May 18, 2003

The new Middle East roadmap does have its share of positives, but, if history is anything to go by, the United States may well loose heart in the process in view of imminent electoral considerations

PRESIDENT George W. Bush announced the long-awaited roadmap for the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict recently amidst growing anxieties and suppressed hopes. Launched in the name of the Quartet — the UN, the EU, Russia and the US — by any definition it is an American construct that assumes to benefit from the erstwhile Tenet, Mitchell and Zinni peace plans that failed to deliver on the heels of the 1993 Oslo Accords signed between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the then Labour-led Israeli government.

That the roadmap also refers to several UN resolutions is a significant departure from their explicit demands of the total Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Lands besides the repatriation of the refugees.

The roadmap is being projected as the formula for enduring peace in the Mideast, while to its Israeli and Arab critics it is simply appeasement of one party at the expense of the other.

Given the failure of past UN resolutions and several peace agreements owing to Israeli stubbornness largely anchored on an unflinching US support, the cynical view does not appear that optimistic. But, many commentators, especially in the West, are eager to assuage such concerns by suggesting that given the fall of Saddam Hussein and a greater US involvement in the region, Washington will ensure its implementation.

However, a counter-view shares skepticism owing to the salience of the Neo-Conservatives in the Bush Administration, who may be wary of undertaking any radical rollback of Israeli expansionism in view of presidential elections in 18 months. However, given the electoral exit of Bush the Senior so soon after the First Gulf War — the crescendo of his popularity— raises several tough questions for George W’s bandwagon.

Another critical view questions the success of the proposed roadmap in reference to undiminished rivalry between the Pentagon and the State Department. The Israeli hawks are already calling it a ploy by the pro-Arab Powell bureaucracy, contrasted with the pro-Zionist Defence establishment.

Thus, the proposals, despite their several ambiguities, have initiated an interesting debate, though still not worthy of the intensity of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which may strengthen the supposition that the plan has been put into currency largely under Tony Blair’s persuasion, though it may be already beyond his control. However, the fact remains that the hawks, fresh from their decimation of yet another Muslim country and after ramroding Syria, Lebanon and Libya, are garnering their appetite for Messianic ventures in the Holy Land.

Consisting of 2,221 words, spread over seven and one-half pages and divided into three major sections, the roadmap displays a rather brief and direct style over and above the typical diplomatic nuances.

Despite being strong on promises such as the two-state solution preambled by an end to violence and post-2001 settlements, it has the hallmark of an American statement of intent. Its launch concurs with the fall of the Baathist regime in Baghdad amidst smithery for a pliant regime, the Syrian Baathists on the back foot and Saudis seeking succour from a long-awaited American departure.

A quid pro quo on Chechnya and Central Asia with Russia since 9/11, a non-enthusiastic Europe and a disillusioned Muslim world, all appear fortuitous for an old-and-new venture. The Quartet undertakes to help rebuild the two-state solution and reconstruction in Palestine, where both Israelis and Palestinians are required to show good faith and substantive steps towards peace.

In the first phase, Palestinians will “immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence” and reiterate Israel’s right to exist as a state and likewise Israel will put “an immediate end to violence against Palestinians everywhere”.

While Palestinians will put “an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism”, Israel will stop deportations, forced settlements and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure. These measures will be implemented with help from the US, Egypt and Jordan, whereas other Arab states will cut off assistance to Palestinian militants.

While the PA will concentrate on institution-building facilitated by Israel and donor agencies, Israel will allow the movement of Palestinian officials between the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian security forces — all reorganized into three main clusters — would be trained under Tel Aviv’s watchful eyes.

The institutions to be built would be of political, electoral, judicial and administrative nature premised on the dictum of separation of powers. This phase includes drafting a constitution for a Palestinian state before the elections, whereas Israel will withdraw from all the settlements established since March 2001. According to one study, Israel has built 200 new settlements since that date, and they account for almost half-a-million Jews.

Phase Two will build on the goodwill, gains and institution-building acquired during the first stage and will cover a transitional period. It will concur with a crucial reappraisal by the Quartet to assess the achievements so far and to recommend multilateral agreements on water resources, environment, refugees and economic development.

Simultaneously, a “comprehensive” peace for the entire region will be launched with the Arab states re-establishing pre-Intifada links with Israel.

The Third Phase, dependent upon the judgment of the Quartet, will endorse the creation of a Palestinian state “with provisional borders” and agreements on frontiers, refugees, Jerusalem and the future of settlements. At this stage, Syria and Lebanon will be co-opted for an overall peace settlement, followed by the restoration of “normal relations with Israel” by all the regional states.

In other words, the roadmap stipulates a gradual and evolutionary process for a twin-state solution, and mentions the UN Resolution 242 as well as Prince Abdullah’s offer of a full recognition of Israel following its acceptance of Palestinian demands.

