News, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Time to consult the Israeli and Palestinian publics
Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star, 11/28/03
After several years of virtual stalemate in Palestinian-Israeli
peace-making, a recent flurry of activity suggests that something is in the
air.
Two separate grassroots Israeli-Palestinian peace frameworks based on the
two-state solution have been proposed (the Nusseibeh-Ayalon plan, and the
Geneva Agreement agreed by teams headed by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed
Rabbo). The UN Security Council has formally endorsed the Quartet’s “road
map” for peace and Palestinian statehood by 2005. To signal its displeasure
with Israel’s expansion of settlements and construction of the separation
barrier, the US has just deducted nearly $300 million from its $9 billion
loan guarantees to Israel. The new Palestinian government headed by Ahmed
Qorei plans top-level meetings with Israeli officials. Egypt this week wants
to host a gathering of all Palestinian political groups to discuss a
cessation of armed resistance against Israel, among other actions designed
to resume the negotiations for a permanent peace accord. Four former Israeli
internal security chiefs have publicly criticized the current Israeli
government policy toward the Palestinians. And even the Israeli prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, has suggested he may dismantle a few of the dozens
of small colonies that Israeli settlers have established in recent years
throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
The meaning of all this is unclear. It remains to be seen if the recent
flurry of activity is merely movement without substance, prompted by
frustration and desperation, or a tangible sign of substantive progress that
builds on the tough lessons of the past decade. I think we have good news
and bad news here.
The good news is that the multiple political initiatives are a sign that
both the grassroots and the political elites in Palestine and Israel cannot
long endure the political, economic and moral costs of the current violent
stalemate. All interested parties are exploring political negotiations for a
permanent peace agreement, including the Israeli and Palestinian
governments, public opinion and grassroots movements in both societies, and
external actors like the US, Egypt, the Quartet and the Security Council.
Particularly important are the signs of Israeli and Palestinian popular
support for a fair, negotiated resolution of the conflict. This week a
public opinion poll conducted by the Baker Institute at Rice University
found that 53 and 56 percent respectively of Israelis and Palestinians
support a peace accord along the lines of the proposed Geneva Agreement: two
adjacent states, an almost total Israeli withdrawal from the territories
occupied in 1967, division of sovereignty in Jerusalem, compensation for
refugees, and an end to the conflict.
Acknowledging the weaknesses of the Oslo process, the Geneva Agreement
proposes a multinational force to ensure security, and an implementation and
verification group to guarantee, monitor and resolve disputes relating to
the agreement’s implementation.
The bad news, however, is that all these political initiatives are unlikely
to succeed, because they all reflect the same flaw that resulted in the
failure of other serious peace-making attempts in the past decade the
Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, Taba and road map processes.
The fatal flaw comprises several related elements: a) a peace accord must
accept the fact of permanent Israeli settlements and land grabs east of the
1967 borders, especially around Jerusalem, comprising some 300,000 Israeli
settlers; b) Palestinian national rights remain hostage to Israeli security
requirements, and even after a permanent peace agreement the Palestinian
state and people are assumed to remain hostile to Israel, and therefore
require security-related constraints such as permanent demilitarization; c)
the proposed resolution of the Palestine refugees issue remains grievously
unfair, and is particularly problematic because it has not included any
serious consultation of the refugees themselves, and also leaves to Israel’s
determination how many refugees might be repatriated to their original lands
and homes in Israel.
The proposed accords reflect Israeli ideological perspectives, military
concerns, and territorial gains far more rigorously than they take into
consideration the parallel Palestinian perspectives. Despite these flaws,
the proposed accords are gaining many supporters and generating serious
public debate among Israelis and Palestinians, because the cost of the state
of war is too high for both sides. The popular consensus seems to be that a
flawed peace agreement is better than no peace agreement. Yet this is a sure
recipe for problems down the road, if both sides rush into a flawed
agreement simply to find an escape from current hardships.
A better approach would be to acknowledge the progress represented by the
proposed peace plans, while also admitting that some imbalances and flaws
must be addressed in order to achieve a truly fair, workable and permanent
peace accord. The most useful way to do this now is to bypass both the
incompetent governments and the small groups of sincere but slightly
marginalized would-be peace-makers on both sides, and consult the Israeli
and Palestinian publics more directly and democratically, especially the
Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian and Israeli publics will respond
reasonably to reasonable proposals.
Rami G. Khouri is the executive editor of The Daily Star
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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