If Arafat Utters the I-Word, Should Israel Say the S-Word?

...Based on my contacts with Palestinian activists over the past 15-plus years, including talks I took part in last February with Yasir Arafat and other PLO leaders in Tunis, I can , report that they have done a lot to start defining the minimum conditions they would need in order to settle their conflict with Israel...

...What elements commonly associated with 'sovereignty' would both sides— or, for the purposes of this analysis, the Palestinian side—be prepared to talk about giving up...

...There would be a role for a local two- or three-way confederal body or bodies, as well as for international bodies and perhaps even, in a limited number of areas, a veto power for Israel...

...Other ranking PLO activists have tried to make a virtue out of the military limitations that all see to be a necessity, speaking of the burden that heavy defense spending has placed on the economies of several modern nations, including Israel...

...Here, the Jaffee Center group produced what the report's co-editor and project coordinator, Joseph Alpher, has called, "the rabbit coming out of the hat...

...In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, too, Shotwell's analysis has great contemporary relevance...

...They are ready to look for new answers...

...Since gaining the new empowerment of the intifada, some Palestinian leaders have become increasingly ready to discuss measures to curb anti-Israeli irredentism in a future Palestinian state...

...The trick, in any successful negotiation, will be to make the measure of the control that the Palestinian entity will eventually enjoy sufficiently enticing, and sufficiently fulfilling over coming decades, that it will act as a powerful incentive to future generations of Palestinians to live in peace with Israel...

...Is there any way to untie such a Gordian knot...

...Then, of course, we encounter the Alphonse and Gaston problem...

...Yet for the large majority of Palestinians, a settlement with such limitations written would still be worthwhile if it gave them the other attributes of sovereignty they crave...

...The American board of advisers of the Jaffee Center study included Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Sol Lino-witz, Walter Mondale and Samuel Lewis...

...The authors of the study are smart enough to realize that there is a problem with the gradualism of this approach: It would encounter deep skepticism from the Palestinian side—and all the more so if, as the study advocates, the confidence-building stage is conceived of as "prolonged...

...The Palestinian entity—let us call it a state—should be, in the phrase many activists use, "authentically Palestinian...

...The volume described in the box on the next page, the Jaffee Center study The West Bank and Gaza: Israel's Options for Peace, examined the strategic pros and cons of six of Israel's most talked-about options for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

...And on the other, the Palestinians should control all aspects of the entity's domestic policy, domestic economy, and internal security...

...As the Palestinians have repeatedly stressed, they have not suffered more than 400 dead in the intifada and counting, just for the partial "autonomy" that the authors urge as a confidence-builder from the Israeli side...

...The Jaffee Center study showed due understanding of these Palestinian fears...

...In the United States, as in Israel, the Jaffee Center study came as a useful contribution to the debate on the strategic implications of continuing, modifying or ending the occupation of the territories...

...Arafat replied with an unequivocal "yes" to the idea of reciprocal curbs on irredentist actions...

...The intifada has given all Palestinian nationalists, in both the resident and the exile wings of the movement^a_deep sense of empowerment...

...19, 20 and 21...

...What, then, are these other attributes, that constitute the Palestinian sine qua non for a settlement...

...And not unnaturally, there have been shifts in Palestinian opinion...

...Most likely, in different areas of jurisdiction the ceded authority would accrue to differing receiver bodies...

...In one of the study's most important contributions, it offered a timely warning of "the progressive deterioration in Israel's strategic standing entailed by the continuation of the status quo...

...Roughly speaking, the flag represents the place where the Palestinians can plant it in safety, within their own homeland, where they can use their own national culture and resources to build their own future and provide a refuge for all Palestinians in need...

...And the passport represents the dignity of responsible citizenship, as well as forming the concrete link between the state and all its bearers, wherever they may live...

...This view has seemed fairly deeply entrenched at important levels of the Bush administration as well...

...It .is at this point that performing a kind of analytical triage on the concept of Palestinian sovereignty might help one or both of our overly courteous French friends to squeeze through the door and say, "D'accord...

...In discussing the shape of a future settlement, Palestinian leaders have also talked freely about keeping open borders with Israel for trade and movement of labor...

...All the more reason, then, to examine the other options quite closely...

...That latter gesture may have seemed to some like a clever publicity play, without significance...

...He said that he would see no problem in submitting the future state to the supervision of an international force, "for whatever period the Israelis want," and that the Israelis could have a veto power over any decision to take it out...

