When Yasser Arafat and Ehud
Barak left Camp David in July 2000, the
political clock stopped ticking. The summit's failure opened the road to
the second Intifada. This culminated in the suicide attack at the
Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv on June 1. Staring into the abyss of
twenty-one young deaths, the Israelis threatened
to eliminate the PA (Palestinian Authority), and
the Europeans pressured Arafat. In response, he
committed himself to a cease-fire. The political clock started ticking
again.
The most
significant turnabout occurred at the White House. Until then
the new Bush administration had refrained from sticking its hands
in the Israeli-Palestinian mess, but now it saw
it had no choice. The American stake in the
Middle East is far too high. William Safire of the New York
Times described what happened: "The pressure on Bush to go down the
Clinton road of all-out arbitration led to his dispatch of George
Tenet, the part time CIA director, to mediate a
cease-fire." (June 28) George W. Bush tends to
side with Israel. Arafat revolts him. As soon as
the political clock begins to tick, though, US prestige goes on the
line. The single remaining superpower cannot afford to hear "No"
when "the whole world is watching." Thus, as
Bush got into a public skirmish with Israeli PM
Sharon on June 27, the event foreshadowed a switch that
Sharon will be called on to make in the coming weeks.
Israel and the PA accepted the Mitchell Report
and later, as its precondition, the Tenet
proposal. The latter provides that both sides
shall agree to a cease-fire, followed by a six-week cooling-off period.
Tenet left many things vague – intentionally. (Otherwise, we shall
see, Arafat could hardly have agreed.) Only
after the Tenet plan is fulfilled will the sides
move on to Mitchell. This provides for
confidence-building measures, including a freeze on settlements, and, at
last, a return to negotiations.
The conflict is stuck, for now, at the Tenet
stage, with Sharon demanding 100% quiet before
beginning to count the six week cooling-off
period. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, on the other hand, sees
the present, partial cease-fire as basis enough for progress toward
the Mitchell phase. The question may be put as
follows: Ought one to demand from Arafat 100%
results, as Sharon does, or should one be satisfied
with 100% effort, as Peres would be.
The dispatch to the region of American
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in the absence
of perfect quiet, shows that Washington sides with Peres.
Powell's task is to carry the ball from the Tenet stage to the
Mitchell. His Arafat file may even contain – who
knows? – the coveted invitation to the White
House.
The Dilemma of
Sharon
On being
elected PM, Sharon resolved to steer his course on two parallel
tracks: 1) to form a unity government with the Labor Party and 2)
to outmaneuver Arafat in winning the favors of
Bush. As long as the Intifada precluded a
political process, he managed to keep good
relations with both.
Many in the Arab world, and on Israel's Left as well, see Sharon's
commitment to the cease-fire as a ploy. He calculates, they think,
that Arafat will fail to implement it; then his
partners will understand that you can't reach
agreement with that "leader of a terrorist gang."
One of the Sharon-doubting pundits is Sima Kadmon. In an article on
June 22 (Yediot Aharonot), she holds that the PM
has no political program. His alliance with
Peres and Bush will collapse, she writes, if Arafat
does implement the cease-fire. As soon as political talks begin, we
shall see Sharon on one side of a tremendous gap, but Peres and the
rest of the world on the other.
Kadmon is wrong. Sharon understands that war
with the Arab world is not a feasible option at
present, and he understands, too, that a war of
attrition with the Palestinians is not in Israel's interest. Speaking to
the Jewish settlers in front of the media, he has said: "I cannot
take the people to war at this time." He
repeated this message in a Washington Post
interview: "If you want you can make it your headline:
There is not going to be a war. I will avoid escalation." (June 24)
Sharon loathes Arafat, but he understands there is no one else. He
sticks with the national-unity government, not as a temporary
measure, but because he needs the Labor Party
for future negotiations. True, his old
right-wing supporters are pressuring him. When he pays condolence
calls on settler families, his tone is gentle and understanding.
Nevertheless, he does not leave them in doubt: if the choice is
between them and Peres, he'll go with Peres.
