BOSTON REVIEW , Summer 2002 "Fenced In"

HEADING:As Arafat declines and Israel's grip tightens, the Middle East sinks
into hopelessness. Helena Cobban- Global Affairs correspondent for the
Christian Science Monitor and Al-Hayat (London), and a member of the Middle
East advisory committee of Human Rights Watch

EXCERPTS

[IMRA NOTE:Providing this article departs from usual IMRA practice. However,
because of the place of Helena Cobban in Middle East coverage and her
advisory position regarding Human Rights Watch, an unusual amount of
coverage is provided. That it originally appeared as a major article, which
provided full opportunity to carefully consider its content, is significant.
The Arafat interview is slightly shortened here. The article's remainder is
much shortened However, every concept presented in the original text is
carried.]
Arafat
"After not having seen Yasser Arafat for seven years, I was scheduled to
meet with him twice ... But on June 25...I was compelled to cancel the
second session with Arafat.
Getting to the earlier meeting, on May 18, had proved relatively easy. ...
...At exactly six-thirty, we were led to a larger, bare-walled room and
greeted at the door by a neatly uniformed Arafat.
The Palestinians' historic leader seemed fragile and tired ... . He had
lost some weight, along with a great deal of the mental agility that I had
observed on a number of previous encounters (though not all of them)...
...at ...times during our thirty-minute meeting,
[IMRA: A short session for a group Cobban does not identify. Does Arafat
want to avoid follow-up questions?]
the ... once-renowned memory seemed to flag and his attention wandered.
Three of his currently favored advisers were sitting around him. One of
them, spokesman Saeb Eraqat, jumped into the conversation frequently, often
talking "on behalf of," or over, or even in direct contra-diction to "the
President." It was an extraordinary performance ... unthinkable until
recently in Arafat's tightly-controlled inner circle. Watching Eraqat's
behavior gave more credence to rumors about the "sharks" in particular, the
heads of the various security organizations created by Arafat over the years
already circling the waters around a leader with only a tenuous grasp left
on political life.
What we did not get from Arafat was any sense of an effectual national
leader articulating a convincing strategy ... . Instead we heard the usual
litany of angry accusations against the Israelis and a plea aimed mainly at
the Americans for "quick, strong, international pressure." Arafat insisted
that "nothing ever happened without pressure!" and recalled the demand that
President Eisenhower had made to the Israelis back in 1956, that they
withdraw "within the next eight hours" from areas they seemed to be trying
to hang onto in Sinai and Gaza. "...they withdrew within half an hour,"...
.
[IMRA: Israel's withdrawal followed a ceasefire. Much later, Eisenhower
regretted forcing Israel out. This set the stage for the Six Day War.]
Then, with the nostalgia that perhaps comes too easily to him in his
seventy-third year, he made a point of mentioning his own role in the Suez
episode. As a de-mining officer in the Egyptian Army's engineering corps, he
had been, he told us proudly, the first Egyptian officer to enter the Suez
Canal city of Port Said after Israel's withdrawal.
Someone from our group brought him back to the present, asking what his
fallback position would be in the event that the Americans failed to bring
similar pressure to bear on the Israelis this time around.
He did not answer the question. Instead, he warned that, "Unless we have a
quick solution, then we'll see all the Middle East in a very serious
situation." He mentioned the sizeable pro-Palestinian demonstrations that
had taken place in a number of Middle Eastern countries over preceding
weeks. But neither he nor his advisers presented any plan that might
translate those expressions of pro-Palestinian sentiment into politically
consequential action.
"What can the Arab governments do to help the Palestinians more?" one
questioner asked.
"War is out. Oil is out," Eraqat replied.
Someone asked about Palestinian political reform.
This time, Eraqat remembered to preface his remarks by noting that he was
speaking "on behalf of" Arafat. "Reform for us is nation-building," he said.
[IMRA: So why was reform needed? Wasn't there proper construction
initially?]
"Occupation, however, is nation-destroying. Anyone from Europe or America
who calls for Palestinian reform while supporting the Israeli occupationwe
don't accept! Palestinian reform must be on a parallel track with Israeli
withdrawal."
