Posted on 10/08/2002 6:18:47 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
European Union Foreign Police Coordinator Javier Solana told Mohammed Dahlan, Saeb Erekat and representatives from the Fatah who met him in Gaza on Sunday night, that he is glad to learn that there has been a lot of progress in turning the intifada into a non-violent campaign. His direct impressions from the field matched the reports sent to Solana's office in recent weeks by European representatives here, led by MI-6's Alistair Crooke. According to those reports, the concept of "non-violence," which was totally foreign to the Palestinians, is gradually sinking into broad strata in their leadership.
Yesterday morning, upset by the night-time raid into Khan Yunis, Erekat said that he told Solana that he hopes the excellent discussions don't cost the Palestinians another 10 or 12 lives. "Every time we try to break the cycle of violence, the IDF has a tendency to launch a bomb," said Erekat. "Every time there's a glimmer of a chance to renew the peace process, someone on your side decides now's the time to attack in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood."
Dahlan added that he asked Solana, half-joking and half seriously, not to say that he had heard first-hand from the Tanzim leader in Gaza about readiness to lay down the terror weapon and take up a non-violent campaign against the occupation. "I said I was afraid that if Sharon heard about it, he'd ruin everything."
At a meeting with Israelis in Pisa, Italy, this past weekend, the Palestinian representatives reiterated their suspicions about the odd proximity of the timing between relative calm and Israeli attacks. Sponsored by the Italian Center for Peace in the Middle East, and with help from the Italian Foreign Ministry, the conference included a poignant moment, as the Palestinians listened in silence to peace activist Avraham Sela describing how his university colleagues at Hebrew University teased him - "So, what do you say now?" - when they saw him in the blood-soaked clothes of the wounded from the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing on Mt. Scopus. It seemed all the Palestinians fully grasped the damage the 24 months of violence had done to their cause against the occupation. Meanwhile, Hamas attacks from one side and assassinations (nobody even refers to them as "pinpoint preventive actions" anymore) from the other perpetuate the violence.
Giving Israel the keys
The question "what's next?" is the main issue for the Palestinian leadership. Growing numbers of key people in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are talking about the idea of formally handing over the civilian keys to the Israelis and announcing they have lost interest in what is called "the peace process."
They say Israel can't demand the PA conduct far-reaching security reforms and at the same time do whatever it wants inside the territorial jurisdiction of the PA. It's not credible that Ariel Sharon will decide when the children of Nablus get to go to school or have to stay home, while Yasser Arafat has to pay the teachers' salaries.
The mounting calls demanding that Israel be made formally responsible for running the police and the health and welfare services in the territories have also reached the ears of the Israeli defense establishment. Nobody opened any bottles of champagne. On the one hand, the return of the civil administration would cost the Israeli taxpayer at least a billion shekels a month. On the other hand, highway robbers, epidemics and hungry children - under Israeli responsibility - won't go over well with the international community.
Dahlan said yesterday that he's been talking with his colleagues in the leadership for weeks about the need to give Sharon full responsibility for the lives of the Palestinian civilian population. Erekat confirmed the idea is gaining support in the leadership. He prefers to phrase things more cautiously. "If Israel wants to reinstate the occupation, it can pick up the garbage," he says, adding, "on the day you deport Arafat, there won't be a PA anymore."
As for Arafat - he's not very enthusiastic about formally giving up what's left of his achievement in the Oslo accords. The initiative to impose a prime minister on him increased his suspicions about any move that threatens his position.
Less holiness
August was a relatively quiet month in terms of terror attacks, and a relatively good time to conduct a public opinion survey to examine Jewish-Israeli public opinion toward Palestinians and a solution to the conflict. With financial help from the late minister Avraham Ofer's family, Dr. Yifat Maoz from the media and press department at Hebrew University examined for the first time the public's attitude toward the Clinton Framework, which includes Israel giving up its authority over the top of the Temple Mount. The results of the survey, based on a poll conducted by Dr. Mina Tzemach, head of the Dahaf Research Institute, show that chances weren't bad for Ehud Barak to win a majority for the Clinton plan. The Palestinians can learn from the poll that if they give up violence, they'll find that the Temple Mount is not necessarily an obstacle to peace.
The poll covered a representative sample of 509 Israeli Jews, and asked them about four possible solutions to the conflict:
1. A signed peace treaty in which Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, with border corrections for security reasons. Jerusalem remains in Israeli territory. A Palestinian state is established, and the Palestinians commit to preventing terror attacks against Israelis.
2. A peace treaty under which Israel withdraws to the 1967 lines, with border corrections, a Palestinian state is established, Jerusalem has two capitals, Israeli in the west and Palestinian in the east. The Palestinians commit to preventing terror (according to the Clinton plan).
3. A unilateral Israeli withdrawal to security lines, except for three main blocs: Gush Etzion, the Jerusalem area, and the Ariel area. The Jordan Valley remains in Israeli hands, and a separation fence is built.