...To engage the Palestinians, up-front commitment to eventual Palestinian sovereignty is necessary...

...But the intifada has already pointed up the limits on the usefulness of that power...

...supporting the Palestinians in their quest for sovereignty...

...But the concomitant effect of the intifada on Palestinians, the new sense of confidence and empowerment it has bestowed on them, is no less significant for the future of both peoples...

...For example, if it should be Jordan that would take up any slack in Palestinian authority over, say, economic affairs, then the amount the Palestinians would be prepared to cede would be different than if the ceded authority should accrue to Israel, or to an international authority, or a local confederation...

...From outright vassalage, through lessening degrees of suzerainty, to full sovereignty—there are probably an infinite number of possible variations...

...As when any political community addresses an issue of such profound importance, there is a lively debate amongst Palestinians over the extent of the sovereignty their future state should enjoy...

...Choosing his words carefully, the former ambassador to Israel judged that, "I don't think it would be politically feasible or conceptually wise for the United States to be giving assurance of such a nature, that ultimately would have to come from a decision of the government of Israel itself...

...The Israeli board of advisers included the presidents of Israel's leading universities The study examined the feasibility and benefits of the six most widely discussed options, from Israel's viewpoint for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict The six options are (1) the status quo, (2) autonomy, (3) annexation, (4) unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, (5) a Jordanian-Palestinian federation, and (6) a Palestinian state...

...I believe there is...

...Indeed, it has been the psycho-historical equivalent of the Egyptians' successful crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973: It has enabled the Palestinians to think seriously about making peace with Israel, a real and lasting peace with a real and lasting Israel—without having to worry, as they felt they had to ^re-intifada, that to do so might constitute surrender...

...The sticks, stones and bottle-bombs of the intifada have, after all, brought them much greater political gains than their previous quarter-century of reliance on the shibboleth of "armed struggle...

...That kind of sovereignty I am prepared to commit to...

...In the words of the broadly researched study Israel, l/ie West Bank and Gaza: Toward a Solution, unveiled last spring by Tel Aviv University's respected Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies: ' 'Israel perceives a Palestinian state as a threat to its existence, while the Palestinians see a state in Palestine as their primary aim, one over which they cannot make concessions...

...For the Palestinians, the two simple symbols of statehood thus carry enormous, even existential, weight...

...Measures such as limiting militarization or forswearing economic protectionism would certainly, if embedded integrally into the eventual settlement, count as serious limitations on an absolutist notion of Palestinian sovereignty...

...Presto...

...In this independent work the Jaffee study group seeks to develop an approach that would be both feasible and desirable (see The Seventh Option: Toward a Solution," p. 20...

...But the least bad of the bunch from a strategic point of view was apparently the idea of a Palestinian state that would be established under a strict regime including demilitarization and other arrangements designed to assure Israel's security—the least bad, that is, except for the bothersome fact that the Israeli government and most of the Israeli public remained firmly opposed to any mention of Palestinian sovereignty...

...The Jaffee Center study put forward one essentially incrementalist way, to unravel the knot of Palestinian sovereignty: Each side, Palestinian and Israeli, needs to recognize at the outset that it must act "to accommodate the other's basic needs...

...and associated external powers," who would commit themselves as part of an interim agreement to support the Palestinians' "quest for" an independent state at the end of the appropriate "prolonged" confidence-building phase...

...Thus could peace be achieved...

...This empowerment has enabled Palestinian activists to talk un-selfconsciously among themselves about "Israel," where previously they would speak only of "the Zionist entity...

...It enabled Yasir Arafat himself, in a public gathering, to use the language of the previously-hated aliens, wishing the latter a hearty "shana tova...

...And for all the derogatory overtones that the term "Finland-ization" has come to acquire, who today would not rather live in Finland than in Estonia...

...After doing this, we can see whether the probable answers need be so threatening for Israelis as raising full-blown the specter of an undifferentiated Palestinian "sovereignty...

...One of his colleagues was slightly more explicit, talking about the "effective demilitarization" of the future state...

...Other PLO strategists point out that such cooperation would also provide Israel with a valuable economic and cultural bridge to the PLO's Arab hinterland: Their vision is thus that both nations could profit from any economic openness that might be written into the future settlement...

...No one at this gathering bothered to ask whether the Palestinians would be satisfied with an assurance from the same government, our own, that guaranteed the safety of the Palestinian noncombatants who remained in Beirut after the PLO's 1982 evacuation...

