Column: Our Life and Times

November 1998

Mid-East agreement

by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes

The October Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, convened under Clinton's sponsorship, were held to kick-start the nearly moribund 1993/1995 Oslo "land for peace" accords, which expire in May 1999. The right-wing nationalist Likud-Netanyahu government agreed on paper to return some 13% more of the West Bank to Arafat-Palestinian Authority control within the next three months, under condition that Arafat suppress Palestinian resistance, not limited to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. To ensure the "security" agreements, the U.S. CIA was designated as referee!

Small wonder that there is little support among Palestinians for what Arafat has brought home. The day to day hardships and insults that Palestinians have suffered with Netanyahu since 1996, especially border closings and loss of work, and the open Israeli government support of rabid religious settlers in the heart of traditional Palestinian areas, are not addressed in the "Wye Memorandum" (named after the South USA former plantation where the parties met). Instead, they are laid open to more restrictions and repression from their own "representatives".

Netanyahu was predictably opposed from the extreme religious-settler right wing of his coalition which disowned him for conceding even one inch of "Eretz Israel," despite his appointment of Ariel Sharon as Foreign Minister only days before talks opened. Sharon, most notorious for allowing Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila to be slaughtered by Lebanese fascist troops in 1982, is most identifiable within Israel as the hard-line backer of settlements in occupied lands. However, his point of view is now shared by others, that land concessions do not automatically mean loss of Israeli control, as long as they are strategically handled. This control includes not only military "security" in the parceling of land, but control of the infrastructure, especially water and other basic resources for development.

Arafat is holding out his own supposed trump card, the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state when the Oslo accords expire in May. This strategy relates primarily to Arafat's goal of maintaining control over the Palestinian Authority, which has come under increasing criticism for authoritarianism and widespread corruption under his administration.

While the vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis support reaching a peaceful agreement of mutually-agreed upon self-determination, there was a resounding lack of enthusiasm for the recently-concluded talks, compared to the original Oslo agreements. NEWS & LETTERS will analyze the situation in more detail in upcoming issues.

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