"We don't even have a working administration!" he exclaimed. "The Israelis
can come and go as they want. How can they speak to us of reform?"
One of our group asked again what teh Palestinian fallback position would be
id the Americans failed to respond to Arafat's demand that they become
constructively involved in peacemaking. The President looked up from the
papers he was thumbing through, and referred to some large, recent
pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Turkey.
I reminded him that our question was about the Palestinian fallback
position.
. "I'm not working alone! I'm working with the Europeans, the Arabs, the
Christians, the non-aligned!"
He changed tack, and asked us with a grin if we knew who the first suicide
bomber in history had been.... "Samson!" he exclaimed. "The first suicide
bomber... was Jewish!"
"We have to follow this great example given by one of the Prophets," he
intoned in mock piety.
Eraqat seemed a little embarrassed at this point. He jumped in to make the
more general argument that the rhetoric of anti-terrorism is not applicable
to the Palestinians' struggle ...
...Arafat triumphantly produced a piece of paper with about six lines of
writing on it from the stack in front of him. "See! Here is the report!" he
announced. "Yesterday I stopped a very serious suicide operation."
I asked to read the report. "No, no, it's security!" he said.
"Could you give us more details then?"
"No. But it was a very serious attempt."...
One member of our group, Eric Rouleau, had served as Middle East
correspondent for Le Monde, and later, as French Ambassador to Turkey and
Tunisia. He asked Arafat about the status of the Palestinians' organized
military operations.
"I refuse to answer," was the reply.
Eraqat noted that the President always condemned all suicide operations,
and also all anti-Jewish attacks and threats in Europe.
Arafat switched back into blame-Israel mode. "Two years ago, I tried to
shake hands with Sharon...at Wye River. ...He was the only one to refuse!
...
Someone asked about the Palestinians' expectations from the Europeans.
Arafat said, "Europe is completely involved in what's going on..From the
beginning, we insisted on their involvement. Here, in this very room, the
siege around my headquarters, and the other one in the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem: both these crises were resolved by negotiations we
held right here, in which both the Americans and the British took part."
... the details of both of those agreements had come under heavy
Palestinian criticism. In particular, the agreement Arafat made in order to
lift the siege in Bethlehem required that thirteen men inside the church who
were highest on Israel's "wanted" list be sent out of Palestine completely.
For Palestinians, any instance of expulsion from the homeland immediately
arouses deep fears that large-scale deportations may not be far behind.
(These fears are not irrational.
[IMRA: Given a unity government, there is a wide array of views. Cries of
"ethnic cleansing" or "transfer" are applied regardless of the numbers
involved.]
Former and current members of Ariel Sharon's cabinet have been outspoken
advocates of "transfer"-the Israeli euphemism for this form of ethnic
cleansing.)
[IMRA: The term "transfer" long preceeded "ethnic cleansing" and was not
regarded as evil. It was weidely used.]
"I sent the thirteen to Europe on scholarships," Arafat told us proudly.
"On the condition that they would not be subject to any prosecutions or to
extradition to Israel."
Someone asked about his expectations from the recently-announced "quartet''
of powers-comprising the United States, United Nations, European Union, and
Russia-that was supposed to sponsor a big Palestinian-Israeli peace
conference sometime in late summer.
"There is no doubt the quartet is headed by the Americans. But the
Americans insisted on the involvement of the others. Sometimes they prefer
to work through allies.."
One of his aides conjectured that the Americans act this way, "because they
prefer not to send their own people to die in peacekeeping operations."
"No, no!" Arafat countered. "The Americans want the involvement of the
others."
Rouleau joked that because the aide had spoken out of line, he would
probably "have to pay a price to Arafat, later."
The aide shot back, "No! It was Abu Ammar [Arafat] who contradicted me.
He'll have to pay a price to me later."
The President smiled, apparently benignly.
"Is it possible that the promised international conference might not take
place after all?" Rouleau asked ... .
"No. It will take place!" Arafat insisted.
"But maybe it will only discuss reconstruction and economic matters?"
