M I D - E A S T   R E A L I T I E S   -   SPECIAL FEATURE

[MER - Normally we send out short, pithy quotes and analysis. But this article by Professor Naseer Aruri is so timely and so eye-opening that an exception is called for. Aruri makes clear what the Israelis and Americans are really up to with the so-called "peace process". Hopefully in the future he'll discuss the realities of Palestinian politics, the tyranny that is today's Arafat "PA", and the "client regimes" that subjugate the Arab world with American, and increasingly with Israeli, help.]

A CONVENTIONAL WISDOM There is a new conventional wisdom emerging about the Middle East peace process: Benyamin Netanyahu is a hindrance to peace. Adherents to the now circulating self-evident truth include international business people, their political counterparts (known nowadays as globalists), liberal U.S. commentators, Arab officials, EU leaders , American Jewish leaders nd former top U.S. officials from the Bush, Reagan and Carter administrations. Lately, even President Clinton, who had thus far behaved in accordance with the assumption that Israel can do no wrong and will be exempt from criticism even when it does, has hinted broadly that all is not well with the "peace process". Granted, he couched his displeasure in such insipid phrases like settlements are "unhelpful" to peace. His mild rebuke coincided with the much stronger statement authored by James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cyrus Vance and other former top officials, accusing Netanyahu of undermining Israel's security and U.S. interests. And yet, he insured that his remarks did not represent a open scolding to Israel as much as they appeared to counsel "both parties" not to "pre-empt the outcome" of final negotiations. But despite the humbug, we can still say that the President, who typically tailors most of his initiatives to the level of support by the public which counts, is also on the bandwagon, though decidedly in the back seat.

An underlying assumption of this verdict against Netanyahu by the distinguished jury is that a peace process, which had begun in 1978 at Camp David (when Vance was Secretary of State and Brzezinski was National Security Advisor), stumbled shortly afterward, resurrected and fine-tuned in 1991 by James Baker and colleagues in the Bush administration, and then offered to Clinton for blessing and promulgation in 1993, has been viable until the initiation of Netanyahu's tunnel and settlements policies in October and December 1996, respectively. A correlate of this assumption is that Netanyahu has departed from the "enlightened" path of Rabin and Peres, thus endangering the "peace process".

How valid is this emerging thesis? How valid is Netanyahus' own position that his policies conform with Oslo I and Oslo II? What were the parties' own perceptions of Oslo I and II? What are the prospects then for an Israeli-Palestinian peace with dignity?

First, the newly discovered self-evident truth is not very truthful. Since the very inception of this peace process--no matter the date - 1978 or 1993 - the party of Rabin and Peres has not embraced a radically different "peace" from that pursued by the party of Begin, Shamir and now Netanyahu. The conventional wisdom that Netanyahu has derailed Rabin's peace train and injured its most prominent passenger, Arafat, causing concern among the many international investors and speculators, stands in contradiction with the current realities of Israeli politics: Irrespective of the party label, Israel excludes Palestinian sovereignty, removal of the settlement, negotiating Jerusalem, repatriating the Palestinian refugees and dismantling the occupation, thereby upholding the status-quo.

It will be recalled that the concept of limited autonomy, which constitutes Israel's alternative to sovereignty, was first adopted by the Knesset in 1977 and dubbed the Begin Plan, the center piece of Likud's Camp David. It also became the essence of Labor's Oslo agreements, albeit in a more limited form than Begin's autonomy, and a far cry from Carter's and Sadat's "full autonomy". Labor's Allon Plan, based on the classical Zionist doctrine of "separation," has been sufficiently adapted to Likud's "mixture of population", in as much as that mixture now translates into cantonization.

Under Oslo II, the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are residents of enclaves "separated" from Israel, but part of a greater Israel. They are separated from the settlements, from Jerusalem, from each other within the West Bank and within Gaza, thus also rendering the two occupied region separate from each other, and of course from the Palestinians in the Diaspora. The unprecedented fragmentation is now becoming social, economic, physical, and of course regional, despite Oslo's provision of a single unit.

