Take it or leave it: behind the 'peace process.'

Christian Century, April 2, 1997 by James M. Wall

I asked A high-ranking Palestinian official in Gaza why Yasir Arafat agreed to such a one-sided deal with Israel that allows Israeli soldiers to remain in Hebron to protect 400 Jewish settlers. He responded: "We accepted the agreement because it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer." Take it or leave it has been the Israeli stance in each of its negotiating steps with Arafat's Palestine National Authority. Israel has persuaded most of the world that it is negotiating fairly with the Palestinians in what is termed the "peace process," but there is nothing peaceful or fair in a process in which every decision is structured for the economic and security benefit of one of the parties involved. When President Clinton ordered the U.S. representative to the United Nations to veto an otherwise unanimous Security Council resolution condemning further Israeli housing construction inside East Jerusalem's expanded borders, he said he did so because he felt such matters should be "left to the parties involved"--as if it were a negotiation between two equal parties.

The official who spoke of the "take it or leave it" deal was Isam R. Shawwa, chief of the cabinet and adviser to the planning office of the PNA. He's one of the "outsiders" Arafat brought back to Gaza when he established his PNA headquarters there. Shawwa had retired after a career in civil service with UNESCO and various Western companies in the gulf states. He sounds like a businessman--someone accustomed to achieving the best possible deal with the hand he has been dealt.

This was my first visit to the area in two years, and I found both widespread Palestinian resentment against the Oslo accords, which leave so much power to the Israelis, and reluctant gratitude for the end--in limited areas--of a 42-year military occupation. One other benefit of the accords, which Palestinians also acknowledge, is the growing awareness of national identity among younger people and an open pride in Palestinian history. Downtown Hebron now has a monument to the martyrs of the intifada. I also noticed that the Palestinian flag, the display of which was once a criminal offense, is everywhere. (In earlier visits I have seen children chased by soldiers for even wearing the colors of that flag.) Tourism also holds some economic promise--especially in Bethlehem, one of the cities under limited PNA control.

But Palestinians still cannot travel outside their own designated areas without permits from the Israeli army. This procedure, agreed to in the Oslo accords, is designed ostensibly for Israeli security, but the roadblocks, with their constant body searches and long delays, also serve to harass and humiliate a captive population. Even movement between Gaza and Egypt, where borders are contiguous, must be made through an Israeli checkpoint.

Constantine Dabbagh, executive secretary of the Near East Council of Churches' Committee for Refugee Work, told me he is still waiting for a permit to attend his daughter's engagement party in Beit Sahour, a little over an hour's drive away. Dates for both the engagement party and the wedding cannot be set until all members of the family get their travel permits.

On my previous trip into Gaza, the border crossing from Israel involved a long walk along a dirt (or mud) highway. Now there is a large parking lot for Israeli vehicles that bring passengers to the border, and a long narrow passageway through which Palestinian laborers must walk on their way into Israel to work. It is this passageway that Israel closes when it wants to keep workers inside Gaza. Even Arafat is not allowed to leave Gaza without Israeli permission, and if an airport is ever built in Gaza, all flights will have to be approved by Israel.

Arafat's decision to accept such a limited authority over widely scattered patches of land, along with the tight border controls, has outraged many Palestinians who feel that the official negotiations between Israel and the PLO, which were begun in Madrid and continued in Washington by the Bush administration, should have been allowed to continue. The back-channel agreement reached in secret in Oslo abruptly ended the Madrid negotiations.

Gaza physician Haider Adbel Shafi, who chaired the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid talks, considers the Oslo accords "a bad agreement" which has done nothing to stop the building of Israeli settlements. "I told Arafat that as long as Israeli settlement construction continues, he should suspend all negotiations with the Israelis," Shafi said. "He did not listen to me. The accords are open to so many interpretations to which the stronger party--Israel--can provide the final interpretation. Israel has a free hand to do whatever it wants to do, which includes the building of these bypass roads which only strengthen their hold over our territorial bantustans."

Shafi feels that President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker were "on the right track" when they linked U.S. loan guarantees to a halt in Israeli settlement construction. But President Clinton, who is viewed by Palestinians as the most pro-Israel U.S. president in modern times, has removed that pressure. Palestinians complain that Clinton's appointment of Martin Indyk as ambassador to Israel is a sign of his strong pro-Israel stance. Indyk is a former executive director of AIPAC, a Jewish organization that coordinates U.S. lobbying efforts for Israel. (It was Indyk, however, who recently proposed a list of confidence-building steps to Israel which Washington believed could ease tensions. These included approval for an airport and seaport in Gaza, the opening of a route for Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, and an end to Israeli seizures of Palestinian land.)