The people of the Middle East have learned from long experience
that the security of their region is inseparably linked to
Palestinian/Arab-Israeli peace. Whenever regional security breaks
down, the peace process breaks down, and vice versa. At present,
the security situation here is feeling the effects of the events of
September 11, the growing power of radical forces, the global war
against terrorism, developments in Iraq and the question of
stability in oil-producing states. None of these issues can be
isolated from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The experience of
the past century demonstrates that the conflict has been a decisive
factor behind all the upheavals that affected the security of the
region, and the cause of five major Arab-Israeli wars. There can be
no security or stability in the Middle East unless the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is settled and conditions in the city
of Jerusalem are stabilized.This piece presents a brief reading of
the state of regional security and its interface with the impasse
the peace process has reached.
The link between regional security and the peace
process
Following the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, the subsequent Oslo
Accords and mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel in 1993,
the agreements that followed on the Palestinian and Jordanian
tracks, coupled with serious negotiations on the Syrian track,
hopes were raised among those who believed in the possibility of
resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the
Syrian/Lebanese-Israeli conflict by peaceful means. Researchers and
strategic analysts believed years of bitter, armed conflict had
taught both Palestinians and Israelis lessons in the importance of
peace. Everybody hoped these developments would lead to extensive
improvements in security, after the partial improvement that came
as a result of the Camp David Agreements between Egypt and Israel
in 1979.
However, events were to prove such expectations unfounded. The
failure of the tripartite Camp David summit that brought together
Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat in July 2000, the
eruption of the Intifada at the end of September 2000, the failure
of the Taba talks in late January 2001, and the killing of about
3,000 Palestinians and 900 Israelis, with thousands wounded on both
sides, demonstrated that 10 years of Palestinian-Israeli
negotiations and agreements had not only failed miserably to ensure
a peaceful end to the conflict, but had also not engendered durable
principles for establishing a peaceful relationship, in spite of
the immense American, international and regional efforts expended.
On both sides there remained people who had not absorbed the
lessons of the past and still believed the conflict could be
resolved through force.
The breakdown of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and the election
of Ariel Sharon in February 2001 dealt the peace process a decisive
blow, and the Palestinian-Israeli track was shelved alongside the
Syrian-Israeli track. Palestinian and Arab suspicions grew as to
the honesty of the American broker, security coordination between
the PA and the Israeli government broke down, and the killings and
retaliations increased, contaminating the security environment in
the whole region.
The scenes of killings, closures and house demolitions moved world
opinion, and especially the Arab "street." The Arabs voiced their
support for their brethren, and the Palestinian question regained
its Arab depth, leading to a further deterioration in regional
security. Israeli society came to be seen by Palestinians and Arabs
as a society that had not matured enough to build a balanced,
peaceful relationship, was not yet ready for a historic
reconciliation and remained unconvinced that peace bore greater
strategic benefits than the temporary and limited ones gained by
colonizing another people and occupying their land. European,
Islamic and African governments, which had lent support to the
peace process, placed the burden of responsibility for the collapse
of regional security on the shoulders of the Israeli
government.
As the Intifada escalated and more and more Palestinians were
killed, many Palestinians and Arabs started calling for greater
military action, holding up Hizbollah's expulsion of the Israeli
army from south Lebanon as the example to follow. Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, the PFLP, the DFLP and Fateh all worked to escalate military
operations against the Israeli army, settlers and civilians. They
demanded an end to all negotiations, contacts and security
coordination with Israel, and that "Jihad" be adopted as the only
way of ending the occupation. They expressed their appreciation
that Yasser Arafat had held out in the face of US pressure and
Israeli blackmail. Arafat, in turn, kept spreading the message that
there was no horizon for an acceptable solution with Sharon in
power. In internal meetings he did not defend the peace process,
and thus provided the opposition with ammunition in support of
their arguments.
All in all, during this era of the second Intifada and Sharon,
extremist ideas prevailed at the expense of more realistic
approaches, and regional security destabilized. Relations between
Israel and a number of Islamic countries cooled, and steps toward
political and economic normalization with Arab countries ended as
Arab officialdom revived the Boycott of Israel Bureau. Little by
little the rules of the political and security game changed.
Israeli tanks crushed the Oslo agreement in the streets of the
cities and towns they reoccupied and buried security coordination
under the rubble of the Palestinian security offices. The cracks in
regional security grew deeper. Sharon's policy, in its hostility to
peace and in its ongoing persecution of Palestinians, was damaging
Arab-Israeli relations, in general, and Jordan's and Egypt's with
Israel, in particular.
Dim Prospects
The breakdown of the peace process on the three tracks, and the
hatred that has accumulated over the last three years, has brought
Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli relations to a new stage still
in a process of formation.
