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The Nation.

October 30, 2000

COMMENT

TheNation.
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The End of Oslo

isreported and flawed from the start, the Oslo peace process
has entered its terminal phase of violent confrontation,
disproportionately massive Israeli repression, widespread
Palestinian rebellion and great loss of life, mainly Palestinian. Ariel Sharons September 28 visit to Haram al Sharif
could not have occurred without Ehud Baraks concurrence; how
else could Sharon have appeared there with at least a thousand
soldiers guarding him? Baraks approval rating rose from 20 to
50 percent after the visit, and the stage seems set for a national
unity government ready to be still more violent and repressive.
The portents of this disarray, however, were there from the
1993 start, as I duly noted in The Nation (September 20, 1993).
Labor and Likud leaders alike made no secret of the fact that Oslo
was designed to segregate the Palestinians in noncontiguous,
economically unviable enclaves, surrounded by Israeli-controlled
borders, with settlements and settlement roads punctuating and
essentially violating the territories integrity. Expropriations and
house demolitions proceeded inexorably through the Rabin, Peres,
Netanyahu and Barak administrations, along with the expansion
and multiplication of settlements (200,000 Israeli Jews added to
Jerusalem, 200,000 more in Gaza and the West Bank), military occupation continuing and every tiny step taken toward Palestinian
sovereigntyincluding agreements to withdraw in minuscule,
agreed-upon phasesstymied, delayed, canceled at Israels will.
This method was politically and strategically absurd. Occupied
East Jerusalem was placed out of bounds by a bellicose Israeli
campaign to decree the intractably divided city off-limits to West
Bank and Gaza Palestinians and to claim it as Israels eternal,
undivided capital. The 4 million Palestinian refugeesnow the
largest and longest existing such population anywherewere
told that they could forget about return or compensation. With
his own corrupt and repressive regime supported by both Israels
Mossad and the CIA, Yasir Arafat continued to rely on US mediation, even though the US negotiating team was dominated by
former Israeli lobby officials and a President whose ideas about
the Middle East showed no understanding of the Arab-Islamic
world. Compliant but isolated and unpopular Arab chiefs (especially Egypts Hosni Mubarak) were humiliatingly compelled to
toe the American line, thereby further diminishing their eroded
credibility at home. Israels priorities were always put first. No
attempt was made to address the injustice done when the Palestinians were dispossessed in 1948.
Back of the peace process were two unchanging Israeli/
American presuppositions, both of them derived from a startling
incomprehension of reality. The first was that after enough
punishment and beating, Palestinians would give up, accept
the compromises Arafat did in fact accept and call the whole
Palestinian cause off, thereafter excusing Israel for everything
it has done. Thus, the peace process gave no considered attention to immense Palestinian losses of land and goods, or to
the links between past dislocation and present statelessness, while
as a nuclear power with a formidable military, Israel continued
to claim the status of victim and demand restitution for genocidal

October 30, 2000

The Nation.

