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Head
of the Palestinian delegation Yasser Abed Rabbo (R) and
head of the Israeli delegation Yossi Beilin (L) |
Once
again, ten years after the Oslo Accords, a number of prominent
Israeli and Palestinian personalities signed an unofficial
“peace” document in the presence of many international
figures, peace activists and prominent peace personalities, most
notable of whom were former US President
Jimmy Carter and Osama El Baz, the Egyptian President’s chief
political aide. The signing ceremony took place in Switzerland – the same
country which over a hundred years ago hosted the first
international Zionist conference, in which the idea of the
establishment of a homeland for Jews in Palestine was
officially launched.
The
agreement, which resulted from two years of secret negotiations,
is the brainchild of leading members of the Israeli left led by
former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, the
former Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister. The Europeans were
anxious to sponsor the recent “peace” initiative in order to
counterbalance Washington’s monopoly
of regional politics. European sponsorship was manifested
through the arrangement of dialogue sessions in resorts and
hotels across Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Britain
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The
Europeans wanted to counterbalance US
monopoly of regional politics. |
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The
Geneva Initiative is a 50-page document that contains proposals
aimed at solving some of the thorniest issues of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, including borders, security, refugees,
and the status of Jerusalem . In essence,
however, the initiative amounts to nothing more than a careful
repackaging of President Clinton’s peace plan of late 2000,
which was rejected by Yasser Arafat. The initiative envisages a
demilitarized Palestinian state encompassing 97.5% of the West Bank with shared
sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem, and a
phased Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories over a
30-month period. In the accords, the Palestinians agreed to
allow the Israeli air force to conduct training missions in
Palestinian airspace and pledged to prevent “terror,”
incitement and disarm all militias. Israel is also
allowed to legalize and retain settlements in the occupied West Bank that house
roughly 300,000 settlers, including all the post-1967 Jewish
settlements in Arab East Jerusalem. In exchange, the
Palestinians receive equivalent territorial compensation from Israel in areas of
the Negev Desert adjacent to
the Gaza Strip. In a controversial clause, Palestinians will
concede the Right of Return for their roughly 4 million refugees
and only a limited number will be allowed to settle in Israel at the
discretion of the Israeli authorities. On a legal level, the
agreement will replace all UN resolutions and previous
agreements pertaining to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
On
the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected the
Geneva Initiative and, on the same day the signing ceremony was
to take place, he sent his bulldozers for the construction of a
new Jewish settlement in Jerusalem.2
In addition, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, arrested
30 others, and blew up several houses after a deadly incursion
into several West Bank cities and refugee camps. Moreover, around 250 right-wing
rabbis issued a religious ruling branding the Israeli
negotiators involved in drafting the peace deal as “traitors
who should be shunned by the world.”3
Thousands
of Palestinians staged protests in Gaza and the West Bank against the
plan, also branding it as “treason” and a “black day in
the history of the Palestinian people.” 4
The main Palestinian military factions also rejected the
document, deploring its renunciation of the Right of Return for
Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat, who has been
confined to his headquarters in Ramallah for almost two years,
called the agreement “a brave and courageous initiative” but
refrained from issuing an official written PA statement
endorsing the accords.5
The
Significance & Implications of the Agreement
The
Accord was the Israeli left’s attempt to reinvent itself
for the elections…
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In
many ways, the Geneva Initiative is an attempt to address issues
relating to Israeli domestic politics more than giving anything
concrete to the Palestinians. In fact, the initiative could be
considered a tool used by the Israeli left to reinvent itself in
its new bid for power after a three year period of estrangement
and loss of influence.
The
Israeli left, which was routed in the January 2003 Israeli
elections, is hoping to capitalize on the enormous attention
given to the new peace plan, both domestically and
internationally. Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the
plan, said that “the Geneva Initiative is being used by many
in the peace camp as a platform for the next elections.” 6
Moreover, Avraham Burg, a Labor MP and former parliament
speaker, contended: “There is no doubt this is a new start for
the Israeli left. The left was actually bankrupt. We started
having a problem the minute we decided there was no partner.
Tonight we showed to the Israelis that we have a partner.” 7
Even Ra’anan Gissin, Sharon ’s media
advisor, called the Geneva document
“a Swiss golden calf” for the Israeli left, and said that it
was tantamount to Israel committing
suicide.8
It
makes a mockery of all previously known forms of state
sovereignty…
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More
importantly, however, the Geneva Initiative makes a mockery of
all previously known forms of state sovereignty when it calls
for a demilitarized Palestinian state with a large police force
whose only duty would be to enhance Israeli security and prevent
all forms of anti-Israeli incitement. Ironically, while Israel is allowed
to maintain the region’s largest arsenal of conventional and
unconventional weapons, the Palestinians would have to be
stripped of all kinds of weapons, however modest they might
be.
As
a result, the asymmetry of power between both sides becomes
evermore acute, and the Palestinians would live under the
constant shadow of Israel ’s absolute
military preponderance. In fact, even the corridor linking the West Bank and
Gaza is subject
to Israeli sovereignty with an unclear form of Palestinian
management.
And
it lowers the Palestinians’ ceiling for any future
negotiations.
