     Hakim | Tuesday, October 17, 2000 - 12:35 am
Oslo was still born. Nevertheless, the "Peace Process" kept going on with the hope that Arafat would sign the "Surrender Agreement" dictated by Barak. When that did not happen because the diktat offered by Barak and adopted by the "honest" American broker was unacceptable and did not satisfy the minimum requirements for a fair "deal", Barak resorted to his military might and left no place for the already dead "peace process".
Clinton is talking about a "cease fire" between the occupier and the occupied, between an army with all kinds of hi-tech equipment and nuclear arsenal and an oppressed and virtually defenseless people under occupation. In other words, Clinton is adopting and supporting the Israeli position, which disqualifies him as an "honest and neutral broker" that he never was.
The following excerpts from the Hebrew media published this morning, before the start of Sharm el-Sheikh summit, sheds more light on the Israeli stance that leaves no hope for a peaceful resolution.
Accordingly, the area is heading towards a new catastrophe unless the international community steps in and try to bring some sanity and respect for international law and UN resolutions that support the Palestinian rights.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH SUMMIT
…Immediately upon arrival, Barak is to meet separately with the host, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and with U.S. President Bill Clinton, both of whom will chair the summit discussions. In the morning Barak is also to meet UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was integral in bringing about the summit, and with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
Barak, who spoke for a long time with the U.S. president, does not intend to meet one-on-one with Arafat, but only within the framework of the summit discussions that are to begin in the afternoon, following a joint lunch by the delegations. After a series of speeches the delegations are to sequester themselves for what the Americans have described as "intensive talks." The summit has been given an "open agenda," and neither side has presented preliminary terms. How this meeting, which is to include European representatives, will be run has yet to be decided: as a joint discussion in one hall, or as separate two- or three-person meetings, which the Americans would prefer. Given the uncertainty, there was tension yesterday between the U.S. and Arafat, who demanded to know the summit agenda in advance. Contacts among the U.S., Egypt, and the Palestinians continued until nightfall, with the Palestinians threatening to "topple" the summit if they didn't receive an undertaking to discuss their range of demands. Arafat's bureau claimed last night that the crisis had been resolved, and that the chairman is expected to take part in the summit.
Officially the summit is due to continue for a day. But the belief in Israel is that the talks will take two days -- until Tuesday afternoon, when Clinton is to return to the U.S.
In Israel, expectations that the Sharm summit would bring the sides closer were kept low yesterday. Sources close to Barak said he expects a signing of the cease-fire understandings reached in Paris 10 days ago, and which Arafat refused to sign at the last minute. Barak made clear that the summit is intended to halt the violence, to create a mechanism for preventing a resumption of violence, and to assess the bloody events of the past two weeks. He stressed that he will not agree to the international commission of inquiry, which Arafat is demanding. "We will agree only to a fact-finding commission set up by the Americans, perhaps with VIPs from the UN and the European Union," the Prime Minister said at a One Israel faction meeting. At the cabinet meeting he said: "My feeling is strong that the peace process, in its present form, has reached the end of the road at this point. Ultimately we will make peace with the Palestinians, but the present Palestinian leadership is apparently not ripe for peace at this time." Barak added that at this stage there is no intention of resuming the final-status talks.
Arafat, who agreed to the summit mainly as a result of pressure from the Arab and European nations, is being careful to display a lack of enthusiasm. Security officials believe that the relative calm in the West Bank and Gaza over the past couple of days is a direct result of a directive from Arafat. However, among the Palestinian public, there is hostility to the summit: Both the opposition organizations and Fatah, Arafat's own party, voiced rejection of the "surrender summit." In an attempt to reconcile the rival groups, Arafat gave a belligerent speech yesterday. Standing on a police vehicle, the Palestinian chairman said: "Our heroic brothers will continue the Intifada. We will not give up on even one grain of sand from our holy land. They fired on us with missiles, tanks, and helicopters, but we will struggle on."
Even the U.S. is not displaying optimism. Clinton, who views the fact that Barak and Arafat will sit together in the same room as an achievement in itself, is hoping for a joint declaration by the two leaders calling for an end to the violence -- and for the peace process to resume. If a "good atmosphere" is created by the sides, the American administration intends to propose they meet next week in Washington in order to continue talks.
Israeli Objectives:
1. An end to the violence, and the creation of a mechanism to prevent new flare-ups.
2. The arrest of the recently-released Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
3. Measures taken against future armed attacks by the Tanzim militia and Palestinian Police.
4. An end to anti-Israel incitement.
5. The preservation and protection of Jewish holy sites.
6. The return by the Palestinians of all weapons held above agreed-upon quota.
American Objectives:
1. An end to violence on both sides.
2. Stabilizing the level of security in the region.
3. An agreement on a framework to investigate the disturbances, in order to draw up rules to prevent their repetition in the future.
