If one thing has become clear in the period that has elapsed since
the conclusion of the limited autonomy agreement, it is that the
new world order ushered in by Madrid and Oslo is every bit as ugly
as the old. The recent election of Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader
of the Likud, to the post of prime minister promises that it will
get even uglier.
The political process that began to unfold at the conclusion of the
1990 Gulf War appears to have ground to a halt. While many believed
initially that the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the
Cold War would enable the United States to playa more even-handed
role, and even minimize the role of Israel as the guarantor of
Western interests in the region, events so far have not
substantiated these hopes. Israel in its hour of victory has not
extended a generous peace. Janus-faced, it is, at one and the same
time, triumphalist and paranoid. If anything, the persistent
Israeli campaign to annul and change the Palestinian National
Charter is indicative of this need, not only to achieve victory in
war and in peace, but also in its symbolic dimension, to have the
Palestinians erase their own history. It is as if the persistence
of the Palestinian claim, in and of itself, poses a threat that
conjures up fear and insecurity.
It is difficult to affirm whether the high Palestinian expectations
that were ushered in by Madrid were delusional or consciously
self-deceptive. The rhetoric of those Palestinians who were close
enough to the PLO leadership, and consequently able to enroll their
names on the quotas of returnees, seemed divorced from the mundane
and humiliating procedures that accompanied the return, and the
limitations imposed upon them. The facade of liberation, power,
sovereignty, and emancipation seemed to mark the new returnees, in
sharp contrast to the attitude of the local inhabitants of the
occupied territories who welcomed any change in the nature and
dimension of the occupation, without necessarily equating this with
the fulfillment of the promise of self-determination and
statehood.
Peres tried to appear both as dove and hawk. Despite all the fancy
rhetoric about the dawn of a new age in the region, he will be
remembered as the butcher of Qana. His political ineptitude came
through in his decision to allow the Mossad to go ahead with the
assassination of Yahya Ayyash, which brought such retribution from
the suicide bombers of Hamas in its wake. In this he was imitating
the late Yitzhak Rabin who, only a week before his assassination,
engineered the murder of the leader of the Islamic Jihad, Fathi
Shikaki, in Malta. Rabin himself was felled by an assassin's
bullet. Testimony to the persistence of the prophecy: Those who
live by the sword, die by the sword.
Indeed, it has been a strange peace which Israel's government
unleashed on the Palestinians since the signing ceremony at Oslo.
For their part, the Palestinians had terminated the Intifada, and
the PLO had gathered its weary troops from far and near, hastily
transforming them in the process into the virtual, if not actual,
guardians of Israel's borders. In order to secure its own survival,
the PLO leadership has acquiesced to sever itself from the body of
the Palestinian people in the countries of refuge, has agreed to
abandon the call for the dismantling of settlements, has to all
intents and purposes accepted the fait accompli of the annexation
of the Arab part of Jerusalem, and perhaps more significantly, has
assumed the new role of guardian of Israel's security.
The Israelis are also doing their share. Jerusalem has been
completely severed from the West Bank. The Gaza Strip and the West
Bank have been detached from each other. After a wage-dependency
which has been nurtured for 29 years, the Palestinian labor force
is forcibly prevented from seeking its livelihood within Israel
proper. Land expropriations and the building of roads linking the
settlements and by-passing Arab population centers are proceeding
at a feverish pace. The absence of Palestinian control over land,
and the restriction of the autonomy to the inhabitants of specific
urban and rural locations are further highlighted by the siege
which the Labor government successfully implemented for the first
time in the history of the occupation, and which transformed the
West Bank into hundreds of autonomous Palestines. The Gaza
Strip, only partially under Palestinian control, was transformed
into one big prison cell, with the keys of the gates at the Erez
crossing firmly in the hands of the Israeli military. Thousands of
Palestinian prisoners have not been released from Israeli
incarceration. At the same time, Israeli occupation forces continue
their task of hunting down and arresting Palestinians suspected of
carrying out violent acts in the territories occupied by Israel and
within Israel proper. The attempt to eradicate any flicker of
resistance to the unfolding Israeli political and military
hegemony, which is a necessary accompanying part of the ongoing
peace process, has led to the use of the military fist, not only in
the areas under Israel's control, but further afield, as in
Lebanon. This is reminiscent of Israel's behavior vis-a-vis its
Arab neighbors since its very inception, going as far back as the
massacres at Qibya, Al-Samu', Bahr Al-Bakar, Irbid, Beirut, Hammam
Al-Shat, to recall some of the major stations in Israel's
biography. Indeed, it seems that the current peace process is in
essence nothing less than war by other means.
