Independent

                               

 

 Humiliation of Palestinians triggers rush to war

 

                                 Dying Peace Process

 

                                 By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

 

                                 9 October 2000

 

                                 What on earth went wrong? Were we not being told less than three

                                 months ago that Israel and the Palestinians were closer to a deal than

                                 they had ever been? Were we not being cheerfully reassured that an

                                 historic watershed had occurred at the Camp David summit and that –

                                 though it ended without an agreement – things would never be the

                                 same again?

 

                                 And yet the descent into violence in the Middle East has been swift

                                 and terrifying. It has happened, above all, because the parties

                                 involved, including Yasser Arafat, for too long underestimated the

                                 rage and frustration that had built up among the Palestinians. Even

                                 now, the Israelis are continuing to make the same mistake by insisting

                                 Mr Arafat has only to snap his fingers to stop it all.

 

                                 The truth is that most Palestinians long ago abandoned any faith in the

                                 Oslo peace process. They judged it on the basis of what they actually

                                 saw – not what was said by the US State Department and Israeli

                                 spinmeisters.

 

                                 They saw that Israeli security officials still barred Palestinians from

                                 moving freely between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – despite

                                 the wildly over-hyped opening of a "safe passage" through Israel a

                                 year ago. They saw that Israeli bulldozers carried on knocking down

                                 Arab houses and clearing Arab land to make bypasses for Jewish

                                 settlers.

 

                                 They saw their workers trooped through the cattle pens at Gaza's

                                 border with Israel to work for a pittance in menial jobs – victims of

                                 Israel's economic throttle-hold, which far overshadowed recent signs

                                 that the Palestinian economy was picking up. They saw the Israelis

                                 crank up the demographic war against the Arab world by opening

                                 their doors to almost one million arrivals from the Soviet Union over a

                                 decade – many of them not Jewish. And, in particular, they saw Ehud

                                 Barak building on occupied land at a faster pace than his hard-line

                                 predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, making a mockery of the pretence

                                 that the Oslo negotiations were founded on UN Security Council

                                 Resolution 242.

 

                                 Mr Barak's aides marketed him skilfully to the world as a peace-maker.

                                 It is perfectly true that he was willing to discuss the division of

                                 Jerusalem and it is true that this took some courage – not least

                                 because it wiped out any prospect of rebuilding his collapsed coalition

                                 government.

 

                                 It is also true that overall, Israel softened its conduct in certain areas –

                                 for example, by announcing the end of the grotesque practice of

                                 revoking residency permits of Arabs in east Jerusalem in an effort to

                                 reduce their numbers, and – at least, officially – ending the use of

                                 torture by the security services.

 

                                 But these moves are seen by ordinary Palestinians as nothing more

                                 than their rights. Nor was it enough. The whole peace process

                                 continued to be blighted by a fundamental lack of good will, and a

                                 strong suspicion that ultimately Mr Barakbelieved that peace was a

                                 matter of bamboozling Mr Arafat into compliance.

 

                                 Complacency also afflicted the Palestinian leadership – Mr Arafat and

                                 his officials, or the "Oslo class" as Palestinians on the street

                                 sneeringly began to call them. They were seen as a world apart,

                                 glossy courtiers jetting from one international capital to another while

                                 those confined within the Palestinian Authority's disjointed scraps of

                                 territory were left to fester.

 

                                 Mr Arafat's tactic of securing loyalty by handing out business

                                 contracts had sown the roots of corruption. As one monstrous

                                 mansion after another appeared on the skyline of the otherwise

                                 squalid,broken-down landscape of Gaza, the public's cynicism and

                                 sullenness deepened. But the world looked the other way. A close

                                 associate of Mr Arafat told The Independent last week: "They mistook

                                 silence for acquiescence, and not the eye of the storm, and today we

                                 are seeing the beginning of the storm." He could not have put it better.

 

                                 Yet the signs were there – although they were ignored by the

                                 leadership on both sides, and also by the Americans, keen to score a

                                 foreign policy triumph before President Bill Clinton left office. Last

                                 November, for instance, 20 prominent Palestinians signed a blistering

                                 petition accusing Mr Arafat of being responsible for corruption in the

                                 Palestinian Authority, and expressing deep disillusion with the Oslo

                                 process. Mr Arafat's response was to arrest half the signatories.

 

                                 Throughout, the Americans soldiered on, believing – not least for

                                 domestic political reasons – that getting a deal was more important

                                 than attending to the danger signals. They underestimated the level of

                                 emotion among the Palestinians so badly that Mr Clinton felt able to

                                 blame Mr Arafat for the failure of the Camp David talks, despite the

                                 latter's apparent willingness to make concessions over such

                                 fundamental issues as Jewish settlement on the West Bank.

 

                                 America's credibility as mediator had long been questioned by

                                 Palestinians, and with reason. "The Palestinians always complain that

                                 we know the details of every proposal from the Americans before

                                 they do," one Israeli government source told The Independent

                                 recently. "There's a good reason for that; we write them."

 

                                 It is ironic, sad even, that Mr Barak's one notable achievement in

                                 office, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon, also

                                 fuelled the fires destroying his one main goal – that of securing a

                                 Middle East peace deal on Israeli terms. The Palestinians, like the rest

                                 of the Arab world, saw the pull-out as a victory for the Hizbollah

                                 guerrillas that had fought Israel's 22-year occupation for so long.

                                 Those now fighting in the streets considered it to be inspiring proof

                                 that violence, albeit by a far weaker side, faced with overwhelming

                                 military force, can achieve results.