The American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has rested on four assumptions.
The first is that people in the end will be reasonable. Even if they don’t want to be reasonable, the cost of unreasonableness will compel them to accept reason.
The second is that small steps are best because they accustom people to change, make it seem less threatening, acquaint antagonists with one another and lead enemies to act like friends. This follows from the American practice of personalizing international relationships.
The aim has been to have the ex-Gen. Ehud Barak and the former political terrorist Yasser Arafat dine at one another’s homes, come out afterward and clap one another on the back, talking about my friend Yasser and my friend Ehud. This actually happened a few days ago. It was shortly followed by the worst violence in the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Then Barak appeared on Israeli television, shaking hands with Ariel Sharon.
The third assumption is that security steps and confidence-building come first. Only when reliable security arrangements exist between the two sides will they be willing to move on to the heart of their disagreement.
The final assumption is that it is useful to postpone the essential disagreements, since addressing them provokes emotional and “irrational” responses. Good personal relations and agreement at the security level, on the other hand, may allow fundamental problems to solve themselves.
All have proven to be wrong.
Arafat is weak, depends on U.S. sponsorship in the peace talks and must rely on the United States to work out a settlement acceptable to the Palestinians and the Arab world. He has had to compromise, to be “reasonable.” His only leverage is street violence, and violence may escape his control.
Prime Minister Barak has not had to be very reasonable. He now is politically weak (a paradoxical incentive to pre-emptive compromises), but his country is the most powerful in the region, and its support from the United States is unshakable.
Vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman said after the Democratic convention that his firm public commitment to Israel was no obstacle to his election since the United States itself is pro-Israel. Neither Barak nor Arafat has any doubt about that.
When President Clinton’s latest Camp David talks failed to produce a settlement, the White House spin was that Barak had gone as far as he could on Jerusalem’s status, and that since Arafat wouldn’t accept his offer, Arafat was responsible for the failure.
It was equally true, however, that Arafat had gone as far as he could on Jerusalem’s status. He is accountable for the Islamic holy places to all of the Islamic nations, including his principal sponsors, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. What Jews call the Temple Mount is what Muslims consider the sacred enclosure of Haram ash Sharif.
That is why Sharon’s visit to the contested area, meant to affirm Israel’s sovereignty over it, proved such a provocation. It was meant to provoke, to undercut any concessions Barak might offer.
The essential political question–the status of Jerusalem–has thus far been impossible to resolve. Several agreements on secondary issues have nonetheless been held as useful substitutions for the resolution of the ultimate problems.
“Final-status” problems would be talked about another day.
At the emergency meeting in Paris Oct. 4, convoked by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Americans and Israelis insisted on security agreements to stop the violence. Arafat walked out because they would not agree to an international commission to investigate the cause of the crisis. While Barak accused him of responsibility for the violence, he was able to exploit international reprobation of Israel for once again using lethal rifle fire and rockets from gunships against rock-throwing civilians.
What advantage the Israeli authorities see in these measures remains a mystery. They inevitably provoke even larger and more violent demonstrations, and certainly do not intimidate the Palestinians.
Friends of Israel should acquaint its leaders with the methods of European riot police, and the advantages, over killing demonstrators, of water cannons, baton charges and new U.S.-developed crowd-incapacitating agents.
On Norwegian initiative and under American sponsorship, Palestinians and Israelis have now spent nearly a decade in negotiations leading up to what now is the crucial problem, the status of Jerusalem–site of the holy places of all three great monotheistic religions.
Everything has been negotiated and tentatively solved except that. As the claims made on Jerusalem by the two sides rest on religious conviction, they are ultimately unnegotiable, “unreasonable.”
Neither side has proven willing to yield sovereignty over the holy places, or share it, or renounce it in favor of an international authority. Until that can be agreed, nothing has really been solved. That is what Palestinians and Israelis have discovered during the past days of violence.
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William Pfaff is a syndicated columnist based in Paris. E-mail: wpfaff@easynet.fr
