Challenge/ POB 41199, Jaffa 61411/ TEL: 03-7394174
We are pleased to send you a description of the contents in CHALLENGE
#63, as well as the editorial.
CHALLENGE is a bimonthly journal which offers investigative reporting
and in-depth analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Oslo
process.
You will also find (Below) details about how to subscribe (and get a
Don't Globalize Me T-shirt/Bag, OR get a One-Time-Free-Hard copy-Copy
In This Issue
Theologians used to debate about how many angels could dance on the head
of a pin. Barak, Arafat and Clinton face a similar problem with
peoples, but our editorial finds these leaders OUT OF THEIR DEPTH.
Something's gotta give, and it isn't likely to be Israel. "CAMP DAVID
WAS A DRESS REHEARSAL" for more Palestinian concessions, according to
Abed Sattar Qassem, a Nablus professor just released from a PA prison.
Now Israel and the US are pressuring Egypt to pressure Arafat, but
CAIRO, writes Yacov Ben Efrat, CAN'T DELIVER.
While such heady talks go on, laborers from Gaza line up each morning on
Jaffa's Gaza Street, hoping for a day's work. Asma Agbarieh interviewed
them BETWEEN SIX TO NINE A.M. IN EAST JERUSALEM, Assaf Adiv reports,
WAC has begun to COUNSEL JOBLESS ARABS.
If people are hungry and miserable, at least they aren't being tortured
anymore - the Supreme Court banned that one year ago. But is it so? Can
Israel show CLEAN HANDS AT LAST? Allegra Pacheco takes a close look.
Well, if people are subject to so much abuse, at least they can find a
little corner of their own to breathe in. Or? A new film group, Video
'48, has just completed its first documentary, NOT IN MY GARDEN! - about
the unrecognized village of Ramya in its struggle with the encroaching
city of Carmiel. Roni Ben Efrat conducts A ROUND-TABLE CONVERSATION with
some of the members.
>From where, then, shall hope come? WAC and the Baqa Center joined hands
in July to create a weeklong overnight summer camp. Its topic was
international solidarity. For its T-Shirt and flag the campers adopted a
design by Swiss dissident and graphic artist Marc Rudin, affirming that
"TOGETHER WE CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAIN." (Rudin himself has paid the price
of years in jail for his solidarity with the Palestinian people.) Orit
Sudri summarized a week of fun, learning and hope on the shore of the
Sea of Galilee.
se note: On July 18 Challenge is moving from Jerusalem to Jaffa. Our
mailing and e-mail addresses remain as bove. We invite you to visit o
office and keep in touch.
Editorial
Out of their Depth
The recent failure of the Camp David summit revealed, for each of the
three participants, a shortage of options.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak favors the purpose of the Oslo
Agreement - namely, to transform Israel into a regional economic power
with Arab approval - but he has always abhorred its mechanisms. (As a
minister in Rabin's government, he abstained from supporting Oslo II,
claiming that Israel was giving too much with too little return.) Now he
seeks an accord that will secure this purpose and enable him, on the
domestic front, to build a stable (preferably right-wing) coalition.
Yasser Arafat, head of the PA (Palestinian Authority), went to Camp
David without great expectations, hoping for an agreement that would
enable him to stay alive.
Finally, US President Bill Clinton sought an accord that would not only
strengthen Israel, but would seal his term of office with an achievement
of world-historical significance - one that would repair, in a word, his
moniker.
Yet the three met under conditions that were distinctly unfavorable for
reaching a decision of any importance.
Barak
Barak at Camp David was a political exile. His cabinet ministers had
quit left and right: He let the leftist Meretz go in order to keep the
ultraorthodox Shas, but once Shas got wind of his peace agenda, it
dropped him - as had two other right-wing parties, the Mafdal and
Israel b'Aliyah. Out of the 120-member Knesset, he could count on only
forty.
Within Barak's party (Labor), senior figures such as Shimon Peres, Yossi
Beilin and Haim Ramon oppose his approach of "agreement or bust!" They
lean toward a new intermediate arrangement that will postpone the Day of
the Lord and keep the region quiet. Barak disagrees. He refuses to give
up another inch of land until he gets what he wants: the dropping of all
Palestinian claims, together with a declaration that the conflict is
over.
Barak is not one for intermediate solutions. He likes to feel decisive.
He prefers broad, sweeping gestures even at high political cost. A year
ago, for example, he thumbed his nose at Syria, saying he would withdraw
Israeli troops from Lebanon with or without an agreement; when the
Syrian conditions seemed hard, he went it alone. The hope had been that
Hafez al-Assad would come to terms, thus giving Yasser Arafat a
precedent for making concessions. But Assad died suddenly. Barak had to
shift to the Palestinian track, where Arafat remained with little choice
but to imitate the adamant Syrian lion. Thus Barak's Lebanese gamble,
without an agreement, resulted in the hardening of the Palestinian
position.
