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The Time Factor And Arafat’s Decision
By Dina Rashed
5/1/2001
Listening to the comments of American foreign policy officials and reading about leaked reports to the American media, one wonders whether the current round of peace talks is about saving people or about saving time.
Almost every news story or analysis about the Middle East conflict contains, by the second or third paragraph, some mention of time running out or the clock ticking. Clinton is racing against time, in his last few days of being in office, to wrap up a peace agreement, and Barak is bidding for the same before February 6th, the date of the upcoming Israeli election.
The repetitious use of these phrases is becoming more and more of a cliché – as if the main issue in the entire equation is to beat time rather than to reach a lasting agreement to a half-century conflict that has worn out both sides.
It is surprising how little consideration is being given to the rights and the future of the four million Palestinians who have lived with the humiliation of their land being occupied and with forced exile from their homes for that long – as compared to that being given to the election of the Israeli Prime Minister and to saving the legacy of an American president as peacemaker.
In fact, the reality is that most Palestinians would rather continue the peace talks with the new administration of President-Elect George Bush than with Clinton, whom they feel has sympathized more with Israeli demands and, in his quest to reach a final agreement under his administration, ignored the true welfare and the emotional and psychological readiness of the Palestinian people.
Another notable feature in these discussions is the weight being attached to Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat’s considerations regarding who the next Israeli Prime Minister should be. One wonders, if he is such a powerful figure that his considerations will help determine who will next govern one of the “closest to democratic” countries in the Middle East, why he must run around desperately trying to save the lives of his nation’s youth and help his people regain their homes.
This presumption regarding Arafat’s role implicitly means that, if the hard-line Likud premier is elected and halts the progress of the peace talks, Arafat will be the one blamed for a choice made by the Israeli people.
The new proposal being presented by President Clinton, under the pressure of a ticking clock, challenges the Palestinians on three main issues: the size and shape of a prospective Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. However, these three issues are not merely side matters – they make up the core of the conflict. They cannot possibly be agreed upon simply because there is a change of power – either in Israel or in the United States.
While the American side is providing little detail or explanation in its proposals, Chairman Arafat is being asked to save the region by agreeing to it – or else, as was the case following the Camp David talks last July, he will be bombarded by accusations that range from him stalling the peace talks, being unable to lead his people and lacking the courage to end the conflict to his being greedy and always asking for more land and concessions from the Israeli side.
The mechanism of decision-making is yet another challenge pressing Arafat. Despite the fact that there is a Palestinian negotiating team, the Palestinian participation remains virtually a one-man show. This means that all of the Palestinians are expected to abide by any agreements Arafat makes, even if they do not accept its terms. Barak, on the other hand, does not carry such a huge responsibility; for one, he has already resigned as Prime Minister, and it is accepted that the Israelis have doubts about the legitimacy of any peace agreement that can be reached before their elections.
Also, even if Arafat tactically accepts the terms of the American proposal in order to avoid Sharon’s ascent to the Israeli office, this does not guarantee the re-election of Barak who is faced with a depletion of support in his parliament and is lagging behind Sharon in public opinion polls.
The Palestinian negotiating team is of the strong opinion that the proposal contains major flaws regarding the rights of the Palestinian people. In addition, even if concessions were introduced by both sides, the Israeli people are in a position to accept or decline the agreement by not re-electing Barak whereas the Palestinians do not have such an option – they are expected to honor whatever concessions their leader accepts as part of the agreement. Furthermore, any additional negotiations between the newly elected Israeli premier and the Palestinians would treat the Palestinian concessions made now as givens.
Most Palestinian and Israeli officials involved with the peace process have cast doubts on their ability to reach a final agreement under the pressure of the clock. And the prudence of the American administration as an effective broker is again challenged. It was criticized before, when the violence erupted last September, for trying to too quickly enforce the peace process and not allowing enough time for the people on both sides to prepare for a settlement. Now, it is still trying to save the process – under the same logic of the ticking clock.
Not to mention that the administration is trying to reach a lasting peace agreement without providing necessary details – which might possibly work during the first phases of the deal, but would not work in later phases.
The Palestinian negotiating team wrote the following to the American administration on the first day of this year:
While we are totally committed to ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we believe that this can only be achieved once the issues that have caused and perpetrated the conflict are resolved in full. This, in turn, can only be achieved by a comprehensive agreement that provides detailed modalities for the resolution of the issues at the core of the conflict. It must be remembered that, in reaching a settlement between Israel and, respectively, Egypt and Jordan, the end of conflict came only after the final, detailed peace treaty.
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