1. The Road Map drawn up by the Quartet to implement the Bush
"vision" for solving the conflict and for the establishment of a
Palestinian state alongside Israel has been shelved, joining the
Tenet Plan, the Mitchell Plan, and numerous other ideas wasted by
both parties. Though Sharon still talks about the importance of the
Road Map, it is only to cover the obituary he prepared for it with
his 14 reservations. The Bush administration, while maintaining
that the Road Map is still alive, has contradicted itself by
accepting 12 of the 14 conditions imposed by Sharon. The fact that
the Bush administration decided to delay the return of its envoy
John Wolf, assigned to follow up the Road Map, after three
Americans were killed in Gaza, only indicates that Wolf has
followed the example of General Anthony Zini and withdrawn quietly
from the mission. It is a mistake to believe the recent UN Security
Council Resolution 1515 is sufficient to save the Road Map and
bring back Wolf. This is not the first resolution, nor will it be
the last, that Israel refuses to implement, defying the
international community, while confident of complete American
protection for its position.
2. There are no prospects for the revival of the peace process or
for the birth of any alternative process in the Sharon era as long
as the US administration continues to adopt the positions of the
Likud, refusing to deal pragmatically with the elected Palestinian
leadership, and appearing to accept the building of the separation
barrier deep in Palestinian territory, as well as the killing of
civilians and the demolition of their homes, as part of the war
against "international terrorism." It also seems that Israeli
extremist forces will remain in power for a long time. Opinion
polls indicate that they continue to garner the support of the
majority of the Israeli population, and thus that political
thinking in Israeli society has not matured sufficiently to accept
a true reconciliation.
In addition, the chiefs of the Israeli security establishment are
aware that the days of "dependence on Palestinian security forces"
(as Israel conceives it) are over, just as their Palestinian
counterparts are aware that the days when the Israeli army dealt
with them as the leaders of friendly forces are gone. Whatever the
position of Israel's security and political establishments
regarding the Palestinian leadership and security organizations, it
is no longer possible to speak of security cooperation and
coordination in its old format, after the killings on both sides
and the collapse of the foundations of all security arrangements
adopted after the Oslo agreements. The PNA has furthermore lost the
necessary tools to dismantle the terrorist forces since Sharon
destroyed its security infrastructure.
3. The Islamic opposition, as represented by Hamas and Islamic
Jihad, has, during the Intifada, succeeded both in forcing the PLO
factions to adopt their modus operandi, and in imposing their
nihilistic positions on Palestinian public opinion. The Islamist
factions and the Fateh organization, along with the PFLP and the
DFLP, entered a race to militarize the Intifada and carry out
suicide operations against civilians. These forces ignored the fact
that military action was Sharon's favored playing field, and that
images of explosions and civilian victims only drove the Israeli
public towards Sharon and the extreme right in search of security
and safety. With the increase in the number of suicide operations,
support for peace died out among Israelis, and the majority started
to believe Sharon's words, picked up from Ehud Barak, about the
Palestinians seeking to drown Israel with millions of refugees. The
suicide operations made it easier for Sharon to destroy the Oslo
agreements and Palestinian institutions, and to initiate the
construction of the separation barrier, taking over extensive
tracts of Palestinian land.
4. During this same period, the Syrian and Lebanese tracks became
more complicated, compounding the complications resulting from the
failed Clinton-Assad meeting in Geneva in March 2000. Sharon's
threats against Syria and Lebanon took the region back to the
atmosphere of the pre-peace process days. Both Israel and Syria
started boasting about their military capabilities, and
highlighting every military action committed against the other
party. Sharon took pride in the Israeli bombardment of the village
of Ain al-Sahib and of Israeli fighter planes flying over the
Presidential Palace in Damascus, and the earlier attack against
Syrian radars stationed in Lebanon. Syria threatened retaliation in
kind, as both parties seemed to forget that not long ago they had
come very close to an agreement that would put an end to the
conflict.
It is not rational to expect the Syrian leadership to be prepared
to resume negotiations from point zero, as Sharon is demanding, or
to agree that the withdrawal from the Golan Heights be any
different than what was implemented in south Lebanon. While Sharon
remains in power and the US continues to occupy Iraq, Syrian
interests will only lead the Syrian leadership to hold onto their
rights, wasting neither time nor effort on reviving the peace
process with Israel, while seeking to shorten the term of the
Sharon government and the departure of American troops from
Iraq.
If Syria will not encourage Hizbollah to escalate military
activities, neither will it discourage it from doing so. It
believes that just as Israel implemented UN Security Council
Resolution 425 on south Lebanon, it will have to implement UN
Resolutions 242 and 338, as they relate to the withdrawal from
Palestinian and Syrian territories occupied in 1967.
The Hizbollah leadership, meanwhile, cannot retract its "Jihad"
platform, which is its very raison d'etre, nor can it keep silent
about its members in Israeli captivity. Its leadership draws
encouragement from the Iranian position in support of Syria and
will continue its support for the struggle of the Palestinians.
