The circus in Washington
UNDER pressure from the United States and all the Arab governments, the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) decided - after great hesitation — to allow the Palestinian delegation from the occupied territories to go to Washington and rejoin the negotiations.
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 the negotiating table.
Doctor Ghassan el Khatib, representative of the People's Party (formerly the Communist Party) in the delegation, who had refused to join his colleagues in Washington, explained in an interview in
MICHEL WARSHAWSKY* — Jerusalem, May 20, 1993
T HERE were numerous rea
sons why they shouldn't go: the 400 or so Palestinians expelled last December have still not been authorised to return; the Israelis still refuse to recognise that the long-term objective of these negotiations is their withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; repression in the occupied territories has overtaken in terms of sheer horror the worst moments of the Shamir government; and the Rabin government even refuses to freeze settlement in the occupied territories.
The leaders of the Palestinian delegation have said on many occasions that they would not return to Washington until the expelled Palestinians returned home; they knew that Palestinian public opinion was against any other approach. Two factors have led to the abandonment of this stand: on the one hand, there was the active intervention of American diplomacy in the corridors of the negotiations; on the other, the occupied territories were closed down.
For the new American administration it was urgent to re-start the process interrupted both by the American elections last fall and by the expulsion of 415 supposed Palestinian militants. To this end, the White House pressured Israel to make some gestures which would make things somewhat easier for the Palestinian delegation. The removal of Israel's veto against Faisal Husseini leading the Palestinian delegation is one such gesture — up to this point, Israel had refused to negotiate with anyone residing in East Jerusalem.
The return of some thirty leaders expelled from the territories in the 1960s and 1970s was another such gesture. There was the promise to allow last December's expelled Palestinians to return "as quickly as possible", as well as guarantees of a softening of the policy of closing down the occupied territories.
Once these measures were obtained and the promises made, the USA could use 10 its Arab allies to blackmail the Palestinians, by saying, "we are going with you or without you. Take it or leave it; it's up to you to decide."
Faced with this Arab blackmail and the danger of being totally isolated, Yasser Arafat decided to negotiate Palestinian participation in exchange for large sums of money for the empty coffers at HQ. But even after making the decision to re-join the other delegations in Washington, the PLO president had to convince the other members of the delegation. They still believed that re-starting the negotiations before the return of the expelled Palestinians would definitively cut them off from their base.
It was the closing of the occupied territories by the Israeli government which convinced the Palestinian delegation to restart negotiations. The misery provoked by this collective punishment of the population of the occupied territories — alongside the tremendous economic, social and cultural damage — convinced the majority of negotiators that they had to give into the blackmail in order to soften the Israeli policy.
With the re-start of negotiations, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had at least one common interest. They had to convince their respective populations that progress was being made and that, since Secretary of State Warren Christopher's visit, the USA had decided to play a more active role in the negotiations and, if necessary, exert the required pressure to keep things moving along
The setting up of several working groups, including one on human rights and another on land and water, seemed to be a concrete sign that this time they were going to accomplish something and that real problems were on the table. Palestinians had to reduce their presence at the daily diates weat, is his is, had transpired in the previous weeks: Palestinian leadership now recognizes that it made a mistake to give into the pressures of Arab states and to return to Washington before the promises made to the Palestinians were in fact carried out. The USA and Israel have not kept their word and have not done what they committed themselves to doing before negotiations re-started."
Ghassan el Khatib knows what he is talking about, given that he was part of the smaller group that negotiated with Washington the return of the Palestinian delegation to the negotiating table.
First of all, the Americans had let it be understood that the Israeli government would re-examine the dossiers of those expelled to South Lebanon and then authorize the return of a substantial number among them. In the end, only 25 have received such authorization. If Rabin's goal was to totally destroy the credibility of the Palestinian negotiators, he has done a very good job.
Secondly, the USA made a commitment, speaking for Israel, to improve living conditions in the occupied territories and to reduce the repression. In fact, the opposite has taken place. During the first week of the negotiations, ten Palestinians were murdered by the Israeli occupation forces, including two children aged 7 and 13. Several dozen homes have been cemented shut and about twenty have been destroyed by anti-tank missiles. The military tribunals continue to hand out heavy punishments to youths accused of "disturbing public order". Prisons are fuller than they were last year.
But the worst measure has without a doubt been the closing of the occupied territories. There is no end in sight and it has made life impossible for one and a half million people. Indeed, not only has it cut nearly 100,000 people off from their only
* Michel Warshawsky is a member of the Revolutionary Communist League, section of the Fourth International in the Israeli State and occupied territories.
