On the Road to a Mideast Peace
SALPETER, ELIAHU
THE PLO VS. THE PALESTINIANS On the Road to a Mideast Peace by ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Aviv On the eve of the 11th round of the Arab-Israeli talks that began almost two years ago in Madrid and have...
...Since he formed his government following last year's elections, Rabin has shifted the focus of his peace efforts several times...
...THE PALESTINIANS On the Road to a Mideast Peace by ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Aviv On the eve of the 11th round of the Arab-Israeli talks that began almost two years ago in Madrid and have continued sporadically in Washington, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicted a breakthrough...
...Most Israelis accept the official assumption that the process has passed the point of no return...
...His hope is that signs of movement in one set of negotiations will speed up the other...
...Infighting could impede progress at the 11th round of the Middle East peace talks...
...Tunis takes a broader view of the peace process than the Palestinian delegation...
...The Palestinian delegation's draft says, "The ground must be prepared for ending the confrontation...
...easing Israeli military government restrictions, reviving the mass employment of Palestinians inside Israel, etc...
...First, the PLO can make peace with Israel despite grumbling from the local Palestinian leadership about strategy...
...The expulsion of 400 Hamas activists to Lebanon was intended to lessen the pressure of the Muslim fundamentalists in the disputed territories on the PLO...
...A mid-August bombing there that took the lives of nine Israeli soldiers soon showed the Hezbollah felt it still had a free hand in the zone...
...While the Hezbollah in Lebanon was conducting low intensity warfare against the South Lebanese Army and its Israeli backers in the security zone across Israel's northern border, Hamas stepped up the terror against soldiers and civilians in the West Bank, Gaza and the Jewish State...
...They are more interested, therefore, in securing some of the powers now vested with Israeli authorities than in scoring points in quest of formal status in the future...
...a top member of the PLO executive (technically subject to arrest) was permitted to visit the West Bank "for family reasons...
...The Prime Minister's apparent seesaw has not been entirely his own doing...
...Hence he is more agreeable to tackling the thorniest issues, like the status of Jerusalem, at a later stage in the negotiations...
...Then there was the interference spurred by Iran, which made no secret of its determination to prevent peace between the Arabs and the "infidel" Israel...
...Under Rabin, the fig leaf has simply been removed...
...Whatever progress was being made at the Washington talks thus came to a halt during the desultory 10th round in the last two weeks of June...
...the local leaders stress regaining the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is their home base...
...Other "national liberation movements" have experienced similar conflicts between local leaders conducting the resistance and their top counterparts in exile...
...For Arafat, who has complex relationships and interests in the Arab world, the renewal of desperately needed financial aid from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States is a major priority...
...So is attaining some kind of Israeli and American recognition...
...The PLO supports the "Gaza first" idea because that would quickly provide the organization with a territorial foothold inside a part of Palestine...
...And the majority of Israelis began to internalize the fact that peace would require painful concessions, including accepting the PLO at the negotiations...
...Assad began to understand that he would not get back the Golan Heights for less than President Anwar Sadat paid for the return of the Sinai to Egypt...
...The PLO draft peace agreement says, for instance, that after the transfer of administrative authority to the Palestinians "there will be an end to the confrontation between the Palestinians and the Israelis...
...As interpreted by Israeli observers, the PLO text sets an ultimate goal, while the delegation's text calls for definite steps to end the violence that hurts, most of all, people in the West Bank and Gaza...
...But their optimism elicited a certain skepticism here...
...Muslim religious extremists had some success in sabotaging the peacemaking, and internal disputes among the Palestinians, as Rabin exasperatedly declared on a number of occasions, often left nobody to talk to on their side...
...Not altogether surprisingly, with the softening of Israel's attitude toward the PLO cracks began to open up between the Palestinian leadership in East Jerusalem and Arafat in Tunis...
...That was more than Jerusalem could tolerate, and in July Operation Settling Accounts brought the heaviest Israeli shelling and bombing inside Lebanon since 1984...
...and a few weeks ago Israel did not protest the naming of three Palestinian peace negotiators to an official PLO committee...
...The Party of God agreed not to hit targets inside Israel, and Jerusalem promised not to stage massive retaliations in South Lebanon...
...Yet this has not produced any sense that peace is just around the corner...
...Opposition parties in Jerusalem demanded that Israel respond to attacks in the security zone by breaking off peace talks with Damascus, because it really controls what happens in Lebanon...
...Negotiators Faisal al-Husseini and Haidar Abdel-Shafi want to create conditions that will guarantee maximum influence to the local leadership...
...The truth, of course, is that even when the peace talks started in Madrid, in the days of the Likud government, the PLO was never far from the negotiating table...
...After aiming at an early agreement on the terms of Palestinian autonomy, he switched his attention to making a deal with Hafez al-Assad...
...But that calculation misfired...
...When the Syrian President insisted that Israel must announce its full withdrawal from the Golan before actual bargaining could start, Rabin turned to the idea of stage-by-stage self-government for the Palestinians, starting with Gaza...
...Second, both the PLO and the local leadership want an independent Palestinian state and the complete elimination of Israel's presence from the territories...
...An American-Syrian brokered indirect "understanding" between Israel and the Hezbollah cooled the atmosphere...
...Its right to represent the Palestinian population, moreover, was contested by the inchoate, hawkish leadership of the intifada...
...The Palestinian leadership felt obliged to demonstrate full support for the return of the deportees...
...But the "understanding" left open the question of what could or could not be done within the security zone...
...Although the PLO may seem more flexible on tactics, it is not more accommodating in the case of ultimate goals...
...What makes the Palestinian situation especially sensitive is that the composition of the peace delegation was subject both to PLO approval and to Israeli veto...
...Meanwhile, amid the tumult marking the summer hiatus in the Washington sessions, several important developments took place...
...The Ahmed Ben Bella-Houari Boumedienne falling-out in Algeria in the mid-'60s is a relevant example...
...In addition, there was a sharp rise in knifings inside Israel, forcing the government to seal off the territories...
...The local leadership, however, cannot make and sign an agreement with Israel without approval from Tunis...
...Palestinian delegation members, on the other hand, are directly exposed to pressures in the territories...
...Arafat wants to make sure that when a Palestinian state is finally established, he and his associates will be its leaders...
...They are expected to show gains in day-to-day matters—e.g...
...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...
...When this proved highly effective and the world started losing interest in the Hamas deportees, the Hezbollah escalated its attacks, firing Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns and villages in northern Galilee...
...Most of the Israeli public, by contrast, seemed to understand that this was exactly what the Muslim extremists wanted to achieve...
...Beyond such differences, there is the latent yet very real competition for power...
...The rocketing of Hezbollah positions even inside Lebanese territory, though, indicated that Syria accepted Israel's right to pinpoint retaliation...
...Members of the Palestine delegation openly shuttled to Tunis overnight to consult with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, and former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir looked the other way...
...The Palestinians began to realize that there was no way to jump over the autonomy stage and move directly to a final settlement...
...Israeli Cabinet members have met with PLO leaders abroad...
...But whatever happens in Washington, there are two important facts to keep in mind...
Vol. 76 • September 1993 • No. 10