It equally refers to the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 when, for the first time, Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors had met directly to hammer out some consensus, which eventually resulted into the Oslo Accords (1993) between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, with some prodding from President Bill Clinton.

However, the references do not mean that these resolutions have been accepted in toto though their legality is uncontested. The plan mentions them for a wider acceptance though a closer reading reveals five possible areas of contention and disputation.

Firstly, it does not promise the total Israeli abdication of the Occupied Territories, grabbed since 1967 and which make about 22 per cent of the total Palestinian land. In other words, there is a worry that the stipulated Palestinian state may include cantons from Gaza strip and the West Bank, with Israel controlling vast chunks of territory all around and in between.

Already, Israel is building a huge 360 kilometre long and nine feet high parameter wall around Palestinian villages and townships not only to encircle them, but also to further divide them across an impregnable boundary. That is why, the future map of a Palestinian state, to many, may not be more than a conglomerate of Bantustans. The Palestine Chronicle has already characterized the roadmap as a “Road to nowhere”.

Secondly, ‘the right of return’ to refugees, acceptable under all international covenant and instruments, remains unclear or, at the most, could be irresoluble by the two states during the third phase. The passing reference to such a crucial issue is almost hedging its urgency. Five million Palestinians expelled since the 1940s, and especially in 1948 and 1967, have been living in refugee camps. Even if some of them are settled in other Arab states, they may lack full-fledged citizenship. Naturally, their Diaspora seeks a right to return to their lands — which is a stronger and logical claim than the Zionist ideal of return after 3,000 years of Expulsion.

While the Zionists solely base the rationale for the state of Israel on their right to return to the land of their ancestors, they are not prepared to allow the same to their Palestinian counterparts, who until recently were the native inhabitants. Ironically, a mystified Expulsion is vetoing a real and recent expulsion.

As openly discussed in Ha’araz and other Israeli newspapers, the repatriation of these Palestinians will prove a death knell for the self-acclaimed Jewish state. Already, more than one million Arabs in Israel — a self-professed religio-racial state — have a second-class citizenship besides suffering from multiple forms of segregation. The Palestinian Diaspora and its half-century dispersal and marginalization are reminder of the combined state of the post-Civil War Natives and African-Americans.

While disallowing the Western political, academic and even journalistic circles to steer free of an overarching Holocaust-related guilt, any reference to anything Jewish — not to talk of Zionism — is quickly translated into anti-Semitism. Discussing Jewishness and Zionism even without any malicious and racist agenda or reference to Israeli oppressive policies have been solidified into ‘no-go areas’.

As a consequence, the Western criticism of Israeli unilateralism and its manipulation of Western institutions remains a hush-hush affair, whereas Islamophobia, post-9/11 war on terror and exaggerated accounts of Islamic fundamentalism, are considered useful assets to divert global attention from human rights violations in Palestine.

The anger of 1.3 billion Muslims across the world — who for centuries protected Jews from the Christian wrath — is presented as a myopic penchant for violence among the pre-modern hordes of bloodthirsty, bearded mobs.

Thus, the politics of appropriation and misappropriation in Palestine remains a thorny issue, and could pose a great difficulty even if Palestinians are able to squeeze a proto-state in the region. The support for Abu Mazen (Mahmud Abbas), the PA Prime Minister, who has been elected during the first phase of this rather delayed roadmap, is largely owing to his critique of Intifada and presumably of his acceptance of Israeli stance on expulsions and return.

That is why, not only Yasser Arafat, but even several other independent Palestinian intellectuals have also been slow in bestowing too many hopes on Abu Mazen. He, however, reflects a new and rather bitter realism and exhaustion among Palestinians who may like to give peace one more chance.

There is no doubt that in the last two years more than two hundred Palestinians have been ‘selectively’ assassinated by Israel, including 27 children, besides thousands others having been killed and injured owing to frequent ‘incursions’.

There are 8,000 Palestinians in the Israeli detention centres, and 40 per cent of the Palestinian males have spent time in an Israeli prison at some point in their lives.

The West Bank now consists of 64 separate enclaves with movement across them controlled by permits issued by the Israeli military. Economy, hope and sense of community, all lie thrashed under Abrams and Challengers.

Abu Mazen has been negotiating with the Israelis such as Yossi Beilin since the 1990s, and is critical of the current wave of Intifada. His insistence on appointing his own person as the head of security did not go down well, especially in Gaza where only three per cent Palestinians supported him against a 30 per cent support for Arafat.

But this is not to deny the fact that Arafat and several other prominent Palestinians would like Abu Mazen to try and succeed though they may stay sceptical. In a way, it is history repeating itself when like in the early 1990s, activist-scholars such as Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmed differed with Arafat over making too many concessions to Israel.

Thirdly, other than the return of land and refugees, the sticking issue is of the future of Al-Quds, or Jerusalem on the whole. Israel, since its creation, has tried to incorporate this inter-faith city into its own territory as the capital, and the War of 1967 helped it attain that besides capturing the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula.

