MERIP Press Information - Note 38
The Peres-Arafat Agreement: Can It Work?
By Mouin Rabbani
(Mouin Rabbani is director of the Palestinian American Research Center in
Ramallah, the West Bank.)
Within hours of the November 2 announcement that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
and the Israeli Minister of Regional Cooperation, Shimon Peres, had agreed
to implement the understandings reached between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority (PA) at the October Sharm al-Sheikh summit, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed teenage Palestinian demonstrator Khalid Rezaq in the village of
Hizma near Jerusalem. Another Palestinian, Adli Abeid, succumbed to wounds
sustained a day earlier at the Mintar/Karni crossing on the eastern border
of the Gaza Strip. Peres pleaded for "two or three days without funerals" to
"normalize" the situation on the ground and permit a resumption of
negotiations. But the underlying political calculus on both sides does not
bode well for this latest attempt to restore the status quo as it existed
immediately prior to Likud leader Ariel Sharon's September 28 entrance to
the Haram al-Sharif.
The Peres-Arafat agreement, like the Sharm al-Sheikh truce, considers the
current confrontation in the occupied Palestinian territories as a security
problem characterized by conflict between disciplined forces. In this
formula, the Israeli and Palestinian political leaders need merely to
command their fighters to cease fire, in order to continue negotiations
toward a permanent settlement on the basis of "bridging proposals"
formulated by Israel and the United States after the collapse of the July
Camp David summit.
The basic flaw in this approach is that it treats the current Palestinian
uprising--now in its second month--as the cause of a security crisis rather
than the symptom of a political one. Instead of negotiating a new framework
for further negotiations, mediators have worked around the clock to restore
Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation and bring the rebellious
Palestinian population to heel within the context of the Oslo accords and
Camp David proposals. Yet a clear majority of Palestinians have come to
reject Oslo and Camp David as camouflage for continued colonization and
military occupation. This rejection precipitated and sustains the uprising.
WITHDRAWAL TO WHERE?
To make the Peres-Arafat formula work in practice, Israel must halt its
attacks upon the Palestinians, withdraw from positions occupied during the
uprising, lift the siege imposed upon Palestinian population centers and
restrain the state-sponsored vigilantism of Jewish settlers.
During the past several weeks, Israeli artillery bombardments have become a
nightly phenomenon from Rafah on the Gaza-Egyptian border to Jenin in the
extreme north of the West Bank. Heavy caliber machine guns mounted on tanks
and helicopter gunships, tank shells, LAW and TOW missiles and more recently
mortar fire have destroyed or damaged numerous civilian homes, though
casualties from such attacks have thus far been comparatively light. The use
of such massive firepower against Palestinian population centers in response
to generally ineffective small arms fire--and sometimes without
provocation--has terrorized and enraged Palestinians. Palestinians will see
the further use of such tactics, in any location and for whatever reason, as
an irreparable breach of the agreements.
An Israeli withdrawal of tanks and armored vehicles from positions occupied
during the crisis will do nothing to restore calm. While Israeli
spokespersons often correctly state that the IDF has not physically invaded
Area A (territory under full Palestinian control), the new fortified
positions nevertheless sit on the edges of or just within Palestinian
cities, in zones retaining the status of Area B (joint control) or C (full
Israeli control). Palestinians care little if these zones are designated as
A or Z, and insist that the Israeli military be removed from their cities
entirely. Since the majority of Palestinian casualties have occurred at the
locations the IDF currently occupies, only a full withdrawal of all Israeli
forces to the positions held prior to September 28 can make a difference.
SIEGES AND SETTLERS
The siege imposed by Israel upon the Palestinian territories operates on a
number of different levels: sealing the border between the West Bank, Gaza
Strip and Israel; sealing the border between the West Bank and Jordan, and
between the Gaza Strip and Egypt; closing Gaza International Airport;
sealing the main intersections within the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
preventing free movement of persons and goods between various Palestinian
districts; sealing individual population centers off from the outside world
by blocking all access roads; and imposing a round-the-clock curfew on
population centers located in Areas B and C. In the Israeli-ruled heart of
Hebron, H2, the 40,000 Palestinian residents have been confined to their
homes 24 hours a day since the start of the uprising. In the village of
Hawara outside Nablus, residents have been so confined since early October.
Israel is likely to gradually lift many of these restrictions in the coming
days, but not all. Further, on the eve of the uprising, Palestinians were
already subjected to a regime of restrictions and permits which far exceeded
anything imposed during the worst periods of the 1987-1993 intifada. This
"normal" closure will continue. Anger at the endless maze of restrictions on
the movement of goods and persons helped fuel the protests of the past five
weeks.
Attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers have escalated significantly, at
the height of the olive-harvesting season central to the Palestinian
economy. Such attacks--ranging from uprooting trees to indiscriminate firing
into residential areas to abduction and murder of villagers--are considered
a form of state-sponsored terror by Palestinians not only because the
settlers are armed by the state but also because the attacks are often
perpetrated under the protection of military escorts. Despite IDF demands
that the PA halt Palestinian demonstrations, Palestinians have reason to
doubt that the military will actively prevent further settler violence. The
prospect of genuine settler vigilantism is also real.
THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY'S TALL ORDER
Televised scenes of Palestinian security personnel using force to prevent
youths from approaching Israeli positions disprove the theory that
Palestinian demonstrators are automatons turned on and off with the flick of
a switch by Yasser Arafat. Such scenes should similarly disabuse viewers of
the notion that the PA encourages Palestinian mothers to "sacrifice their
children" to embarrass Israel on CNN. Over a quarter of the 150 dead and
several thousand wounded Palestinians have been children.