Sharon is aware that no Israeli PM has managed
to get through a term since Oslo. He learned a
lesson from the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, and
from the fall of Binyamin Netanyahu, whom the extreme Right toppled, and
from the fall of Ehud Barak, whom Arafat toppled. He understands
that the alliance with Peres is a precious
asset, affording him a chance to stay in power.
Nor should we forget that Netanyahu, revived by the polls
– and much more extreme outside than he was in office – is
breathing down the PM's neck.
Sharon didn't go to Bush with empty hands. He
brought a program and a set of maps. His message
was: I'm not dragging my feet. Despite the
unplanned public debate with the President on this last visit, he will
take great care not to turn the differences into a rift. Their
agreement is greater than their disagreement –
and more to the point, he has no choice.
The indefatigable Peres
Unlike Sharon, Peres does not view the
national-unity government as a strategic boon.
While a Minister in the Barak regime, he sharply opposed
bringing Sharon in – for fear of his own seat. Yet Peres is not one
to sit in the opposition. Nor is he willing to
see Oslo, the crown of his life's work,
collapse. He has decided, therefore, to stake all his
prestige on the unity government – and help Sharon bring Israel
back into the warm embrace of the world's
respectable nations.
People from Labor and Meretz attack him daily. Sharon's lackey, they
call him. They err. It was Peres who persuaded Sharon to absorb the
attack at the Dolphinarium without reprisal, a self-restraint that
got the political process moving again. On June
24 he announced, for the first time on public
television, that there was no alternative: the
government would have to dismantle certain settlements and gather their
inhabitants into blocs, by agreement. Peres has always had a keen
sense for the breezes blowing out of Washington.
His statement amounted to a hint for Powell,
that when he visits, there'll be something to talk
about.
As far as
Peres is concerned, the Clinton plan by any other name would
smell as sweet. He mediates between Sharon and Arafat, explaining
to each the constraints of the other. Will he
succeed? Maybe not, but the man has always had a
penchant for cracking nuts.
The Dilemma of Arafat
Arafat steers his course on the same tracks as
Sharon, but in the opposite direction: he wants
to bring down Israel's national-unity
government, and he wants to return to the club of leaders who are
welcome at the White House. He is presently in serious trouble. The
Intifada has yielded no political gain beyond what he could have
had at Camp David. This is one reason why he
isn't able to stop the shooting completely.
Arafat did not start the Intifada. Rather, it
pulled him in. The Arab regimes, especially in
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, had not given him the
backing he'd needed to sign at Camp David. He could not afford to appear
all alone in selling out on Jerusalem and the refugees. After nine
months of fighting, the only gain is this: those very Arab regimes
have had a taste of the hell they could find
themselves in, and they may be willing to back
him more next time.
Next
time, however, is far away. Arafat is not in the same condition
today as before September 28, 2000. There are 500 more Palestinian
dead and thousands wounded. He cannot afford to
appear, therefore, as giving in without getting
more than Barak had offered. Peres and the Americans
understand this, yet the most they are willing to offer is paltry
by comparison. The Mitchell Report demands from
Israel only that it freeze the settlements and
renew the talks. In short, Arafat will have to pry
the boulder of negotiations from the bottom of the valley in order
to reach, once more if he can, the place on the
slope at which they stopped.
In the present circumstances, then, the
chances for peace are slight. Bush and Sharon
now understand, to be sure, what Peres long has known:
1) There is no alternative to Arafat and the PA; 2) A new war won't
solve anything. After the collapse of Oslo, however, it isn't
enough to have assimilated these two points. In
the reality of the new Middle East, not a soul
in Israel or America can envision an agreement that
would be both possible and conducive to regional stability.
Arafat's prestige has risen because of the
Intifada. Yet if he returns to his Oslo tricks,
no one will be able to protect him from an enraged
Palestinian people.
Roni
Ben Efrat is the editor of Challenge
magazine.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Roni
Ben Efrat
by the same
author:
The Israeli Elections: Changing Patterns on the Left
