Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 10

Affairs of State

 

This Way Out…Egypt and Jordan Have a Plan

 

By Eugene Bird

As mortar bombs were launched from Palestinian Gaza and Israeli missiles fired from U.S.-made Apache helicopters continued to strike Palestinian security forces, the Department of State spokesperson, in a regrettable tone of voice, spoke of “excessive force” and “retaliatory killings.”

The press corps was quick to ask if the Bush administration had changed its policy toward balancing its views of the continued violence between Israel and the Palestinians. No, was the reply, the spokesman was simply repeating terminology used in the State Department’s latest Human Rights Report.

After two weeks of visits to Washington by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Jordan’s King Abdullah, both of whom stressed the danger of a possible escalation of the violence beyond the borders of Israel, the administration is feeling the pressure of the facts on the ground.

 

Negotiating Team Visit

A working-level Palestinian negotiating team visiting Washington at the same time as the two leaders briefed the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (but not its House counterpart), as well as the Department of State and National Security Council. The three-person delegation included two Yale Law School graduates and a London-trained lawyer. For the first time, an official Palestinian negotiating legal team went public with an explanation of why President Yasser Arafat had not agreed to last year’s Camp David terms and of how the intifada resulted from the Israeli military presence on the Harem al-Sharif. Most importantly, however, the team sought to convey the PLO/PA’s proposal for a way out of the present cycle of violence.

The delegation, headed by Omar Dajani, legal adviser to the Ramallah-based Negotiating Support Unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called for ending the confrontation by a series of steps specified in a two-page document originated by Egypt and Jordan and sent to the European Union, Israel and the United States.

They were not able, they said, to share the actual document with the public. However, their briefing was very detailed on how the negotiations might be resumed and what it would take to meet minimum Palestinian demands for freedom and an end to the occupation.

 

The Four Propositions

The Egypt-Jordan proposal is simple and straightforward:

1) The implementation of Sharm el-Sheikh II, which includes an end to the intifada, removal of Israeli tanks and an end to the closure or siege against Palestinian towns. A specific step-by-step timetable would lend confidence to the process.

2) Israeli implementation of already-signed agreements, specifically including the third West Bank [?] re-deployment, a commitment to the land-for-peace equation, and an end to settlement activity, including “natural expansion.” For their part, the Palestinians would resume security cooperation and continue the collection of weapons from the civilian population.

3) The initiation of Israeli-Palestinian parallel talks, starting with discussions on what has already been agreed. A second track would consist of talks on a comprehensive and final permanent status.

4) Third-party monitoring of the commitments of both sides.

Regarding monitoring, delegation member Nisreen Haj-Ahmad admitted that the only third party she could think of that Israel would accept was the United States. Since the Bush-Powell administration has already ended Central Intelligence Agency participation in such cooperative monitoring, the last point remains very doubtful.

 

Objections to Camp David II

What was wrong with the original Camp David II proposals? Dajani, who along with other legal advisers was kept at arm’s length during those talks, said there were three essential points which must be met in any future agreement: The Palestinians would demand independence, including freedom of movement. They would require a viable state that would have developmental potential independent of Israel, and territorial contiguity. Finally, there would have to be choices given to all Palestinian refugees. They might choose to stay in their present location, to take compensation and move to another country, or to return to their homes in Israel. The Camp David proposal fell short on all three counts.

Even during the later negotiations in Taba, Dajani pointed out, just before Ehud Barak’s fall from power, there had been no Israeli maps that met any of the three criteria. Jerusalem’s Palestinian population would be relegated to “islands” surrounded by Jewish colonies. Jerusalem would extend to the Jordan frontier, further precluding any Palestinian contiguity. And despite Israel’s agreement to allow both, Dajani added, safe passage from Gaza to the West Bank is limited to people, not goods.

Furthermore, key parts of the West Bank, such as the Latroun salient, which holds a significant portion of the water resources in its underground aquifers, would remain under Israeli control, prejudicing any long-term resolution of the water problem under international law.

 

New Media Orientation for Palestinians

“Why,” Palestinian journalist George Hishmeh asked the team, “have we not heard of this history of Camp David and the reasons for the intifada before?” Better late than never, Dajani responded. He added that another lawyer in Ramallah on the negotiating support unit team, Michael Tarazi, was devoting full time to media work on the Palestinian effort to get back to the negotiating table. (Tarazi’s e-mail address is < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >, and the Web site is <nad-plo.org>)

The Bush administration, meanwhile, was faced with two letters from Congress, one signed by 87 senators and the other by 200 representatives (see “Congress Watch,” p. xx), calling for no high-level U.S. officials to talk with Arafat and the closing of the PLO/PA office in Washington. So far, the administration has not responded to the letters.

President George W. Bush has set neither a policy nor a team in place. He is relying on the same individuals at the NSC and at State who monitored the Middle East under Clinton. One of those officials, in an off-the-record briefing hours after President Mubarak lunched with President Bush, said that the administration’s vision remained the adherence to U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

 

Mubarak’s Washington “Rally”

Dr. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, working with some Jewish organizations, notably the Israeli Peace Forum, arranged for President Mubarak to speak to an audience of 2,000 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. As it was well covered, this represented Mubarak’s best chance to reach an American audience—although the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations refused to attend. One of the two rabbis who were in attendance was reported to have immediately sent a protest to the Council, saying it had no right to go public with such a boycott in the name of all 52 organizations in the Council. Along with Arab-American groups [?], representatives of at least two Jewish organizations helped arrange the unique event.

Zogby himself complained that the new administration had rolled back American involvement to the point where the crisis might continue and reach its inevitable conclusion—further violence.

King Abdullah of Jordan had a quite different public appearance at the National Press Club, where the audience of correspondents asked some tough questions and the king, marking his second anniversary in power, answered in a manner that had the audience applauding. He emphasized that anything can be done once one decides to do it, that the Middle East had taken America too much for granted and that the Arab parties must take more responsibility for addressing the problem of the Arab-Israel dispute.

But he warned, too, that the current crisis must not be allowed to continue, and that a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations must be brokered by the U.S. and other powers.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon answered complaints from Jewish colonists on the West Bank that he is not being much tougher than his predecessor had been, and accusing him of being ineffective.

Sharon responded by asserting that he has a plan that is being implemented to end the intifada. Israel’s attack on the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza came two days later.

Unless some common sense and workable approach to implementing land for peace as promised in 1993 is adopted—such as the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative detailed above—one can only conclude that Bush’s next 100 days in office will see further violence and further estrangement of the parties. Will he step forward and adopt a new vision, beyond just ending the violence through low-level negotiations concerned with security alone? One can only hope that the benign neglect of his first 100 days will be recognized for the dead end it is.

Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.

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