COMMENT
anti-Semitism in Europe. There has still been no official acknowledgment of Israels (by now amply documented) responsibility for the tragedy of 1948. But one cant force people to forget,
especially when the daily reality is seen by all Arabs as reproducing the original injustice.
Second, after seven years of steadily worsening economic
and social conditions for Palestinians everywhere, Israeli and
US policy-makers persisted in trumpeting their successes, excluding the United Nations and other interested parties, bending
the partisan media to their wills, distorting the actuality into
ephemeral victories for peace. With the entire Arab world up
in arms over Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks demolishing
Palestinian civilian buildings, with almost 100 fatalities and almost 2,000 wounded, including many children, and with Palestinian Israelis rising up against their treatment as third-class
citizens, the misaligned and skewed status quo is falling apart.
Isolated in the UN and unloved everywhere in the Arab world
as Israels unconditional champion, the United States and its
lame-duck President have little to contribute.
Neither does the Arab and Israeli leadership, even though they
are likely to cobble up another interim agreement. Extraordinary
has been the virtual silence of the Zionist peace camp in the United States, Europe and Israel. The slaughter of Palestinian youths
goes on while they back Israeli brutality or express disappointment at Palestinian ingratitude. Worst of all are the US media,
cowed by the fearsome Israeli lobby, with commentators and
anchors spinning distorted reports about crossfire and Palestinian violence that eliminate the fact that Israel is in military
occupation and that Palestinians are fighting it, not laying siege
to Israel, as Madeleine Albright put it. While the United States
celebrates the Serbian peoples victory over Milosevic, Clinton
and his aides refuse to see the Palestinian insurgency as the
same kind of struggle against injustice.
My guess is that some of the new Palestinian intifada is directed at Arafat, who has led his people astray with phony promises
and maintains a battery of corrupt officials holding down commercial monopolies even as they negotiate incompetently and
weakly on his behalf. Sixty percent of the public budget is disbursed by Arafat to bureaucracy and security, only 2 percent to the
infrastructure. Three years ago his own accountants admitted to
an annual $400 million in disappeared funds. His international
patrons accept this in the name of the peace process, certainly
the most hated phrase in the Palestinian lexicon today.
An alternative peace plan and leadership is slowly emerging
among leading Israeli, West Bank, Gaza and diaspora Palestinians,
a thousand of whom have signed a set of declarations that have
great popular support: no return to the Oslo framework; no compromise on the original UN Resolutions (242, 338 and 194) on
the basis of which the Madrid Conference was convened in 1991;
removal of all settlements and military roads; evacuation of all
the territories annexed or occupied in 1967; boycott of Israeli
goods and services. A new sense may actually be dawning that
only a mass movement against Israeli apartheid (similar to South
Africas) will work. Certainly it is wrong for Barak and Albright
to hold Arafat responsible for what he no longer fully controls.
Rather than dismiss the new framework being proposed, Israels

supporters would be wise to remember that the question of Palestine concerns an entire people, not an aging and discredited leader.
Besides, peace in Palestine/Israel can be made only between
equals once the military occupation has ended. No Palestinian, not
even Arafat, can really accept anything less.
EDWARD W. SAID
Edward W. Saids latest book is The End of the Peace Process (Pantheon).

ISRAELI DOVES SPEAK OUT

lthough most Israelis, even those who consider themselves members of the left, are blaming Yasir Arafat
for escalating the current violence, some are trying
to voice a different position. They have organized a
number of small protests calling for Israels withdrawal
from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and against the shooting of demonstrators.
In addition, about fifty Israeli scholars and community
leadersJews and Arabshave published a petition in
Israels daily Haaretz stating that war must and can be
avoided. The petition was initiated by sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling. Signers include Ruchama Marton, the founder of the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights; Dalia Kirstein, director of the Center for the Rights of the Individual;
and Gila Svirsky, former director of the Israeli and Palestinian feminist group Bat Shalom. Also signing were literary figures David Grossman, Yitschak Laor, Yigal Shwartz
and Orly Lubin; economist Arieh Arnon; and three Palestinian citizens of Israel who teach at Ben-Gurion University, Ismael Abu-Saad, Thabet Abu Rass and Ahmad Saadi.
The petition demands:
An immediate and unilateral Israeli commitment to
evacuating the provocative settlements and zones that are
to be included in the Palestinian stateincluding those
in the Gaza Strip, Hebron and the Jordan Valley.
That Israel accept Palestinian sovereignty over all
Arab neighborhoods and mosques inside Jerusalem, while
Israel will maintain sovereignty over the Western Wall.
The city, within this framework, will be completely open
to all residents.
That Israel declare a strong commitment to insuring
equal rights in every area to all Palestinian and other citizens of the state of Israel, and that it stop shooting at
demonstrators.
A release and exchange of all prisoners on all sides.
We believe that only the acceptance of this package
and the immediate cessation of all violence by all populations on all sides can serve as the basis for rebuilding
trust among Jews, Palestinians and the Arab world.
NEVE GORDON
Neve Gordon teaches in the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University in Israel (ngordon@bgumail.
bgu.ac.il).