4. Within the context of a peace agreement, the Palestinians get sovereignty over part of the Temple Mount and Old City, except for the Jewish Quarter and Western Wall.
As expected, unilateral separation is the preferred solution by most of the Jewish-Israeli public - 55 percent.
The Clinton Framework, in which Jerusalem remains Israeli, gets a 46-percent approval rating. The Clinton Framework that includes a sharing-partitioning of Jerusalem wins 27 percent, while the proposal to grant the Palestinians sovereignty over parts of the Temple Mount and Old City gets 25 percent. But support for that solution rockets to 41 percent when the Israelis are told the solution will end terror.
Cessation of terror is far more important than sovereignty over the holy sites. Dr. Maoz believes that negotiations or some other framework that could guarantee a cessation of terror would significantly increase the support from all parts of the Israeli public for solutions that include significant compromises with the Palestinians.
In addition to the link between readiness for compromise and an end to terror, the poll found that there is a very strong link between contact with Palestinians from the territories and Israel, including social contacts and planned gatherings, and readiness for concessions. Only 25 percent of Jewish Israelis reported having friends among Israeli Arabs, and only 15 percent reported taking part in planned meetings with them.
Some 8 percent said they have acquaintances in the territories and 3 percent participated in planned meetings with Palestinians beyond the Green Line.
Those with Palestinian contacts reported more positive attitudes toward their neighbors and to a large extent agreed with the following statements: "I believe that in the coming years there will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians"; "I think Palestinians can be trusted"; and "I think Israel won't be safe until there is a Palestinian state strong enough to control terror."
Dr. Tzemach says there's no way to know if the meetings with Palestinians moderate Israeli attitudes or if Israelis with moderate attitudes tend to be the ones to attend meetings with Palestinians.
Nonetheless, 75 percent of those surveyed agreed that most Palestinians would eliminate the State of Israel, if they could, which strengthens Maoz's theory that fear is the main motive for concessions, and not trust or love. Some 62 percent said they are afraid that they or their relatives will be hurt in a terror attack, and 57 percent believe most Palestinians hate Jews.
Relying on Ben-Eliezer
Since September 2, when Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee that illegal settlement outposts would be dismantled "shortly," the minister has been promising his friends in the Labor Party leadership: "tomorrow morning I'm going to see Arik and tell him that the IDF is dismantling the outposts today."
Last Tuesday he told me that the next morning he would be "sorting the matter out with the prime minister," and would let me know immediately after the meeting which outposts would be dismantled.
Yesterday, exactly five weeks after Ben-Eliezer's official commitment to dismantle illegal outposts, the defense minister's bureau said that the outposts would be removed within the next few days.
On the eve of the previous Labor Party convention in May, when he was courting Avraham Burg and the Labor Party doves, Ben-Eliezer trumpeted a diplomatic plan that even Yossi Beilin would have put his name to. The defense minister ordered the plan translated into Arabic in order to promote it among the Palestinians and among Arab leaders and public opinion shapers. An English version was disseminated among important Western statesmen and commentators. Unfortunately for Ben-Eliezer, some Palestinians know how to read Hebrew. One of them went to the trouble of comparing the texts and found significant differences between the Hebrew version and the Arabic and English versions.
Somebody decided that some parts of the text were not suitable for foreign - in particular Arab - consumption. In the security separation clause, for example, Ben-Eliezer promises the Hebrew reader that as well as the separation fence, which is intended to prevent terrorist attacks, Israel keeps the right to defend its security in any location "including Area A, if necessary," referring to Palestinian controlled areas. In Arabic however, the defense minister forgot to tell the Palestinians that Israel would retain the privilege to enter their territory. That is something that can be left to Sharon. In order not to offend the Saudis, the Arabic version omits the defense minister's view that the Saudi plan has some "problematic elements".
In the chapter on Ben-Eliezer's vision for Jerusalem, the bon ton obviously dictated that the Arabic version should not include demographic claims aimed at convincing the Hebrew reader of the need for separation from the Arab neighborhoods in the east of the city, "lest the Palestinian minority in the Israeli capital become a majority within a quarter of a century." God forbid, somebody might even find that tainted with racism.
But the Arab reader does receive compensation for omissions from the Hebrew version - pontifications that the Israeli reader has been spared. Perhaps Ben-Eliezer or his advisors thought that Israelis don't buy used propaganda any more.
The translated version of the Ben-Eliezer plan tells the Arabs that in July 2000 negotiations began for a final stage agreement that included what had been offered at Camp David - an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem. Ben-Eliezer also repeats the contested version of events that states that "all these propositions were rejected and the Palestinian Authority chose instead to take the path of violence," adding a sermon spared the Israeli reader, that "after 20 months of violence both sides are still counting their dead and injured, and the Palestinians have yet to achieve their aims".
A spokesman for Ben-Eliezer's bureau said that the minister was surprised to hear of the differences between the versions and had asked his aides to investigate the matter urgently.
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