The Hebron model presages deeper fragmentation and sets a precedent for cantonizing even the canton itself. Netanyahu's insistence on re-negotiating Oslo II on Hebron hardly puts a dent on the already signed and sealed scheme of that city's partition, allocating the core to the 400 Jewish settlers while rendering the 120,000 indigenous Palestinians to the periphery. The December 1996 Hebron agreement has only minimized Netanyahu's attempt to re-negotiate the city's division and security responsibilities, established on 28 September, 1995. It should be emphasized here that the DOP grants Israel overall responsibility for the security of Israelis. That would make the issue of hot pursuit, presumably one of the stumbling blocs in the way of a Hebron settlement, superfluous. Israel does not need a specific clause to permit its forces to enter the Arab sector of Hebron designated as H-1. Slicing each of the West Bank and Gaza into three separate but not equal zones was in fact Labor's solution to Likud's earlier dilemma: how to insure that their absorption of the occupied territories (which contrasted with Labor's formula of separation) did not lead to a bi-national state. Oslo II provides Israel with the land without the people, thus meeting Labor's requirement of ethnic purity and separation, in conformity with classical Zionism, and at the same time accommodating Likud's proclivity for penetration deep into Arab population centers. The synthesized formula which is referred to euphemistically as mixed control arrangements is apartheid, pure and simple. It was hailed by Ariel Sharon, when theOslo map was first published in the Israeli press, as a vindication of his 1981 "Cantonization Plan".

At least, Labor's presumed "territorial settlement" and Likud's "functional settlement" are reconciled on terms which favor the latter. The increased decoupling of Gaza from the West Bank and the corresponding easier communication between the West Bank and Jordan suggest a possible Israeli convergence towards the early 70s formula advanced by Moshe Dayan, known as "functional compromise." Israel would maintain sovereignty over the West Bank while the Palestinians would have control over their interests in association with Jordan. Gaza would then become the closest thing to a Palestinian entity.

Netanyahu's policies, therefore, do not repudiate his predecessors "peace," but only the process. Whereas Rabin and Peres succeeded in enlisting their adversaries meaningful participation in the new governance structure,Netanyahu, who must cater to the ideological right-wing and the fundamentalist sector, has unwittingly made the adversary cum subcontractor seem like a national hero. The Oslo structure of governance had, after all, been facilitated by Arab and Palestinian potential centers of resistance, and financed by the global lending institutions and Western governments.

Netanyahu's present policies seem to threaten this system of dominance, despite their conformity with Oslo's objectives, hence the unrest in the components of the system--Israeli, Arab, Palestinian, Western. Dissent by credible sectors in the Israeli political and security establishments, by new and old Arab partners, by the P.A., by American Jewish leaders and within the international business community and Western governments, reflects a collective apprehension that Netanyahu's tampering with the process may impair the "peace," in which they all have a vested interest. Thus Netanyahu has gone "too far", even for the usually obedient P.A. functionaries and the compliant Arab regimes. Hence Arafat's sudden stoutness and the recent Arab threats to reconsider normalization; hence also Baker's reference to "progress made by the peace process over the last two decades", which could be harmed. That, according to the statement by the eight former U.S. officials, would "threaten the security of Israel, the Palestinians, friendly Arab states and undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East". Additionally, Israel's head of internal security warned that Netanyahu's settlement policy could invite a new explosion. Moreover, the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Eric Yoffie said in Los Angeles in mid-December that Netanyahu's decisions on settlements are especially"troubling" due to the expected increase proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Again, regional stability and progress are behind the broad concern being expressed by such a heterogenuous group.

Netanyahu's response to his recalcitrant critics has thus far been characteristically steadfast and arrogant. It is they, not Israel who must change policies: "the policy of this government is to strengthen settlement in places where it exists...these are natural needs and necessary growth". That was after all, Israel's policy under Rabin and Peres, resulting in the growth of West Bank and Gaza settlements by 49 percent during the past four years under their rule. According to the authoritative "Report on Israeli Settlements" November 1996, the population in annexed East Jerusalem grew by 33 percent during the same period, while more than a hundred settlements increased their population.

The difference between the two governments relates more to public relations than to substance. Netanyahu's approach is to be up-front and abrasive rather than defensive and wary. It is not dissimilar to a Gingrich-like style, which eventually lost out to Clinton's illusive yet more appealing approach. He feels unimpelled to disguise or finesse Israel colonization or to deny that the interim phase and the final settlement are one and the same. Hence, his proudly declared non-negotiability of virtually all the final status issues. Colonization equals freedom of movement for Jews anywhere in the "land of Israel". It is manifest destiny, which Americans, of all people, are expected to understand given their mid-Western historical legacy.