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In
a step that eventually legalizes Israeli settlements, the
Palestinian negotiators involved in the initiative agreed that
the Israeli settlements of Ariel, Efrat and Har Homa would be
allowed to exist inside the newly formed Palestinian state, in
return for some lands in the Negev Desert adjacent to Gaza to be handed
to the PA. This leaves one wondering what kind of viable,
territorially contiguous, fully sovereign, Palestine state could
emerge under such conditions.
The
agreement scraps historic UN resolutions that legalize
Palestinian rights and replaces them with a series of
hypothetical accords that have not gained any legal or official
legitimacy. It attempts to impose new realities that eventually
lower the Palestinian ceiling in any future negotiations since a
new starting point for future talks would have been established.9
Nevertheless,
the most serious of all steps agreed upon in the initiative was
the abandonment of the Palestinian Right of Return for refugees,
without any mandate from any official Palestinian institution,
nor from the Arab countries which host them, and definitely not
from the refugees themselves who have been expelled and deprived
from their most basic rights since 1948.
Peace
or Piece by Piece?
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A
Palestinian mother holds a picture of her son, detained in
an Israeli jail, in protest of the Geneva Accord, Gaza
City. |
It
is all too easy to see that as time passes by there might not be
anything substantial to negotiate, given Israel ’s
continuous settlement-building in the Occupied Territories and its
construction of an apartheid wall inside the West Bank (notice how this was conveniently neglected in the Geneva
Initiative). Even if one considers it a viable alternative to
the current cycle of violence, the Geneva Initiative fails to
provide a convincing, long-term, just solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, it is simply a reformulation of
tried and tested initiatives and peace deals that were all
destined to failure from the moment the signatories left the
highly publicized signing ceremonies.
The
principle reason for the failure of such initiatives is that
their main purpose was to repackage the Israeli occupation of
the Palestinians and perpetrate the same conditions that lead to
Palestinian anger and frustration. In essence, most initiatives
often neglect facts on the grounds, and involve Palestinian
personalities whose basic interest is to return to the lavish,
carefree lifestyle which they enjoyed during the Oslo days and
beyond. After all, the Palestinians who participate in such
meetings never have to endure daily humiliation at Israeli
checkpoints, arrests at gunpoint, and house demolitions. Rather,
they roam around in the most expensive cars and are hosted in
the most luxurious international resorts.
One
must also bear in mind that the Geneva Initiative emerged from
the same Israeli school that produced the Oslo Accords. During
the 1990s – the decade of Oslo – Israel was
principally governed by the Israeli left. Between Rabin’s
election in June 1992, and Sharon ’s
overpowering of ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in February 2001,
there were nearly six full years of government by the Labor
Party and the left-leaning Meretz Party.
The
Palestinians who participate in such meetings never have
to endure the daily humiliation.
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During
the leadership of the so-called “doves” of the Israeli left,
Israeli politicians used the Oslo process to
further consolidate their colonial grip over the Palestinians:
existing settlements expanded, additional ones were built, and
the settler population more than doubled. Leftist Prime
Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres exploited the
asymmetrical balance of forces between the occupying Israeli
state and the occupied Palestinian society to enforce an “iron
wall” of continuous domination and exploitation of the
Palestinians.
It
is the Israeli left which bears the primary responsibility for
the failure of the “peace process” of the 1990s. In this
regard, one has enough reason to doubt that a likeminded group
of Israeli leftists would be able to bring about peace. After
all, no one from the Israeli left was willing to assume any
official Israeli responsibility for over half a century of
occupation, massacres, bloodshed, and daily humiliation of the
Palestinians. Instead, they consciously sought to link the
conflict to Palestinian “terrorism” and historical
rejectionism.10
No
peace deal that fails to consider Palestinian rights as
inalienable will ever succeed. If the realization of full
Palestinian aspirations does not come about now, future
generations of Palestinians will continue what their parents and
grandparents started. The Palestinians have shown a remarkable
ability to survive amidst great odds and their endurance is a
modern day miracle. The Israelis just have to hope that their
policies do not turn the whole Palestinian population into
ticking time bombs.
Kareem
M. Kamel is
an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt.
He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in
security studies, decision- making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently
assistant to the Political Science Department at the American
University
in Cairo.
1
“Geneva
Doomed Like Other Middle East Peace Initiatives,” Pro
Log November
20, 2003
2
“Israel Builds Settlements in al-Quds,” Al-Jazeera
(English) December 1, 2003
3
“Palestine Peace Plan Branded Treacherous,” Al-Jazeera
(English) December
1, 2003
4
Ibid.
5
Mazal Mualem, et al. “US Welcomes Geneva Accord; Arafat
Sends Letter of Support,”
Ha’aretz
December 2, 2003
6
“Geneva Initiative Galvanizes Israeli Left,” Al-Jazeera
(English) December 2, 2003
7
Ibid.
8
Mazal Mualem, et al. “US Welcomes Geneva
Accord; Arafat Sends Letter of Support,”
Ha’aretz
December 2, 2003
9
Azmi Bishara, “A
Glimmer of Nothing,” Al-Ahram Weekly October
23 – 29, 2003
10
Shiko Behar and Michael Warschawski, “The
Israeli Text and Context of the Geneva Accord,” Middle
East Report Online (MERIP) November
24, 2003
