’s position). Yet Clinton’s proposals did not take them by surprise, since they reflected what, since Oslo, had been almost a forgone conclusion – an almost total withdrawal from the Territories, and a compromise on the subjects of Jerusalem, the settlements, the refugees and the right of return.
The Likud opponents of Oslo also failed to clearly define their position with regard to the final settlement. They opposed the entire Oslo accord, and still do, but accepted, as a political fact of life, matters on which signed agreements had been reached and that had been implemented in the past.
True, Likud governments did reach a number of agreements with the Palestinian Authority, which, however, with the exception of the Hebron agreement, both parties took care not to implement. By 1996, when Benjamin Netanyahu acceded to power, the Oslo agreement had been relegated to the status of “living on borrowed time”.
The tactics pursued by Labour consisted of economic integration with the Palestinians (the Paris accord), but both Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak declared themselves in favour of economic separation. Rabin actually turned terror attacks to some advantage by creating an effective separation, by means of imposing protracted blockades and by issuing work permits to tens of thousands of foreign workers.
The Likud governments, oddly enough, supported economic integration with the Palestinians and therefore, the other side enjoyed relative economic prosperity during the Netanyahu regime.
Throughout the term of the Oslo accords, Israel acted consistently to reinforce the settlements. Over an eight-year period, the number of settlers increased by 110%. Labor actively supported the settlements within the limits of the Yigal Allon plan, while succumbing (mainly on the part of Barak) to pressures in other areas. The Likud governments actively supported settlements within the areas of the West Bank, in order to create facts on the ground, which would ensure that the Palestinian state did not enjoy territorial continuity.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada, Israel has been deploying military operations in accordance with rational considerations: use of maximum force (encirclements, bombardments and specifically directed liquidation), in the framework of international political restrictions. Israel continues to maintain a low dosage of economic integration with the other side, permitting, subject to security considerations, the flow of goods, services and also workers, from one side to the other.
Forecast
An objective analysis of the realities of the situation shows wide strategic gaps between the two camps, while opposition elements, both here and there, oppose any peace agreement. At the same time, conditions are currently coming about that are conducive to a political settlement. The stalemate between the parties, along with the change in the international political picture, operates to improve the chances of a settlement.
The Palestinians, after a year of fighting, realize that they will not be able to achieve their goals by force, or without negotiation. Israel, after a year of attrition, understands that it has no chance of decisively winning the battle against them, and that, in effect, the wall of its physical security stands breached, leaving it wide open to the violent tactics being pursued by the opposing camp
Moreover, all economic walks of life in Israel have been steadily on the wane, a process that will only get worse in the near future, and will be accompanied by cultural, sporting and other types of isolation. While the media and populations of both nations have toed the line traced by their leaderships, they have done so knowing that those leaderships have utterly failed to achieve their strategic goals.
Meanwhile, the developed nations, headed by the United States, are coming to the ever clearer realization that although the leadership of international terror resides, perhaps, in Afghanistan, and has been active there for over twenty years, yet the “army” of terror is flourishing in our region, on the fertile soil of the national-religious struggle between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While the focus lies ostensibly in the Temple Mount mosques, Arafat’s potential for harm in relation to the global alliance is increasing (by reason of his ability to “heat up” the mosque arena). His price in international politics increases accordingly. As the furtherance of a prime American interest comes to appear stymied by the two parties’ failure to achieve their goals, there emerges, for the first time, a future prospect of a pax Americana type of agreement, which will be imposed on both leaderships, enabling them to overcome internal opposition, entrenched in hostility to any peace agreement, on the basis of the Clinton proposals.
The first anticipated step in this process is a cease-fire, in return for an absolute and hermetic freeze on settlement. The outcome is in the hands of the political leaderships of both parties, which must truly lead their peoples, and not be dragged in the wake of pressure for the preservation of a violent status quo, with no resolution anywhere in prospect.
The writer participated in talks with the Jordanians and Palestinians in the years 1993-1999, and was Commissioner for State Revenue.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on October 7, 2001.