Obviously, if Hizbollah carries out operations against Israel, it
will cause a limited regional conflagration, particularly as Sharon
has changed the rules of the game. He and his establishment now
insist on holding Syria responsible for every operation carried out
by Hizbollah, and they are threatening to attack Syrian troops in
Lebanon and have already attacked targets in Syria. It is the same
logic they have applied to the PA. When Hamas carries out military
operations, Israel holds the PA responsible.
5. The most the Bush administration will seek to achieve during its
involvement in Iraq and until the American presidential elections
in November 2004 is: a) attempting to contain the situation in the
region, and keep it under control, while reducing the level of
violence and constraining Sharon from carrying out any major
military adventure that could escalate the situation, b)
encouraging the Palestinians and the Israelis to reach a cease-fire
agreement, or "hudna", to soften the positions of the two sides,
and to resume security and political contacts at the highest
levels, c) cooling the political and military tension on the Syrian
and Lebanese front, and pressure both governments to curb the
actions of Hizbollah, d) keep alive the concept of resolving the
conflict by peaceful means.
It should be added here that any discrepancies between the Israeli
and American positions regarding settlements and the separation
barrier are limited and do not touch upon the position of the Bush
administration in support of the Sharon government. It is true
that, while in London, Bush criticized Israel for not halting the
building of "fences" and settlements, however, the Sharon
government did not take these criticisms seriously, realizing they
would not evolve into serious differences or be followed by serious
pressure.
Therefore, if there are no prospects of the parties stepping down
from their positions, and no prospects of convincing the Bush
administration to make Israel resume its negotiations with Syria
from the point they stopped or to implement the Road Map, the
logical conclusion is that the peace process, as the peoples of the
region came to know it, has stalled and a third party will have to
step in to separate the parties.
One thing is clear: Successive American administrations cannot be
absolved from their responsibility for the collapse of the peace
process and regional security, and the obstruction of the role of
the UN. If President Clinton is blamed for failing to resolve the
conflict, then President George W. Bush and his team stand accused
of facilitating the spilling of innocent blood and prolonging the
conflict, after dubbing Sharon "a man of peace" and allowing him to
spread hatred and anger in the whole region.
The Geneva Document: A Glimmer of Hope
The Middle East has rarely been as turbulent: Declared wars,
undeclared wars, chronic conflicts alongside new ones that could
well escalate. Everything in the region is in flux and nobody can
predict how things will turn out. If the resumption of negotiations
on the Syrian track with Sharon in power would require nothing less
than a miracle, then his irredentist ambitions in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip would render any agreement over final status issues with
the Palestinians absolutely impossible.
Peace advocates are able to identify the dangers to both peoples
and regional security as a whole if the Likud maintains a prolonged
hold on power. Sharon has said on more than one occasion that Iran,
Syria and Libya should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction.
He will strive to make optimal use of the remainder of President
Bush's first term, and the preoccupation of the White House team
with the forthcoming elections and the open-ended war in Iraq. It
seems that Sharon is determined to leave politics only after having
created irreversible facts on the ground. The best example is the
separation barrier, but he has also extended Israel's control over
the territories of the West Bank, built more settlements and
undermined any basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state,
while escalating the situation with Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Instead of exploiting the state of weakness prevailing in the Arab
world to make peace, he finds in this weakness the opportunity to
tear down all the foundations of peace, to get rid of Yasser Arafat
and to destroy what remains of the PNA. At the same time, the
continued control of Palestinian extremists over the internal
situation will only bring greater disasters for the
Palestinians.
Saving the security of the region should be a collective task
shouldered by supporters of peace everywhere. Numerous
international parties have voiced their concern about the inability
of the two parties to address their differences, and experts in the
conflict have called for imposing an international mandate over the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip, placing the Palestinians under
international trusteeship and assisting them in building a viable
democratic state.
Research centers and think tanks have focused their attention on
bringing in a third party, and the issue is still under discussion.
Such a step appears to be an important way out of the current
impasse, perhaps the only one. The hudna between Palestinians and
Israelis is of utmost importance in stopping further deterioration.
However, as we well know from experience, to maintain such a hudna,
save the peace process and provide security to both sides, large
numbers of observers are needed to ensure that both sides are
meeting their obligations, and the time has come to make the
presence of a third party a central priority.
In the same context, the Geneva Accord that the Beilin-Abed Rabbo
group drew up, along with the Ayalon-Nusseibeh document, has
created a glimmer of hope, demonstrating that saving the peace
process is both possible and achievable. The interview with the
four former Israeli intelligence chiefs in Yediot Ahronot, an
Israeli mass circulation daily newspaper, has strengthened this
hope. Will the supporters of peace be able to take up the
opportunity offered by these initiatives and turn it into reality,
saving the people of the region from greater turmoil? Or have they
lost the initiative and are too weak to stand up to the extremists?