The Israeli PM has two mutually exclusive options, which he plays off
against each other. If he manages to get a peace accord, he believes, he
can go to the electorate and win a strong parliamentary majority. If
such an accord is out of reach, however, he will seek to make his mark
on the domestic front - and that will require a national-unity
government with the right-wing Likud. With this second option in mind,
Barak has recently aired what he calls a "secular revolution", designed
to free Israel from certain archaic norms imposed by the religious
parties. This is a way of pressuring the Arabs, as if to say, "Unless
you bend, I'll turn my back on the peace process and tend my garden at
home."
It is a clumsy trapeze act over the abyss. He is able to carry it off,
for the moment, because of two tattered and temporary safety nets: The
Knesset is taking its summer break, and several right-wing MK's are
anxious about possibly losing their seats in new elections. These MK's
prefer to wait and see: if there's no agreement with Arafat, then Barak
will likely invite them to join his government.
The Israeli PM conducts himself as though he knows something no one else
does. On the merely mortal level, however, his sheer braggadocio
astonishes. As a leader sans government, sans Knesset - sans any
guarantee that the paper he signs will become reality - what makes him
think that the Palestinian or the Arab side will go out on a limb for
him?
Arafat
The conditions under which Arafat went to Camp David were even harder
than those that accompanied Barak. At Oslo Israel gave him a regime and
some patches of land. He cannot hope to build a state or any semblance
thereof without international recognition and support, but these will
not be forthcoming except in the context of an agreement. On the other
hand, there will be no agreement unless he is ready to surrender on all
the issues Oslo postponed: final borders, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem
and the refugees. Oslo postponed these matters for the simple reason
that Israel has no intention of yielding on any of them. Yet now there
can be no more postponing: the time has come for Arafat to pay up. Yet
he hesitates. Accusing fingers are leveled at him: those of four million
refugees whose right of return he compromised by recognizing Israel
prematurely; those of the farmers locked in endless land disputes with
armed Jewish settlers; those of hapless workers who have to run the
blockades.
It suited Arafat at Camp David to shift the focus of the conflict to
Jerusalem, for here he does not bear the total responsibility - he
shares it with the entire Muslim world. In this way, he thought, he
could elude American pressure on him to make a decision that would
recognize Israeli sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem.
Since Camp David, however, Arafat has suffered two diplomatic failures:
First, Europe has refused to support him if he declares Palestinian
statehood without first reaching an agreement. Second, the Arab world
has continued to waver. On the one hand, Arab leaders pronounced as
unthinkable the idea of making concessions on Jerusalem - not to mention
al-Aksa! On the other, they said it would be up to Arafat to decide. At
the Jerusalem Council, convened by the PA chief in Morocco on August 28,
sixteen Arab and Muslim states came out with a vague, non-committal
statement.
Arafat has remained alone with the mess he made by going alone to Oslo.
The Arab regimes, unwilling to bail him out, mark time. Why should they
appear to be recalcitrant hard-liners, drawing Washington's ire? On the
other hand, why should they appear to their peoples as agents of Israel?
Better to remember Sadat and keep a low profile, awaiting the results of
the US elections.
In the West Bank and Gaza, meanwhile, disgust with the corrupt PA
continues to mount. To one achievement alone can Arafat point: security
cooperation with Israel.
Clinton
Despite his desire to enter history as a peacemaker rather than a
philanderer, the prestige of this lame duck has fallen to zero in the
Middle East. This is due less to the immorality of his once-private life
than to that of his attacks on Iraq. He added insult to injury, shortly
after Camp David, by giving a lengthy interview on Israeli TV, in which
he clearly showed his preference for Israel. It is clear to the Arab
world that this man can be no fair mediator.
Can these three pseudo-leaders, hemmed in and without support,
manage nonetheless to settle the century-old conflict? Of course not. At
most they may finesse a flash in the pan. It will not be enough, by any
reckoning of possibilities, to satisfy the Palestinian people.
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE:
Please send a check (made out to CHALLENGE) for $30, 20L, 55DM or, for a
local subscription 75 NIS to: POB 41199, Jaffa 61411, Israel. Other
currencies should be sent by a bank check in US dollars or a post office
transfer. If neither is possible sent your cash currency (well covered).
Please write your address clearly.
A new subscriber is entitled to a Don't Globalize Me T-shirt or bag.
We are not an e-mail journal. If you want a ONE-TIME FREE TRIAL (hard)
COPY, please send us your name and home address via e-mail:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
