LONDON – If it seems almost impossible to conceive how the Israelis and the Palestinians will progress further in their negotiations following the failure of Camp David, it gives some comfort to see how far they have come.
Less than a decade ago they didn’t even talk to each other. Israel said it would never accept a Palestinian entity much less a state. As recently as early 1999, shortly before prime minister Ehud Barak was elected, deposing the rightist Benjamin Netanyahu who resisted even the tiniest compromise with the Palestinians, Yossi Beilin, a well-known dove of Barak’s Labour party and Michael Eitan of the opposition Likud party drew up an informal cross-party proposal for a Palestinian state. At the time it was regarded as a stalking horse for Barak. It was considered as bold as it was stark. But Israel would retain all water resources, maintain complete sovereignty over Jerusalem and the settlements on the West Bank- including the surrounding lands for “natural” growth. Israel would continue to hold responsibility for security along the Jordan river. Thus Israel would still control 50-70% of the West Bank and around 35% of the Gaza strip. The question of the return of the Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Israel, from whence they were evicted during and after the 1948 war was ignored.
As the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies commented at the time, “even if such a Palestinian “state” contained all of the Occupied Territories’ Palestinian residents, it would be little more than an archipelago of isolated enclaves, with little prospect of developing the communication and economic structures necessary to operate as a real sovereign entity.”
What happened at Camp David, by this light, was simply a miracle. Not only did Barak offer the Palestinians a real state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza, he put forward a sensible proposal for the solution of the Palestinian refugees and he broke the great Israeli taboo of discussing the future of Jerusalem with a proposal (albeit in mosaic form) of Palestinian administrative control and sovereignty over the Arab areas of Jerusalem and the Muslim Holy sites.
As we all now know Yasser Arafat did not consider Barak’s offer on Jerusalem enough. “The Arab leader has not been born who would give up Jerusalem”, he was reported as saying. A “special regime” or autonomy over Palestinian neighbourhoods in the Old City is not sovereignty, say the Palestinians, but that’s as far as Barak would go, although in international law Jerusalem is occupied territory.
A week after Camp David, as the full impact of what was and was not achieved sinks in, what moment of truth, if any, is at hand?
It all depends on where you sit and who you are. There are Palestinians of influence who have said to Arafat, “close the deal”. And it is more than a question to wonder if Arafat had said “yes” whether Barak would have been able to maintain the equilibrium of his government long enough to deliver on the deal. The voting down of Shimon Peres for president, Israel’s heroic peace maker, confirms that Barak walks on a knife edge.
Even assuming there is a moderate middle on both sides large enough to push through such a deal as presently constituted the fact remains that the fringes of opposition on both sides are large and substantial enough to wreck havoc.
There is, to be blunt, no point in considering the deal over Jerusalem – the most sensitive part of the negotiations – if it means another assassination in Israel and it means revolution in Palestine in a year or two’s time when a new or outside generation comes to power determined to declare war on the Jewish state. There has to be a full peace that is manifestly acceptable to something over 80% of Israeli and Arab opinion (including good majorities of Arab opinion throughout the Middle East and the Maghrib).
At the time of the ending of the British mandate, Jerusalem belonged to the Palestinians. Only in 1948 did Israel capture west Jerusalem and only in 1967 during the Six Day War did Israel capture and annex east Jerusalem. UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 calls on Israel to withdraw from “territories occupied”. Until this piece of history is put right, no deal will have anything like 80% of Palestinian opinion behind it.
This is not meant to be provocative. It is simply stating reality – a state of affairs that is non-viable cannot be turned into the acceptable by the willpower of politicians alone. Too much water has gone under the historical bridge.
For now what needs to be bought is time. Time for both a Palestinian state to be created (covering 90% or so of the West Bank as Barak offered) and time after that for Palestine to learn to live cheek by jowl with Israel, and vice versa. One day, perhaps, not too far into the future, there can be a common market and free migration of labour (which both sides desperately need, as any economist on the spot will tell you). From that could grow a joint sovereignty over the heart of Jerusalem. (There has never been a need, accept a rhetorical one, to talk about the whole of Jerusalem – this is a city that is over four times the size it was in 1948.)
Meanwhile, both sides should step back from their confrontation over the city and make the heart of Jerusalem an internationally administered city of peace. Let the local government of this part be run by neutral outsiders for a decade or two whilst the two communities learn the art of making the most of their proximity. Is not this city, holy to three great religions, meant to be for all of them the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem?
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