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PALESTINE
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 source of earnings, but it has divided Palestinian society into four regions totally separated from one another.
By forbidding Palestinians to enter Israeli territory, the government has condemned the Gaza Strip to total isolation, even in relation to the West Bank. By forbidding them to be in Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, annexed to Israel in 1967, the government has divided the West Bank into three distinct zones.
But the occupied territories constitute a whole, whether from an economic, social, cultural or administrative point of view — with East Jerusalem in the centre, not only geographically but also politically and socially. There is no economic or social life possible for Palestinians without Jerusalem. Everything happens through Jerusalem; and a lot happens in Jerusalem.
It was for this reason that the Palestinian delegation was obliged to put the issue of Jerusalem on the top of the negotiations agenda, in spite of their previous willingness to accept the Israeli point of view which is that Jerusalem will not be on the agenda of negotiations on autono-
Israel's acceptance of Faisal Husseini as part of the Palestinian delegation, in spite of his Jerusalem identity card, is of little significance compared to what fifty days of closing the occupied territories has shown the world: East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Palestinian West Bank; it is its heart and nerve centre.
In this sense, the closing of the occupied territories has created a double obstacle in this set of negotiations. It has meant a qualitative worsening of repression and living conditions for the population of the occupied territories; and it has widened the already large gap between the positions of the two camps on the question of Jerusalem. What was meant to be the last point on the agenda has once again become a central and urgent issue.
When one asks a Palestinian their point of view on the closing of the occupied territories, they will almost always reply, "Do you want separation? We too, but with Jerusalem. We are not against you putting a border between you and us, but on condition that East Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian area." And this common reply has little to do with considerations of the type that say, "Jerusalem is an integral part of our Palestinian fatherland" and much more to do with concrete arguments of the type that say, "without Jerusalem, our whole administrative system will crumble, our health services will no longer work and we will have no cultural life."
Aside from the question of Jerusalem, the main differences between the Israelis and Palestinians revolve around three points: control of land and water during the period of autonomy; the link between the period of transition and the definitive future solution; and the definition of the governing powers of the autonomous Palestinian administration.
For the Palestinian delegation, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories must be put into effect in the transitional phase — as a transitional and not provisional measure. For them, the Israelis must recognize that a definitive solution will be reached according to the "land for peace" formula, and that land and air must immediately fall under the exclusive control of the Palestinian administration. As far as the powers of the autonomous administration are concerned, they should not be limited except for those cases where Israeli security may be jeopardized.
Contrary to the promises made by the Americans on the eve of the re-started negotiations, on these three points the Israelis have in no way changed their original positions — positions of the previous government, which everyone knew had no intention of ceding anything in the nego-
For Rabin and his government, the period of autonomy would not be transitional. He sees it as an intermediary solution between the current situation and the future situation in which everything would be an open question: independence, a federation with Jordan, a territorial compromise or even annexation by Israel. All these solutions are equally legitimate in the eyes of the Israeli delegation - and like Shamir, Rabin refuses to make any commitment whatsoever regarding the ultimate status of the occupied territories. That being the case, it can be understood why he also refuses to recognize any substantial powers for the Palestinian administration and any control over natural resources and the land.
This is clearly unacceptable for the Palestinians, however moderate they may be. Dani Rubenstein, writing in Haarets, May 14: "From the point of view of the Palestinians, the situation is bleak, and in their eyes the Washington negotiations are for naught. Israel is continuing its policy of faits accomplis in the West Bank and Gaza and is enforcing de facto its conception of the intermediary solution [...] The building of settlements continues and the government is not doing anything to limit the activities of the settlers, leaving in tact their privileges and letting them do as they wish. Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza interpret this as a strongarm policy aimed at imposing Israeli plans on the Palestinian population. So what is the use of negotiating?"
But the most forthright proponents of negotiations recognize that popular support for the process is declining in a dramatic fashion. A professor at Bir Zeit University told us recently that 80% of students were for an immediate end to the negotiations with Israel - and one can imagine that in the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip there is even greater disappoint-
The professor, who is hardly a radical, continues, "the more we negotiate the worse things get. What then is the point of this circus in Washington? Better to let the Israelis manage the situation all on their own, and stop sewing confusion among the people and in international public opinion. What Rabin is proposing is that we administer our own occupation - and that in the meantime, by sitting at the negotiations table, we give our tacit support to the policy of faits accomplis in the occupied territories. No thank you."
The Central Council of the PLO is scheduled to meet in two weeks in Tunis. If there is not a big turn in the Israeli policy, it is doubtful that Yasser Arafat will be able to continue the policy of participation in the negotiations.*
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