...The idea of a state's accepting limits on its sovereignty is not, after all, terribly new...

...High-ranking activists who for years worked with the PLO's Planning Department have envisioned an active interdependence between the economies of Israel and a rapidly developing Palestinian state...

...The relevance of this analysis has only increased in the years since it was written...

...But this criticism reportedly stemmed more from a feeling that he had exceeded his political mandate and the requirements of national dignity, than from any basic opposition to the ideas he expressed...

...I was present when Arafat first unveiled the idea of the future economic relations among Palestine, Israel and Jordan resembling some kind of Benelux arrangement...

...The intifada, in short, has focused the Palestinians' attention on what it is they truly need from Israel in order to end the conflict, and what it is they are prepared to talk about conceding...

...A good way to start, which would have the added benefit of unlocking real progress toward a settlement, would be to start engaging the Palestinians in a direct and creative discussion of what it is they mean when they talk about that dread "S-word"—sovereignty...

...This study, a by-product of the larger study, was done by the Jaffee Center authors, independent of other sponsorship...

...The Palestinians fear that, if there is no reference to final status issues, then autonomy or any other interim measures would become a swamp in which Israel would seek to mire the energy of the intifada...

...As long ago as 1944, the historian James T. Shotwell wrote that, "It is time that the politicians . . . stopped talking about national sovereignty as thought there were no limits to it...

...The study lists the elements of this deterioration at the domestic and international levels, and concludes that the result of sticking to the status quo, "may be a considerable erosion in Israeli deterrence, and the specter of an eventual Arab-Israeli war...

...So adamant are the Palestinians on this point that they express a strong preference for negotiating for as long as it takes to nail down the total deal (interim steps plus final status issues, or— as they prefer to term it—the final package deal with the phased steps for its implementation) rather than getting drawn too hastily into an interim phase with no final status in sight...

...well aware that their acceptance of limits on the militarization of their state is a sine qua non for attaining any Palestinian entity under presently foreseeable circumstances...

...Most of these conditions relate to sovereign jurisdiction over internal issues, as summed up in the Palestinian dictum that what they seek is "a flag and a passport...

...That is, on the one hand, it should enjoy exclusive authority in conferring its own citizenship and residence rights...

...Despite this resistance to ceding authority in security matters directly to the Israelis, all Palestinian activists are The Jaffee Center Study The work that Helena Cobban addresses, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza: Toward a Solution, was prepared in connection with a recent study by Israel's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies entitled The West Bank and Gaza: Israel's Options for Peace, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'nth and the American Jewish Congress...

...To the Israelis, the intifada has brought the dilemma of having to deal with an unstoppable revolt of unarmed civilians...

...For the Palestinians, the intifada has caused a comparable questioning of their pre-existing modes of action...

...All of these options were rejected by the study as either not feasible or not desirable from Israel's viewpoint (see "Six Rejected Options," p. 19...

...But there is no doubt that there has been a shift in overall Palestinian opinion over time...

...Over the longer term, the more political factor of generating a strong Palestinian self-interest in the international regime under which they live will be a much more durable guarantor of stability than any purely military veto...

...And it is not only former ambassador Lewis who has expressed opposition to the U.S...

...The idea of mutual respect and mutual guarantees, like that of direct negotiations with the government of Israel—all these were possibilities that the PLO's leaders clearly seemed to welcome...

...Certainly, the many Diaspora Palestinians who have accumulated business skills and large amounts of capital in the Gulf feel they have little to fear from open competition with Israel...

...The most significant shift that I have seen has been that sparked by the intifada...

...So there they were, Alphonse and Gaston, both aware that the Palestinians would need some kind of commitment concerning eventual sovereignty in order to get any serious negotiations underway, but each eager to have the other fellow's government offer it...

...each side must then engage in a "dynamic of prolonged mutual confidence-building...

...Arafat came in for some criticism from his colleagues for espousing this idea in public in a "60 Minutes" interview aired a few days later...

...Hang on a minute," said the eloquent former representative for the U.S...

...However, given the history of the Palestinians' mistrust of both Israeli and Jordanian motivations, one rule of thumb many Palestinians would instinctively apply is that they would agree to cede more authority in any particular area to a supra-regional body than they would to either of their immediate neighbors...

...For a minority of Palestinians, this is precisely why they reject what they deride as "an emasculated mini-state...

...In his 1981 book My Home, My Land, Fateh number-two Salah Khalaf wrote eloquently about the Palestinians' need for a "flag and a passport of our own...