"There will be a donors'-conference part of it, certainly," said Arafat.
"There has to be, because all our infrastructure was destroyed.. But the
main item at the conference will be political."
Our time was up. We navigated our way to the door and down the stairs to
the sandbagged lobby. Arafat graciously came down to bid us farewell as we
left the building. His hands were meticulously manicured, as always, but his
grip was weak.
.===============================
OTHER MATTERS
By June, the steep hills around Hizma, in the West Bank, were scorched dry.
... On a hilltop to the east of the village, the members of our Quaker
fact-finding team noticed a yellow sign that read "Almon." But the cluster
of settlement houses that bears the name "Almon" was nowhere in sight.
"True, the settlement's houses are a few kilometers away," explained Israeli
anti-settlement activist Michael Warschawski. "But now, for planning
purposes, the perimeter of the settlement has been extended up to here. As
you can see, the sign is telling Palestinians in the village right beneath
it that all the land between them and the houses of Almon now belongs to
Almon."
[IMRA:Not necessarily so. The sign indicates the settlement lies ahead.
Warschawski goes far beyond being anti-settlement. He vigorously opposed
Oslo from the outset and is critical of Peace Now for accepting Oslo. That
the group chose him as a guide or co-guide identifies the political stance
of "our Quaker fact-finding group".]
On another hill, he stopped our bus at an isolated gas station staffed by a
single, bored guard cradling a chunky machine pistol. "Okay, here we are at
what's called the Psagot gas station," Warschawski said. "Of course, despite
the name, we are quite far from the settlement of Psagot, which is over that
crest. Then, if you look down the hill from here, you'll see the layout for
a future industrial park. So now we have a Jewish-Israeli axis of control
that-to protect these facilities-will require a road leading to the next
settlement. And voilà. You see how they've diced through the Palestinian
land once again-and this time without even putting in a single additional
settler! It's like the Japanese game of Go. The aim is to cut off and
encircle the other side. And so far, the settlement project is winning hands
down."
...in the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel won Arafat's agreement to link the
settlements to each other with new roads that bypassed Palestinian cities
and villages. Underwritten by special
[IMRA: By-pass roads are not mentioned in the Oslo agreements. They
became necessary because, despite Oslo, it bcame dangerous to Israelis to
travel on roads through Arab villages. Oslo provided for the security of
Israeli settlements and did not prohibit the establishment of new ones. The
ultimate status was left for the final stage.]
"peace aid" from American taxpayers, this new road system was carved into
the West Bank's hills and valleys throughout the rest of the 1990s. During
the past few months, it is the Palestinian cities and villages that have
been thoroughly fenced in.
. . .
Naomi Chazan, a member of the left-leaning Meretz party ... is now Deputy
Speaker of the Knesset. Like many other Israeli leftists we spoke with,
[IMRA Cobban does not mention speaking with any "rightist" or "centerist".]
she pointed out that although the polling data can make Jewish Israelis look
very hawkish on security issues, they seem more accommodating than ever
before on key political aspects of the Palestinian question. For example,
support for a Palestinian state-once a taboo subject in most Israeli
discourse-has now become fairly widespread (... this answer says nothing
about what kind of state these respondents would favor).
[IMRA: Other polling does.]
A recent poll in Ma'ariv found 52 percent of respondents expressing support
for a formula that would involve building a high border fence between Israel
and the West Bank-with dismantlement of the Jewish settlements to the east
of it.
[IMRA: Where would the fence be in relation to the settlements?]
"Politically," Chazan concluded, "Israelis seem willing to accept solutions
that they wouldn't have thought of accepting in the past."
Chazan is a smiling, shorthaired woman of enormous intelligence and moral
clarity. "Both sides have committed unspeakable acts," she said. "I give no
reductions to either side. They use not just violence, but very cruel
violence. Suicide bombers violate human rights at a very basic level.
[IMRA:And drive-by murders don't!]