With regard to the issue at hand, the Likud government's statement on settlements makes no attempt to hide the fact of non-negotiability: the settlements population would simply have their National Priority A status restored in order to "reinstate social and economic parity between (them) and other developing areas of the country". What is illegal under international law is thus turned on its head and transformed to a higher moral purpose: to prevent discrimination between post-1967 and pre-1967 settlers. The government's statement makes clear that post-1967 settlements have effectively been annexed, since the "corrective action" will grant them benefits similar to those enjoyed by settlers in what became Israel proper after 1948-"the Negev and Galilee".

Moreover, the official statement correctly posits that the government's action on settlements does not contradict either Oslo I or II. Neither of these agreements "contains provisions prohibiting or restricting the establishment or expansion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza". What is actually prohibited is formal action that would alter the legal status of the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps no one had explained to Arafat's negotiators in 1993 that the clause does not proscribe building Jewish settlements, but in fact prohibits him from declaring a state, at least during the interim phase. As for Israel, the clause prohibits formal annexation, but not the defacto annexation which Rabin and Peres were exercising and which Netanyahu is now continuing, though less discreetly. Netanyahu's government is not the only one on record vowing that the settlements will grow and remain intact forever, despite final status negotiations, but Rabin had reiterated the same on numerous occasions. Shortly before his death, when he submitted Oslo II to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, Rabin said: "I wish to remind you, we made a commitment, meaning we reached an agreement, we made a commitment to the Knesset not to uproot any settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement, nor to freeze construction and natural growth". This quote was utilized by Netanyahu's government policy statement defending its view that no change has occurred in settlement and land policy.

The outcry by the P.A. and in the Arab world, as well as the general protest in the international community continue despite the lack of fundamental differences between the two parties in the final outcome. They are differences in tone, ambiance and style , which make Labor more adept at mollifying the P.A. Moreover, Arafat and company have been willing to be hoodwinked by Labor's sweetened approach.

Since the inception of the process at Madrid, a period which witnessed two Likud and one Labor governments, it became rather clear that regional and global imperatives created a convergence of interests between Israel and the PLO. Israel's "security" requirements would have to be reconciled with her quest for international legitimacy, and together, both of these would have to be matched against Arafat's need for some kind of a state. A formula for co-existence based on these considerations had emerged in the DOP in September 1993 and was explicated in Oslo II two years later. Israel under Rabin proceeded to insure its requirements through the Talmudic phraseology of the Oslo documents prepared solely by the legal staff of its foreign ministry. Arafat, on the other hand, who had effectively conceded U.N. guaranteed Palestinian right, in exchange for the now-proven worthless Baker assurances, was left without legal recourse, similar to what Rabin had in his DOP.

Arafat's only recourse, undertaken as a mere gamble, was the potential for pressure-by Washington, Cairo, and the international community. The grotesque asymmetry has enabled the Labor government to keep Arafat on a short leash whereby concession after concession could be exacted in return for an eventual formula of co-existence that would grant him an entity below a state in which he could declare "independence" within Israeli frontiers along the Jordan River and El-Arish. The revelations by Yossi Bellin, deputy foreign minister in the Labor government about a Palestinian state,with its capital in Abu-Dis( published by the Associated Press on July 31, 1996 ) are a case in point. Similarly, The "Stockhom Document", which was to be released on May 9, 1996 , was another example of Labor's grand-standing, presumably aborted by Netanyahu. Herein lies the real difference between the two Israeli governments: Labor was willing to allow Arafat to take home something he could call a state. The fact that the settlements and Area C (70 percent of the West Bank) would firmly negate statehood was to be overlooked. By contrast, the present government of Benyamin Netanyahu seems unwilling to accommodate even the necessary diplomatic ambiguities. The coalition of militarists, right-wing ideologues, and fundamentalists is bent on not disguising their real intentions and determined to give Arafat much less trappings to take home. The potential for violence is what really disturbs the Arab governments, Washington and the international community. Otherwise, the two governments are two sides of the same coin. (12/26/96)

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