Dec 14th 2000
TWICE in the past four years, Yasser Arafat has done his bit in an Israeli election. In 1996, he tried to help Shimon Peres to the prime ministership by rounding up hundreds of Palestinian suspects with some alleged link to the suicide-bomb attacks in Israel. In 1999, he helped Ehud Barak by drawing back from his pledge to declare a Palestinian state. Now, he is being told that Mr Barak’s best chance of re-election in the coming poll is to clinch a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But this time Mr Arafat, publicly at least, seems unimpressed.
“It means peace talks will stop until the elections are over,” said Mr Arafat on hearing that Mr Barak had resigned as prime minister. “The truth is”, he added, “we do not believe in his ability to make compromises that are acceptable to us.”
A prime reason for Mr Arafat’s disenchantment is the intifada and Israel’s reaction to it. In the past 11 weeks, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 273 Palestinians from the occupied territories (plus 13 Israeli Arabs) and wounded over 10,000. The government has imposed a blockade that slices the Gaza strip into six separate enclaves, and the West Bank into 24, costing the Palestinian economy $505m, according to the latest UN report. The severity of Israel’s retaliation is unmatched by any previous government, Labour or Likud, and few Palestinians are now prepared to acknowledge a difference between the two Israeli parties.
This sums up the Palestinians’ dilemma. Most of them accept that at the Camp David summit last July Mr Barak went further than any other Israeli leader in the proposals he suggested for solving the conflict. But, say the Palestinians, these proposals remain in the realm of ideas. On the ground, Mr Barak was no better, and in some ways worse, than his unlamented predecessor and possible successor, Binyamin Netanyahu.
On December 4th, Israel’s Peace Now movement released its latest report on settlement construction in the occupied territories. In his first 18 months in office, Mr Barak had built 2,830 new units in the West Bank and Gaza and increased the settler population by 13,000 to a total of 195,000, excluding the 180,000 Israelis who live in occupied East Jerusalem. Peace Now’s settlement expert, Amiram Goldblum, concluded that in such matters as issuing building tenders, or bestowing economic privileges on the settlers, there had been no difference in Mr Barak’s and Mr Netanyahu’s policies.
The one difference, say the Palestinians, is that Mr Netanyahu was lambasted for these policies while Mr Barak has continued them with barely a murmur of disapproval. For this reason, there are Palestinians who genuinely believe that a victory for Mr Netanyahu, or for Likud’s present leader, Ariel Sharon, would be better for their cause than another dose of Mr Barak.
It is unclear whether Mr Arafat subscribes to this view. His apparent reluctance to bale out Mr Barak stems rather from the fact that he has heard nothing from him that would make it worth his while. Just before his decision to call an election, Mr Barak dusted down the old idea of a “long-term interim agreement” with the Palestinians as a prelude to a final one. Israel would recognise a Palestinian state and pull back from another slice of the West Bank. The contentious issues of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees would be deferred to another day.
But it turned out that Mr Barak was contemplating withdrawing from no more than another 10% of the territory, which would leave the Palestinians in full and partial control of only half the West Bank. “It is actually the same agreement Ariel Sharon offered us in 1998,” says one of the Palestinian negotiators, Yasser Abed Rabbo.
After his resignation, Mr Barak was not much more forthcoming. Although he said he was “looking all the time for a way to renew the negotiations,” his suggestions did not appeal to the Palestinians. In any final agreement, he said, Israel would annex “80% of the settlers in Judea and Samaria”.
The Palestinians calculate that this would amount to much the same as the Israeli-proposed deal they refused at Camp David: a state in less than 90% of the West Bank, divided into two or three cantons. At Camp David, the Americans had bettered this suggestion with a proposed deal of 92%. The Israelis had said they would consider that if the Palestinians did. But both percentages were unacceptable to the Palestinians, whose counter-offer was 97%. Now, given the sacrifices and the temper of the uprising, the Palestinians are even less likely to be tempted by Mr Barak’s latest suggestion.