Those who undertake them against civilians are carrying out crimes against
humanity. But also, to use F-16s or attack helicopters against civilians, or
to cut off food or medicines: these are also gross violations of human
rights. And this violence has important by-products. You have societal
traumas on both sides. People are scared and jittery and jumpy, and they do
things that they would normally consider unacceptable..Nowadays, the policy
on both sides is emotion-driven, based on a misplaced understanding that
there's a military solution.
[IMRA: Israel insists there is not a military solution. Palestinian
leadership insists on a blend of violence and negotiation.]
"There has been a total breakdown of trust on both sides," she said. She
recalled that she had been meeting with various PLO figures since the 1980s.
"We spent all that time building up trust-but the last twenty months have
shattered it
[IMRA:Demonstrates her failure and gulibility.]
..This has brought out the absolute worst in both peoples.
[IMRA: Has also brought out the best in Israel. Despite all the terror,
there have been no anti-Arab riots. Arabs walk in full safety in streets
whre murderous terror attacks have been perpetrated.]
Racist and fascist utterances have become commonplace. In the Knesset-it
makes you weep! But also, what I read on Palestinian web sites is grossly
anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israeli. It's making us all ugly..The number of
hate-letters I get from Jews is unbelievable-all because I'm one of the
leaders of what's left of the left."
She noted that Meretz has started calling for the establishment of some kind
of international mandate over the West Bank and Gaza. "The situation is
desperate now," she said. But she warned, "It can get worse."
The gadfly
Sari Nusseibeh, the PLO's chief representative in Jerusalem, had been
receiving hate mail, too. We saw him four days after he had led an effort to
publish a signed ad in a Palestinian newspaper that called on "those who
stand behind military operations that target civilians in Israel, to
reconsider their policy." The first day it ran, the ad carried 58
signatures. By the time we met with him, it had gathered about 500.
[IMRA: The ad says the activity should stop because it is
counter-productive from a public relations viewpoint, NOT because it is
immoral.]
Nusseibeh is an Oxford- and Harvard-trained philosopher who enjoys playing
the role of puckish and independent thinker, responsible to no constituency
and protected only by Arafat's patronage. When we saw him on June 25, he was
once again standing firmly against the mainstream of Palestinian opinion. He
and Arafat were the only two Palestinians with anything good to say about
Bush's speech of June 24. Indeed, Nusseibeh sounded genuinely intrigued by
the speech (though some of his optimistic interpretations seemed
ill-supported by the text). "Here it says, 'The occupation that started in
1967 must end.' Well, clearly, that means the occupation of all the
territories. Yes, and here Bush calls for a new and different leadership.
Well, Yasser Arafat understands that he would run in the elections and win
them. So then, he'd be a 'new and different leader,' wouldn't he?" And
later, "What I read into the Bush speech, although of course it was not said
directly, was that what he wants is a new leadership in Israel."
I asked how he felt about Bush's stipulation that the Palestinians should
undertake deep internal reform before they can reach any independent status
at all. "It would certainly be something new," he admitted with a smile,
"attempting to win national liberation through reform."
Later, he became more serious. Someone asked whether, historically, the
Israeli Labor party had been better on settlements than Sharon's Likud.
"No, not necessarily better, historically, but- Look, if the time comes
when there are problems with having so many settlers who don't want to move,
I don't mind saying we don't want our own separate state. At any time when
it's impossible for us to have a state, I would ask to become an Israeli and
have equal political rights inside Israel..If the settlers want to stay,
then I'm in favor of a one-state solution. But if there's a two-state
solution, then the settlers should all go, in return for the Palestinian
refugees giving up their right of return to Israel.
. . .
Sometimes the Arab-Israeli arena seems awash in philosophers. In Damascus,
two weeks earlier, we had engaged in some revealing discussions with a Baath
party theoretician whose business card describes him as a "Professor of
Epistemology and Socio-Politics." In Israel, the political philosopher Yael
Tamir was Minister of Immigration in Ehud Barak's government.
[ IMRA" Apparently Barak didn't rate an interview.]
And then there's Azmi Bishara, one of the 18 percent of Israelis who are
indigenous Palestinian Arabs. Bishara chaired the philosophy department at
Bir Zeit University for many years. But now he, like Tamir, is a Member of
Israel's Knesset.