4. A means of renewing the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians -- in order to reach an accord.
Palestinian Objectives:
1. The creation of an international commission of inquiry to probe the events of the last two weeks.
2. A cease-fire declaration.
3. The lifting of the closure on Palestinian towns.
4. Redeployment of Israeli forces to their positions prior to the disturbances.
5. The opening of the border crossings and of Gaza Airport.
6. Discussion of an Israeli undertaking to ensure such actions are not repeated. (Yediot Aharonot, p. 11, by Smadar Peri and Shimon Shiffer)
MR. PRESIDENT
Mr. President, Barak will say to Clinton, welcome to the Mideast. A tough region, no doubt about it. The truth is that it's becoming tough even for us.
Before we talk about Arafat, a word about Lebanon. You saw the event with Sheikh Nasrallah yesterday? You saw what a hug he got from Lebanese Prime Minister Salim el-Hoss after he announced the kidnapping? The abductee is our business, but the abduction is yours. There were times when nations like Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, East Germany, Uganda, or Cuba gave their blessing to all sorts of kidnappers, and got away with it unpunished. Those days, we thought, were over. If you do not drown Lebanon in sanctions, the next hostage will be one of yours, an American citizen.
Just between us, Hizbullah is managing to do to us what the Palestinians did not: It is turning us into a joke, the fat kid of the Middle East. When we left Lebanon, we said that if they continued to operate against us we would mess 'em up big time. Many Israelis say now that I threaten too much. I have a big mouth and short arms. You know, no doubt, of my standing in the polls. Not good.
I hope I am wrong, but it seems to me that over the past two weeks I've been smelling fear among your people. You are afraid your embassies will be burned, your aircraft-carriers blown up, that your price of gas will be jacked up. When America quakes, Europe gets panicky. The Arabs smell the fear, and get predatorial.
I read in the American press that your administration is accusing both you and me of forcing the Camp David summit. Arafat begged to be given more time, at the most three weeks, but I applied pressure, for internal political reasons, and you agreed, in order to get a grand finale for your end-of-term party. Don't misunderstand, Mr. President. The explosion was unavoidable. I'm convinced of it. If it hadn't happened two weeks ago, it would have happened tomorrow.
I recommend you don't believe Arafat's poor-me face. When he understood that he had to stop the violence, he knew how to do so. The time has come for him to decide where his eggs lie -- in the basket of Iraq, Iran, and Libya, or in the American basket. Best you clarify for him that he cannot dance at two weddings. The days when he would be received at grand Washington cocktail parties, care of his friends, the left-leaning Jewish philanthropists, are over. Tell him that if he goes on like this, Washington will spit him out.
At Camp David I reached the conclusion that Arafat is not the man. He's no Sadat and he's no Rabin. It's not with him that we will make the celebratory banner headlines with the word "peace" on the newspaper covers. All his life he believed that Palestine would be liberated with blood and fire. It seems Oslo did not change his outlook. The question is how we make sure that his successor is different than him.
He threatens us with declaring a state. If he does this, he will force me to annex some of the territories. There'll be an almighty uproar. I'm not sure we'll know how to get out of it.
My voters don't want to hear of peace accords now. They want quiet. Separation. The thinking at Oslo was first to sign an accord, and later, gradually, to reach reconciliation. Recent events have changed that thinking. First, Israelis want to be sure that there is a real wish for peace on the other side. First reconciliation. Concessions later.
If what will make his day is an international commission of inquiry to probe the disturbances, let's give him one. There are so many commissions of inquiry checking into things with us, and nothing comes of it. Let there be another. (Yediot Aharonot, p. 1, by Nahum Barnea)
HIZBULLAH OBJECTIVE – WAR: NASRALLAH'S AGENDA
A significant change can be seen in Israel in the attitude toward the Palestinian Authority chairman.
In the intelligence community and the security establishment, the assessment is already growing that Arafat simply can't reach a final status arrangement and therefore negotiations will be suspended until he is replaced. The significance of this is that the conflict with the Palestinians will continue for a relatively long period of time.
But in the meantime, a new threat to regional stability has sprouted. All signs and information point to Hizbullah's leadership planning to carry out a series of actions in an effort to breathe new motivation into the "el Aksa Intifada" which is starting to die down. At the same time, Hizbullah will try to create provocations which will force Israel to realize its threats against Lebanon, and then all the other Arab countries will be forced to take military action against it. The security establishment claims that the danger of a regional conflagration as the result of Hizbullah's activities is greater than the threat posed to regional security by the confrontation with the Palestinians.