TWICE in the past four years, Yasser Arafat has done his bit in an Israeli election. In 1996, he tried to help Shimon Peres to the prime ministership by rounding up hundreds of Palestinian suspects with some alleged link to the suicide-bomb attacks in Israel. In 1999, he helped Ehud Barak by drawing back from his pledge to declare a Palestinian state. Now, he is being told that Mr Barak’s best chance of re-election in the coming poll is to clinch a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But this time Mr Arafat, publicly at least, seems unimpressed.
“It means peace talks will stop until the elections are over,” said Mr Arafat on hearing that Mr Barak had resigned as prime minister. “The truth is”, he added, “we do not believe in his ability to make compromises that are acceptable to us.”
A prime reason for Mr Arafat’s disenchantment is the intifada and Israel’s reaction to it. In the past 11 weeks, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 273 Palestinians from the occupied territories (plus 13 Israeli Arabs) and wounded over 10,000. The government has imposed a blockade that slices the Gaza strip into six separate enclaves, and the West Bank into 24, costing the Palestinian economy $505m, according to the latest UN report. The severity of Israel’s retaliation is unmatched by any previous government, Labour or Likud, and few Palestinians are now prepared to acknowledge a difference between the two Israeli parties.
This sums up the Palestinians’ dilemma. Most of them accept that at the Camp David summit last July Mr Barak went further than any other Israeli leader in the proposals he suggested for solving the conflict. But, say the Palestinians, these proposals remain in the realm of ideas. On the ground, Mr Barak was no better, and in some ways worse, than his unlamented predecessor and possible successor, Binyamin Netanyahu.
On December 4th, Israel’s Peace Now movement released its latest report on settlement construction in the occupied territories. In his first 18 months in office, Mr Barak had built 2,830 new units in the West Bank and Gaza and increased the settler population by 13,000 to a total of 195,000, excluding the 180,000 Israelis who live in occupied East Jerusalem. Peace Now’s settlement expert, Amiram Goldblum, concluded that in such matters as issuing building tenders, or bestowing economic privileges on the settlers, there had been no difference in Mr Barak’s and Mr Netanyahu’s policies.
The one difference, say the Palestinians, is that Mr Netanyahu was lambasted for these policies while Mr Barak has continued them with barely a murmur of disapproval. For this reason, there are Palestinians who genuinely believe that a victory for Mr Netanyahu, or for Likud’s present leader, Ariel Sharon, would be better for their cause than another dose of Mr Barak.
It is unclear whether Mr Arafat subscribes to this view. His apparent reluctance to bale out Mr Barak stems rather from the fact that he has heard nothing from him that would make it worth his while. Just before his decision to call an election, Mr Barak dusted down the old idea of a “long-term interim agreement” with the Palestinians as a prelude to a final one. Israel would recognise a Palestinian state and pull back from another slice of the West Bank. The contentious issues of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees would be deferred to another day.
But it turned out that Mr Barak was contemplating withdrawing from no more than another 10% of the territory, which would leave the Palestinians in full and partial control of only half the West Bank. “It is actually the same agreement Ariel Sharon offered us in 1998,” says one of the Palestinian negotiators, Yasser Abed Rabbo.
After his resignation, Mr Barak was not much more forthcoming. Although he said he was “looking all the time for a way to renew the negotiations,” his suggestions did not appeal to the Palestinians. In any final agreement, he said, Israel would annex “80% of the settlers in Judea and Samaria”.
The Palestinians calculate that this would amount to much the same as the Israeli-proposed deal they refused at Camp David: a state in less than 90% of the West Bank, divided into two or three cantons. At Camp David, the Americans had bettered this suggestion with a proposed deal of 92%. The Israelis had said they would consider that if the Palestinians did. But both percentages were unacceptable to the Palestinians, whose counter-offer was 97%. Now, given the sacrifices and the temper of the uprising, the Palestinians are even less likely to be tempted by Mr Barak’s latest suggestion.
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