Washington Report, April 2006, pages 24-25

United Nations Report

Quartet Not Only Playing Out of Tune, But in Mono Rather Than Stereo

By Ian Williams

SINCE the best weapon left in the hands of the Palestinians is the body of U.N. resolutions and international law, it was obvious why for many years the U.S. and Israel sought to exclude the United Nations from any role in the so-called peace process. When Boutros Boutros-Ghali, one of the architects of the original Camp David, was secretary-general, they relented enough to allow the U.N. an observer role, which was expanded when the organization became one of the four legs of the so-called Quartet that is the U.S., EU, Russia and U.N. together.

It was clear that Washington called the shots, and saw the Quartet’s role as inhibiting opposition to the growing abandonment of Palestinian claims and disguising the shredding and rewriting of the road map.

Now, the election of Hamas has brought the tensions to the surface. The result clearly shocked everyone involved—including Hamas, which had pragmatically hoped that as a major opposition they would have power, while Fatah would have the responsibility. However, a significant number of Palestinians seem to have treated the elections as a referendum on the failure of the peace process to proceed in any way that was at all meaningful to them.

In the limbo of non-occupation, they not only were less secure physically and economically, but also reminded daily by Israeli death squads that the Palestinian Authority may indeed have been Palestinian, but that it had little authority—and what it did have was not exercised very constructively. The PNA-controlled areas can best be described as a destructive synthesis of a Bantustan and a free-fire zone.

At least until mid-February, there was the still small voice of reason in the howlings from Likud about the Hamas victory. Alvaro de Soto, the U.N. special representative for the Middle East, condemned the Israeli threat to withhold tax and customs revenues from the Palestinian National Authority, “These funds belong to the Palestinians and it is not right to retain them,” he pointed out.

As he says, the money represents tax and customs revenue collected by Israel on behalf of the PNA, not some grant-in-aid from the Israeli government. De Soto also noted that the decision “contradicts the resolution taken by the international Quartet Committee,” which had announced that international donors at least should continue their financial aid of the interim government, until Hamas forms a new one. Again, the money the Israelis are holding onto is not even aid, but the PNA’s own money.

There are of course, very real problems with a Hamas government. Quite apart from its attitude to Israel, its attitude to other Palestinians is unlikely to reassure Christian or more secular members of the community. On every level from hijab-wearing to the odd tipple of the local beer and raki, Hamas is likely to run athwart one of the more secular and modernizing populations in the region.

But some reciprocity is called for. Hamas is not alone in being trapped by its theology. It is difficult to treat politics like mathematics, but it is always useful to draw up an equation of demands and to substitute the political terms as if they were algebraic. Look at the Israeli demands, and delete “Palestinians” and “Hamas” and replace with “Israel” and “Likud” or “Kadima.” You will soon note that what sounds self-evident to Israel supporters looks much less if the equation is reversed in this way.

For example, Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized last month, “It is the view of the Quartet that all members of a future Palestinian Government must be committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the road map.”

Which, however inadvertently, sums up the problems with the road map. Has anyone recently been heard to demand that all members of the present, let alone any future Israeli government must be committed to nonviolence, recognition of a completely independent Palestinian state, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the road map?

As far as this writer is aware, no member of the Likud government has declared unequivocal acceptance of the Palestinian state, let alone committed itself to Resolution 242 and other U.N. resolutions on the issue. It is possible that one of them may have expressed regret for terrorist acts such as the assassinations of U.N. Envoy Count Folke Bernadotte, or the objectively pro-Nazi assassination of Lord Moyne during World War II, not to mention the Deir Yassin massacre. If they did, however, it was not very loud or widely broadcast. (Ironically, since Moyne was the heir of the Guinness brewing empire, Hamas may even have approved.)

On a more contemporary note, the Israeli government continues incursions into the PNA areas, with targeted killings and extensive collateral damage to ordinary civilians. In complete defiance of international law, let alone the road map, it has been busily changing the situation on the ground, expanding settlements at a breakneck speed and building its annexation wall in defiance of a ruling by the world’s highest legal authority, the International Court of Justice.

The U.S. government has demanded that the PNA hand back $50 million in aid to keep it from falling into the hands of a government that does not respect the road map. I would advise that no one hold her breath waiting for a demand for repayment by Tel Aviv of the $3 billion-plus in annual checks sent to an Israeli government that has effectively been ripping up the road map while laughing in the face of Washington’s repeated, albeit weakened, stipulations on settlement building.

On the theological front, Hamas appears to be offering wiggle room. Both its theology and its populist politics in the refugee camps inhibit it from recognizing the 1948 boundaries as final. (Nor does Israel, of course.) Offering a long-term indefinite hudna, truce or cease-fire, however, in practical terms is close to recognition.

If that seems not far enough, in the same spirit of reciprocity, perhaps the Quartet could insist that every member of the Israeli government renounce all claims of settlement or ownership based on biblical deeds to Greater Israel, Eretz Israel? Or that they should at least offer rights of mutual settlement: If Israelis can settle on the other side of the Palestinian line because Moses looked down from the highlands on it once, then surely Palestinians can live in Israel, because they and their ancestors actually hold current good title to their homes.

However, these are the fine tunings of the negotiations. There is a firm basis of a settlement, to which the Arab League has asked Hamas to subscribe, and that is the Beirut declaration, which effectively enjoins both sides to accept the U.N. resolutions, the Green Line and mutual co-existence. By all means, pressure Hamas to accept it. But let us hope that the European Union and other members of the Quartet will take a leaf from the Church of England Hymn Book and apply pressure on Likud and Kadima, and indeed Labor, to accept it also.

Ian Williams covers global politics and the U.N. for a wide range of publications, and now has a blog, <Deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

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