-Caveat Lector-
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Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 15:43:08 +0200
From: Gush Shalom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: International List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [ongoing debate] The Palestinian Peace Offer - by Jerome Segal
[The following op-ed in Ha'aretz (Oct. 1, 2001) by senior research scholar and
Middle-East specialist Jerome Segal is another reaction to former minister
Shlomo Ben-Ami's accusation that the Palestinians did not come up in Camp
David with a peace proposal of their own. Segal points out how much of Ben-
Ami's own information - when placed in the context of the history of the conflict -
proves this accusation to be invalid. NB: This article is not a Gush Shalom
statement. If you have comments, you can send them to "Jerome M. Segal"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
The Palestinian peace offer
By Jerome M. Segal
Great import has been attributed to the absence during the entire Camp
David-Taba period of any Palestinian proposal that would have ended the
conflict. It has been argued that while the Palestinians might have had
legitimate problems with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer, if they
had been serious partners in the quest for peace, they would have come
back with their own counter-offer.
When former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (Ha'aretz, September 14, 2001)
was asked in a recent interview, "Didn't the Palestinians make a
counterproposal?" he responded:
"No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations
between us and the Palestinian, was there a Palestinian counterproposal.
There never was and there never will be."
What makes the Ben-Ami interview remarkable, is that Ben-Ami actually
provides specific details of a Palestinian offer. True enough, it did not
come with whistles and bells and a sign saying "Counter-Offer to End the
Conflict." But it was clearly there. His failure to see it as a
legitimate, even if politically untenable, proposal, tells us much more
about Ben-Ami and the other Israeli negotiators than it does about the
Palestinians.
The starting point is to recall the formal Palestinian position going into
the negotiations. As far back as 1988, the Palestinians accepted the
two-state solution. They not only reversed their position on the original
1947 Partition Resolution, but they accepted Resolution 242, which calls
for a permanent peace and directs its attention to Israeli withdrawal from
territory occupied as result of the 1967 war, but does not mention
territory beyond the partition plan allocation that Israel acquired as a
result of the 1948 war.
The Palestinian position on 242 is that it requires Israel to withdraw
from all of the territories occupied as result of the war. This would
require Israel to withdraw to the Green Line, and to relinquish all of
East Jerusalem, including the Old City. As is well known, Resolution 242
was ambiguous, speaking only of withdrawal by Israel from "territories
occupied in the recent conflict." It never says "all of the territories."
The Palestinians bolster their position by pointing to the preamble of 242
which stresses "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by
war." But this is insufficient. There is no right answer as to what 242
requires - the ambiguity was deliberate. But the point is, the Palestinian
opening position is not absurd. Indeed, given that Egypt and Jordan
secured total withdrawal, the political necessity for Palestinians to at
least aim at total withdrawal is quite predictable, even if unrealistic.
The second pillar of the Palestinian formal position was UN General
Assembly Resolution 194, which "resolves that the refugees wishing to
return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be
permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date."
The resolution does not speak of a "right of return" but Palestinians, not
surprisingly, claim that it established or expressed such a right.
Moreover, they maintain that it applied to all of the descendants of the
1948 refugees. Here too, their position is not absurd, but if they were
not prepared to compromise on the idea that millions of refugees would
actually return, then they were not seriously engaged in an effort to
negotiate an end the conflict.
Ben-Ami makes clear that the Palestinians moved in very fundamental ways
away from these opening positions, despite their long held reluctance to
relinquish what they see as the international law case for their claims.
Specifically, here's what Ben-Ami has told us:
1. On territory, the Palestinians proposed that Israel should withdraw
from 97.66 percent of the territory. This would allow Israel to annex
areas that contain the majority of the settlers, even if less than the 80
percent of settlers that Clinton proposed. In exchange for the 2.36
percent annexed, there would be a territorial swap. Here the Palestinians
wanted a one-for-one swap. Whether this Palestinian proposal asks too much
of Israel's internal politics or not, it is a real counter-offer that
abandons their view of 242, in order to allow Israel to mollify most of
the settlers. Yes, what they propose squeezes the settlers quite hard, but
in truth, they are more right than wrong. Israel should have never allowed
the settlements and it is hard to see why the Palestinians should be more
than minimally accommodating. As for their insistence on a one-for-one
swap, this hardly seems unreasonable, even if unpleasant for Israelis to
contemplate.