...These Palestinians— the ones who can routinely raise fifty or a hundred thousand dollars at a single fundrais-ing dinner at the Kuwait Sheraton—are more than adequately represented in the present PLO leadership...

...In our age, we have seen the mighty superpowers agreeing to limit the size of their arsenals, while in Western Europe the states that were the first embodiment of the concept of national sovereignty are continuing to cede increasing portions of it to supra-national bodies...

...They understood that in order successfully to engage the Palestinians even in the confidence-building stage, it would be necessary to offer some up-front commitment concerning eventual Palestinian sovereignty...

...It would involve thinking through the concept of Palestinian sovereignty a little further than the Jaffee Center study did...

...Many Israelis find their role in this effort uncomfortable, if not unacceptable...

...Nearly a decade later, the mainstream of the PLO still sees Khalaf s two attributes of sovereignty as the minimum necessary for a stable settlement with Israel...

...Thus, in resolving this conflict, as in Israel's earlier settlement with Egypt, the self-interest of both parties will be the best guarantee that the agreement will survive the demise of those individuals who sign it...

...A further question, whose answer directly affects the range of possible answers to the main question, is this: If the Palestinians are indeed prepared to cede some authority in areas that are normally thought to lie in the domain of " sovereignty ^ then in which other body would the authority thus ceded be vested...

...But for a Palestinian leader to deliver a Hebrew greeting in public: In terms of the Palestinian discourse, this was a sign of acceptance of Israel as potent as the more abstract formulae of recognition that entered the Palestinians' official parlance last December...

...Rather than the Israeli government offering the desired commitment on sovereignty, this would come from "the U.S...

...The intifada has" taken both Israelis and Palestinians into previously uncharted territory...

...Under this scenario, Israelis and Palestinians would sit down together like the lion and the lamb at the end of the confidence-building stage to negotiate the final status of the territories, with the U.S...

...However, the Palestinian political culture of our times has been weighted with histories of individual and mass displacement, and of the systematic dismantling of their national institutions at the hands of Israel and the Arab states...

...But in some sensitive areas, especially security, there will remain a deep Palestinian resistance to the idea that any authority they might cede would accrue directly to the Israelis...

...side, Ambassador Samuel Lewis, when Alpher pulled this rabbit from the hat in a semi-public forum at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...

...It is a strategy that has been pursued throughout the ages by small states Bbrdering-on disproportionately more powerful neighbors...

...Specifically, it would involve asking which attributes of a sovereign state the Palestinians consider to be non-negotiable, and which they would be prepared to bargain over...

...But for the Arafat-led majority both inside and outside the territories, a state that is created under these circumstances is still strongly preferable to a continuation of the status quo...

...And, as the Israeli military analyst Ze'ev Schiff has stressed, for any settlement of this issue to be stable it is important that the Palestinians should not view it as a surrender...

...But these ideas only gain a positive response when it is clear that they would be fully reciprocated by Israel...

...Hence, the need for rabbits, hats, etc...

...One would hope that such attitudes would change in the course of negotiations...

...Is it not in the strong self-interest of the Israelis that they and their friends make some reciprocal gesture of acceptance...

...In our discussion with Arafat, he replied with an unequivocal "Yes" to the idea that there should be reciprocal curbs on irredentist actions...

...That all six options were either not feasible or not desirable from Israel's viewpoint led to the adjunct study entitled Israel, the West Bank and Gaza: Toward a Solution...

...They scoff at the idea that the state might have a Cuban-type socialist economy, though they note that it will initially require large-scale public investment infrastructure...

...Its limits are real and advantageous because all other nations live under the same conditions...

...See boxes, pp...

...When we saw Arafat in February, he was forthright in saying that all military issues could be negotiated with Israel...

...Palestinian sovereignty: This sometimes barely mentionable concept has become a central impasse in Mideast peacemaking...

...Some people—but probably not most Jews—may regard these two surface attributes of statehood as little more than insubstantial symbols...

...government getting out in front of Israel in making an early declaration of support for Palestinian sovereignty...

...Over the whole of the foreseeable future, Israel will continue to enjoy (as it does today) a de facto military veto power over developments in the West Bank and Gaza...

...In the realms of foreign and military affairs, however, there is a widespread recognition among activists that the jurisdiction of the future Palestinian entity will of necessity be severely curtailed...

...None, in the Jaffee group's analysis, offered Israel a totally risk-free strategy for dealing with the question of the territories...