The lever by which Hizbullah intends to breathe new esprit de geurre into the Palestinians is the question of the release of detainees held by Israel. The abduction of three soldiers two weeks ago at Har Dov and the abduction of businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum which Nasrallah announced yesterday, were meant to prove to the Palestinians that Hizbullah is on their side and they should not put down their weapons, but rather step-up the struggle. Hizbullah is trying to prove to the Palestinians that the only way to humiliate Israel and take revenge on it while at the same time blackmailing it to release prisoners and make other concessions, is through a sophisticated and unceasing terrorist struggle, and not through negotiations. The model for action they are proposing is supposed to show the way to Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad and to encourage the Palestinian street to support terrorists, and not follow the Palestinian Authority line.
Hizbullah also has its own motivation for the abductions. The elections in Lebanon did not get it the political victory it had hoped for following its "victory" over Israel, and what is more important, the Iranians are pressuring Hizbullah to continue military activity against Israel.
Hizbullah has built a broad military infrastructure which includes various kinds of missiles on the border with Israel, but at the moment Syria is not allowing them to use it. Bashar Assad does not want to get dragged into war with Israel now. Yet Syria does not object to Hizbullah, aided by Iran, wearing out Israel and helping the Palestinians by striking blows to the Jewish weak spot: losses in life and prisoners. Therefore Damascus looks the other way when Hizbullah acts in the controversial Har Dov area and in the international arena.
The Iranians accept the game rules set out by the Syrians. They have formed a coordinating mechanism between Hizbullah, the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Jibril's organization and have put a well-known Lebanese arch-terrorist at its head, Imar Murniyeh. Murniyeh, who planned and carried out a number of abductions and bombings in Lebanon in the '70s and '80s, is probably responsible for the international infrastructure of terrorism shared by Hizbullah and Iran. The activists in this infrastructure are probably those who initiated and carried out the abduction of Elhanan Tannenbaum.
But that is not the end. Hizbullah knows the two abductions will not drag Israel into a military response. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect in the near future additional provocations from the organization, whose aim is to set the Israel-Lebanon border ablaze as well. They won't have to work too hard to do that. Hizbullah fighters are on the border and their options of action are nearly unlimited, from abductions to firing missiles and mortar shells. Hizbullah is waiting for the Palestinians to escalate the situation again, and then they too will probably join. (Yediot Aharonot, p. 1, analysis by Ron Ben Yisha)
THE EFFECTS OF "NO STONE UNTURNED": THE STONE-TURNING STRATEGY
How did we reach this situation? There are many reasons, some of them linked, of course, to the personality and functioning of Yasser Arafat. A main reason linked to him is Barak's "stone-turning strategy." The line running through Ehud Barak's thinking and actions is this: I have left no stone unturned in order to reach an accord, or to see if we have a real partner. If after I finish turning over stones it becomes clear there is no accord/partner/etc., the whole nation will stand as one behind me.
There is no doubt that Barak has, with extraordinary courage and zealous dedication to his objective, turned over every single stone. But the problem is that no stone stands alone. The stones are a pile, connected to and affecting each other. For every stone-turning there is a price, and after each stone turning a fact is created, as are chronic damages. Barak lifted the Syrian stone. Lifted and replaced, amused by the illusion that it was only a matter of exchanging ideas, an academic exercise in which we did not really concede anything. But the chronic damage is in the future, since in any future negotiations with the Syrians, the starting-off point will be the Kinneret, the June 4 boundary, and perhaps even west of that. The consequences of the other stones: To the Palestinians it has been demonstrated that they must insist on getting 100 percent of the territories, and if they go down a few percentage points, then this should be made up for with land inside the State of Israel.
In Lebanon the Syrian stone obligated Barak to carry out unilateral withdrawal, and along with the acquired quiet caused damage: Hizbullah was not disarmed and took up positions on the border. The IAF does not fly in Lebanese air space, and every strategic situation there is fragile. The effect was damaging: The mighty IDF retreats before guerrilla warfare, Israeli society is tired and unusually sensitive to casualties, and spirit of the Four Mothers has settled upon us.
And when the Palestinian stone was held up high, exposing the most sensitive nerves in the conflict, the consequences were immediate: on Arafat himself, on the Moslem world, Arab nations, and Israeli Arabs. There are many further costs: Barak's credibility is gone. Great expectations were created in the nation, and just as great are the disappointments. An internal rift has been created, whereby there are always those who will say not enough stones have been turned, and those who will later cry that too many were turned.
The big reward of stone turning has been that out international standing has improved beyond recognition, because of our withdrawal from Lebanon and our unprecedented concessions to the Syrian and Palestinians. But it turns out that even this was short-lived and fragile when faced with the first stone from a Palestinian youth. The stones were lifted, but more of the house fell. (Ma'ariv, p. B7, commentary by Amos Gilboa) |