. Bishara made quite clear in our meeting that his current field of action
is in Israeli politics, rather than in the tangled Palestinian politics of
the occupied territories.
[IMRA: But his is busy on Israeli-Palestinian issues: anti-Israel.]
"The Palestinian leadership has no unified and coherent strategy," he said.
"This leaves the field open to the other actors: to the U.S. leadership, to
Sharon, and to the suicide bombers..If they had a strategy, however, I think
the situation would be ripe for resolution. The Israeli public is tired of
this conflict. They only support Sharon because there is no alternative to
him. And on substantive political issues there's been a move toward the
dovish side-on a Palestinian state, and on settlements.
"Israel's public mood, its public culture, has shifted to the right. Toward
outright racism. But the political positions have gone to the left.
"You know, there's a Palestinian claim out there that the suicide bombers
'broke the security theory of Ariel Sharon.' That may be true. But who said
this is a theoretical debate? Politically, this tactic has backfired..It's
the same story throughout Palestinian-Israeli history: killing civilians
unites Israeli society, killing soldiers splits it. In the latter case,
people blame the government, since soldiers represent policies. But
civilians-they represent society."

Bishara is right that there is currently no evident alternative to Sharon as
Israel's leader. The past three years have ruined the country's
once-powerful Labor party.
[IMRA: Why?]
After my last major research trip to Israel in 1998, I wrote that Labor
might never gain power again. I was wrong. Disaffection with ... Netanyahu
was so widespread that in the elections of May 1999, a Labor party
reinvented under the title "One Israel," and led by ...Barak, swept into
power.
But while Barak knew how to run an army, he quickly showed that heknew
nothing about the art of running an Israeli governing coalition and equally
little about diplomacy. Almost from the day of his inauguration, his
coalition started to weaken. Meanwhile, he dragged his feet fatally in
peacemaking. In July 2000, Barak seemed to win a tactical victory when after
the failure of make-or-break talks with Arafat at Camp David-he persuaded
President Clinton to blame Arafat for the breakdown. But that victory proved
Pyrrhic. Barak's governing coalition collapsed soon after that and he was
forced to call elections for the following February.
By then, a new and more violent Palestinian intifada had erupted.
[IMRA: Called for new election well after intifada II was instituted. It
didn't simply "break out".]
With Barak having achieved nothing in peace diplomacy, Jewish-Israeli
voters plagued by new insecurities, and Palestinian-Israeli voters
abstaining because of their disenchantment with Barak, a newly-rehabilitated
Sharon romped home in the polls.
[IMRA:Because Barak decided there would not also be a Knesset election.
Had he opted for both, Netanyahu would have run and been elected.]
Sharon was able, moreover, to co-opt the remnants of the Labor party into
his government. Two veteran Labor leaders-Shimon Peres and Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer-took up crucial cabinet positions. So until now, Labor has
presented no viable alternative to Sharon's policies. Nor has any other
alternative emerged. One of the saddest features of the present situation is
the massive disappointment on all sides about the Oslo process. Sharon, who
always opposed Oslo, has now completely killed it (with near-total backing
from President Bush). It is terrifyingly uncertain what comes next.
[IMRA: Clearly, Arafat intitiated continues to deliver vital blows
against Oslo.]
On the day I left Jerusalem, I talked with an old friend, someone so
well-connected with successive generations of Israeli military leaders from
before 1948 that he serves as the virtual "institutional memory" of the IDF
general staff. He remains in close contact with the IDFincluding with the
reports of internal army censors, based on their reading of conscripts'
mail. "The government needs to start worrying right now because there's a
complete power vacuum on the Palestinian side," he told me. "And on our
side, the soldiers are very angry because of the suicide bombings. They are
starting to lose restraint. This generation is different from earlier
generations of Israeli soldiers: many are from the Russian republics. What's
good from Israel's viewpoint is that there's a strong national consensus
regarding this conflict. But the lack of restraint is worrying."
[IMRA: Sounds like an arrested "institutional memory", and ,of course,
nameless.]

Dr. Joseph Lerner, Co-Director IMRA