For its part, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has been
busy trying to assert its authority and show the Israelis, the
donor countries, the Palestinians under its control and the whole
wide world that it is firmly in control. Notwithstanding the
holding of elections to the Legislative Council in January 1996,
authority remains firmly in the hands of a handful of powerful
figures within Fatah who hold positions of power within the PLO,
and in the executive arm of the autonomy apparatus. The elected
Legislative Council, where Arafat enjoys an automatic majority, has
been deliberately sidestepped and marginalized. Indeed, it is as if
the whole election exercise was meant as a sop to an outside world,
to whom democracy is formal, procedural, institutional, and not at
all substantive. The actual influence of the elected council on the
current political process is minimal. In many ways this is similar
to the situation in Jordan, where the executive authority can, with
the connivance of a built-in majority in the elected representative
body, ignore it with impunity. The new dawn has produced meager
pickings.
The Palestinian political scene is one of total disarray. Within
the ranks of the PLO the demarcation between loyalists and
oppositionists is at best fuzzy. The session of the Palestine
National Council held in Gaza, with the specific aim of annulling
the National Covenant, was attended by senior figures from both the
Popular Front and the Democratic Front, in effect giving legitimacy
to its proceedings. At the same time, their delegates boycotted the
sessions devoted to rescinding the covenant! For their loyalty,
they were rewarded by an increase in their numerical allotment
within the council. The formation of the executive council of the
autonomy held more surprises. The Peoples Party (ex-Communists) who
have been one of the severest critics of the agreements and of the
behavior of the PNA since its arrival in Gaza, accepted a portfolio
in the new cabinet. Another surprise was the participation in the
cabinet of the popular ex-mayor of Al-Bireh, long associated, in
the public eye, with opposition to the PLO bureaucracy, and since
the days of his membership of the PLO executive committee in
Beirut, to Arafat personally.
The picture within the Islamic Movement is just as confusing. For a
few months, conflicting messages have been coming from the
direction of Hamas. On the one hand, repression, both by the
Israelis and by the PNA's security forces, have dealt them a severe
blow. This has been accompanied by what seems to be an open fissure
between their spokespersons within the occupied territories and on
the outside. Reported peaceful overtures to the PNA in the wake of
the wave of suicide bombings that rocked the country have tended to
sow confusion in the public mind over the political agenda of the
Islamic Movement. The statements of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin publicized
by the Israeli authorities from his prison cell, and the unexpected
failure, perhaps inability, of the movement to play an
interventionist role in the recent Israeli elections have served to
sow further doubts. If the Islamic forces are willing to facilitate
the unfolding of Arafat's agreement with the Israelis and the
consequent expansion of the autonomy, then what is it that they are
opposed to? Is it that they merely want to become partners, but are
making a bid for a larger share than Arafat is willing to give
them? Their radical stance, and the bloody campaign of terror
unleashed by them on the Israeli public, are not commensurate with
their perceived political agenda.
To an overwhelming degree, Israel has succeeded in implementing its
political and military agenda in the region. Its decision to enroll
the Palestinians in its efforts to ensure a hegemonic presence in
the Arab world has tended to create yet further divisions within
Arab and Palestinian ranks. To be sure, Israel's strategy is not
preoccupied with matters Palestinian or with the borders of
Mandatory Palestine. Since 1948, Israel's main adversaries have
been the neighboring Arab states, Egypt and Syria, standing in for
an Arab world, fearful and wary of this new foreign implant. Israel
waged a struggle against this wall of Arab refusal and rejection.
Major landmarks are the full-scale wars waged in 1956 and 1967, but
there was a continuing and persistent war going on all the time,
directed, not against armies and states, but against ordinary
people in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and further afield. The aim
was to ground them into submission. There is no denying that
current political developments are witness to the success of
Israel's strategy. But the spirit of resistance has not been
completely eliminated. There are still voices saying No. They are
reminiscent of the famous picture of the lone individual standing
in front of a row of tanks during the Tiananmen Square popular
outburst in Peking. There are still arms raising the high banner
with the legend We Are Not Going to Let the Wretches Grind Us
Down, boldly inscribed across it.