Despite UN resolutions and global opinion to the contrary, Jerusalem has been made into the capital of Israel, with Muslims and Christian Arab communities left asunder amongst various Israeli high-rises, security posts and ring roads. While the PA would like to share Jerusalem with Israel as a joint capital — something like Indian Chandigarh — Israeli Likuds and Orthodox elements are aghast at the very concept, nor are the Neo-Conservatives enamoured of it.

The dispute over Al-Aqsa, the third holiest place for Muslims, next to the Jewish and Christian shrines, begs an international effort where the city could assume a Vatican-like neutral status, guaranteed by all. The roadmap again leaves this thorny issue to the future states, and mentions it only once and that, too, in passing. At a crucial stage in their history, which M.J. Akbar rightly considers to be the epitome of impotence, the Arab states are least likely to persuade Israel to the internationalization of Jerusalem.

Fourthly, and most importantly, is the issue of the Israeli record so far of encroachments, repression and expulsions that makes Palestinians suspicious of their real intent. The biased Western official policies, partisan media reportage and an escalating anti-Muslim idiom have not helped the Palestinians overcome their serious reservations towards Israel.

While many Palestinians were ready to give Rabin a chance to move the peace process forward, his assassination by Zionist fundamentalists and then the ascension of avowedly anti-Arab leaders such as Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon did not bode well for regional peace. While Sadaat, through Camp David, and Arafat, through Oslo, showed their willingness to accept Israel’s right to exist, the Likud regimes and even Ehud Barak’s Labour coalition encouraged a persistent usurpation of more Palestinian territory.

By singling out PA for corruption and accusing Arafat of senility and support for terror, Israel not only tried to destroy the Palestinian infrastructure, but it also dispersed Palestinian hopes for co-existence. The Israeli regimes, without offering anything reciprocal, demanded of Arafat to control Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who had been sponsoring suicide-attacks. Arafat never condoned such attacks and might have preferred a peaceful Intifada, but Israeli governments did not leave any space for him to manoeuvre.

His support for Saddam Hussein in 1991 cost him heavily though his acceptance of Oslo Accords during the Clinton era helped him regain some of the lost ground. However, Israeli insistence on more territory, control of Jerusalem and denial of ‘right of return’ have all left Arafat a broken man, besieged in his decimated headquarters in Ramallah. He may have committed some mistakes, but a stateless leader with a host of rudderless refugees could not offer any more pounds of flesh to his Israeli and North Atlantic detractors.

Fifthly, the credibility as well as the level of willingness on the part of the Anglo-American alliance itself will determine the future of the roadmap. While the departure of Yitzhak Shamir allowed the United States to push Arafat and Rabin to hammer out a peace agreement, now in disarray, Abu Mazen may prove more amenable to such pressure though one may never be so sure of Sharon.

Eulogizing Sharon while coercing Palestinians may backfire, as it will simply increase the despair and resultant terror on both sides. Just before the announcement of the roadmap itself, 13 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops, whereas a day later a suicide-bomb took three lives and injured another 40 in Tel Aviv — not a good omen for peace at all. The US may balk at giving its full-throttle support to the maturing of the roadmap so as not to anger the pro-Israeli lobby, though according to Condoleeza Rice, the Bush Administration was determined to push forward. Still, there is a worry that , as has been summed up Gilles Kepel, the well-known French scholar: “Alienating the pro-Israel lobby, strongly ‘embedded’ as it is in the Neo-Conservative Pentagon civilian elite, therefore seems totally unrealistic”.

While any move towards peace in the Middle East, and especially in the larger interests of Palestinians and Israelis is a welcome step, it needs to be different this time. It must be based on justice for all though it may involve political risks for some. Yet, its dividends will be enormous for billions across the globe. Any further divisions among Palestinians — such as between Arafat and Abbas, or between the Islamists and the others — will only betray the rationale for peace.

While Israeli civil society, as represented by its laudable liberal groups, Labour sections, vocal academics and activist organizations such as Gush Shalom, needs to be recognized as a genuine force for peace and tolerance, similar voices across the Arab/Muslim world and elsewhere are waiting to be harnessed for a greater good.

If the roadmap, despite the visible American presence in the region and its unchallenged pre-eminence, fails to deliver or suffers from electoral expediency and a continued appeasement, it will be perceived not only as one more betrayal of a bereaved community, but also as a serious denial of co-existence and human rights.

After all, it is a golden chance for Washington and London to prove to the world that their policies are not driven by double standards, nor are they geared for selective gains. Only time will tell whether Bush, surrounded by Wolflitz, Abrams, Feith, Perle and Fleischer, and Blair being advised by an untiring Lord Levy, are willing to work for a durable peace, or the roadmap is simply another eyewash or a mere spin!

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