The Peres-Arafat agreement calls upon Arafat to abort a mass uprising only
partially of his making, one which he has controlled largely through minimal
interference in its development, and led by representing the aspirations for
which it stands. Even if Israel were to fully implement its own commitments,
this is a tall order.
Arafat's problem is that the uniformed Palestinian forces he does control
have been only marginally involved in confrontations. As far as possible,
these forces have deliberately held back from participating. The uprising is
being conducted, on the one hand, by masses of politically unorganized
Palestinians, primarily those between the ages of 15-25 with little or no
experience of the previous uprising, and on the other by armed irregulars
who have picked up where the early 1990s guerilla campaign within the West
Bank and Gaza Strip left off. Their tactics, enhanced by the expertise of
former PLO combatants and the lessons of Israel's defeat at the hands of
Hizballah, are showing increasing sophistication. The uprising's
organizational structure is in turn provided by the "Nationalist and Islamic
Forces in Palestine," a coalition dominated by Fatah on the basis of
informal understandings with the opposition and in which all Palestinian
political movements are represented. This coalition's relationship with the
Palestinian leadership and the PA more generally is neither subordinate nor
independent. The coalition exhibits varying degrees of organizational and
geographical autonomy as circumstances demand, and permit.
Hence Arafat's position as leader of Fatah--under the best of circumstances
anything but a disciplined political movement--does not automatically
translate into unambiguous control of either the uprising's organizational
leadership or even of Fatah's role within it. The uprising thrust to the
forefront that wing of the movement which while ultimately loyal has long
sought to distance Fatah from the PA and establish it as a mass-based
political party. This wing has become increasingly critical of if not
hostile to the Oslo process, and has seized upon the uprising to achieve its
broader national and narrower political objectives.
PALESTINIAN OPPOSITION
Another complicating factor for Arafat is the Palestinian--and particularly
Islamic--opposition. Sending a message that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak is not the only one capable of forming coalitions with forces opposed
to the Oslo process, the PA has largely ceased its campaign of repression
against Islamic militancy, made overtures to the political leadership of
Hamas and Islamic Jihad and permitted Fatah to work with the opposition
organizations. The basis for such cooperation appears to be that the
opposition will not contest Fatah's domination of the uprising, so long as
Fatah remains committed to its continuation, and the PA does not implement
security agreements intended to abort the rebellion. The opposition is
basically free to conduct activities--including armed operations--within the
occupied territories, provided it does not carry out attacks beyond the 1967
boundaries, to which the PA is resolutely opposed. Islamic Jihad's November
2 car bomb attack on a crowded market in West Jerusalem is a double message.
The attack puts Israel on notice that a security agreement with the PA will
not end the uprising and that continued Israeli attacks on Palestinian
civilians will henceforth exact a higher price. Islamic Jihad is also
warning the PA that attempts to restrain the opposition within the occupied
territories in the context of a security agreement will result in attacks on
civilian targets within Israel which will strain Israeli-Palestinian
relations to the breaking point.
A MATTER OF TIME
So the Peres-Arafat agreement's broader political context forms yet a third
set of challenges to its implementation. Fatah is highly unlikely to to lay
down its arms unless it can demonstrate tangible benefits for doing so. A
restoration of the status quo ante can hardly be considered a Palestinian
achievement. More to the point, if Fatah were to abandon the uprising now,
it will surrender much of the mass support lost during the past seven years
but recouped during the past month, and the uprising will in any case
continue under more militant leadership, including presumably a substantial
number of ex-Fatah cadres. Fatah appears to have made its choice between
coordination with Israel to restore Oslo and cooperation with the opposition
to terminate the occupation.
The PA, and Arafat personally, are confronted with Fatah's same dilemma.
While neither the Sharm al-Sheikh truce nor the Peres-Arafat agreement give
the Palestinians a quid pro quo for aborting the uprising, most senior PA
officials are already on record as demanding both a revised political
framework for further negotiations and an expansion of international
sponsorship beyond Washington, which has in many respects been less
forthcoming than Tel Aviv.
On balance, it appears that neither Israel nor the Palestinians will be able
to implement their commitments pursuant to the latest agreement, even if the
other does. The agreement's political context also raises questions about
the parties' willingness to fulfill their obligations. It is probably only a
matter of time before the agreements break down and a new and more violent
confrontation ensues. This time, Israel will continue to use massive
firepower against unarmed civilian demonstrators and heavy weaponry against
armed irregulars within population centers and against "sensitive" border
areas, but also increasingly resort to special operations and economic
warfare. Israel also appears determined to set the stage for an open
confrontation with the Palestinian security services so as to exercise more
and more direct political pressure on the political leadership. If the PA
submits to the Camp David proposals, fine. If not, Israel will unilaterally
impose these proposals in what the Barak government continues to term "Judea
and Samaria." Then the PA may heed popular demands for a more equitable
distribution of the body count, and might seek to transform a popular
uprising against military occupation into a recognizable war of national
liberation.
(When quoting from this PIN, please cite MERIP Press Information Note 38,
"The Peres-Arafat Agreement: Can It Work?" by Mouin Rabbani, November 3,
2000.)
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For analysis of the failure of the Sharm al-Sheikh truce, see MERIP Press
Information Note 34: After the Sharm al-Sheikh Summit: An Armed and
Temporary Truce:
http://www.merip.org/pins/pin34.html
For background on the uprising, see the special primer at MERIP's home page:
http://www.merip.org
The winter issue of Middle East Report (MER 217) will focus entirely on the
uprising and its likely regional impact. To order individual copies or
subscribe to Middle East Report, please call Blackwell Publishers at
1-800-835-6770.
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