2. On Jerusalem, the Palestinians agreed that Israel would not have to
withdraw from all of East Jerusalem, but would retain under Israeli
sovereignty, all of the Jewish neighborhoods built since 1967 (such as
Gilo). To Israelis this might not seem like much of a concession, but
research into the attitudes of the Palestinian public (See Negotiating
Jerusalem, by Segal, Levy, Katz and Said) shows that agreeing to Israeli
sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods has been acceptable only to a
minority of Palestinians. Most Palestinians are prepared to accept a
different idea, that the Jewish neighborhoods be controlled by Israel, but
under Palestinian sovereignty. Accepting Israeli sovereignty over a major
part of East Jerusalem is a very clear concession from the Palestinian
point of view, and is similar to what Clinton proposed.
3. With respect to the Old City, the Palestinians abandoned their demand
for full Israeli withdrawal, and instead accepted that Israeli would be
sovereign over the Jewish Quarter, including the Western Wall. The issue
of the Armenian quarter remained unresolved, but clearly, the Palestinians
were in a compromise mode.
4. With respect to the Temple Mount, the Palestinians retained their claim
for Palestinian sovereignty, but were willing to enter a formal agreement
that they would not excavate without Israeli agreement. This of course,
represents a limitation on their sovereignty, and is very close to one of
Clinton's formulations which affirmed "Palestinian sovereignty over the
Haram and Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, and shared functional
sovereignty over the issue of excavation under the Haram and behind the
Wall such that mutual consent would be required for any such activities."
The Palestinians rejected the theoretical notion of "shared functional
sovereignty" but in practice, accepted it.
5. On refugees, Ben-Ami is somewhat vague. The Palestinians, while
insisting on the identification of return to Israel as one of the options
open to refugees, appear to have accepted the principle that the actual
return would be limited to a specific number. Ben-Ami is not sure of what
numbers the Palestinians proposed, but mentions 150,000 per year for ten
years. If this number is accurate, coming to a total of 1.5 million
returnees, it is totally untenable. Ben-Ami indicates that Yossi Beilin
responded with a total of 40,000. Clearly, they were far apart, but the
principle that there is no unlimited right of return appears to have been
conceded. This discussion of the size of the cap came very late in the
day.. We do not know if it could have been bridged. It is quite possible
that even if the negotiations had gone on for several more months, this
gap would not have been closed. But it is very likely that it would have
been significantly narrowed, and that, in the end, the Palestinians would
have settled for some substantial but not demographically impossible
number.
In reflecting on whether the above constitutes a genuine counter-offer, it
is important not to confuse that question with whether the Palestinian
proposal was tenable within Israeli politics. Clearly it was not
politically tenable. But then, the Israeli offer was probably untenable
within Palestinian politics. We will never know whether continued
negotiations would have lead to an agreement. But it is hard to see why
the Palestinian proposal - one that allows most settlers to remain, allows
Jewish neighborhoods to remain in East Jerusalem, accepts Israeli
sovereignty over the Jewish quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall,
agrees to an Israeli veto over excavation, and in principle accepts that
the actual return to Israel cannot be unlimited - is somehow proof of
Palestinian determination to destroy Israel.
The fact that this conclusion has been drawn, points to a continued
problem in the mind set of many, the insistence that meeting the demands
of Israeli politics is the criteria for judging whether a Palestinian
proposal represents a genuine offer to end the conflict. The Israeli
public would have been far better served if the Barak government had
turned to Israelis and said: "Here is the price the Palestinians are
asking for peace - we have rejected it because it is more than we are
willing to pay."
Jerome M. Segal is a senior research scholar at the University of
Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies. He is co-author
of Negotiating Jerusalem (SUNY Press, 2000).
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