Ben Efrat/Langfur schrieb:
> Challenge/ POB 41199, Jaffa 61411/ TEL: 03-7394174
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> We are pleased to send you a description of the contents in CHALLENGE
> #65, 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 or get a
> One-Time-Free-Hard -Copy. Please pay attention to our latest request.
>
> In This Issue
>
> As the new year opens, the Middle East finds itself in desperate
> straits. Our editorial investigates What Went Wrong and Why.
> Politics makes Strange Bedfellows, and strange it is indeed, writes
> Samya Nasser, to see Arab Knesset members getting into bed once again
> with Labor, whose government gunned down thirteen of their constituents
> in October. Within the Occupied Territories, youngsters between 12 and
> 18 make up a third of the civilian martyrs and more than half the
> wounded. Israel is to blame for their deaths, but the PA too, writes
> Michal Schwartz, is No Catcher in the Rye.
> One of eight foreign volunteers living in Hebron, Kathy Kern describes
> life under curfew in Area Two, where Israel's army protects 400 settlers
> from 35,000 unprotected Palestinians, who must rely on weapons like the
> Necklace of Umm Yusef.
> Amid the darkness of present and imminent wars, it is fortunate to find
> in our midst a man with a quick solution to all our problems. We refer
> to Dr. Theodore ("Ted") Schmerzl, who after five years of solitary
> meditation has emerged from the deserts of Vienna with The Next Failed
> Ape.
> In the spirit of our ancestors, failed apes who could stand upright,
> Yacov Ben Efrat looks over the tall grass beyond the two-state formula
> (now defunct) to a long-term Solution from an Internationalist
> Perspective, defining the need of the present hour in its terms.
> And in the present hour: Israel has closed the Employment Bureau in Arab
> East Jerusalem since the intifada started three months ago. Thus it
> deprives 1500 jobseekers of their benefits, dealing out collective
> punishment. The Workers Advice Center (WAC) has opened a campaign to
> re-open the Bureau.
> And still in the present hour: 45 well-known Israeli artists donated
> their works to the Baqa Center in Jaffa for a fundraising exhibition. We
> netted $21,000 in a single day toward much-needed renovation. Dani Ben
> Simhon and Nir Nader report.
>
> Editorial
>
> What Went Wrong and Why
>
> If anyone still believed that US President Bill Clinton could serve as a
> fair mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latest bridging
> proposal ought to have ended the illusion. Arab journalists dub it "the
> Israeli document adopted by Clinton." This criticism derives, in part,
> from a steep rise in the threshold of Palestinian demands. But not only
> that. The Clinton proposal marks a retreat from past official American
> positions. Here are three examples:
> 1. The question of the settlements: Since 1967 Washington has officially
> called them illegal. But Clinton has now accepted Israel's position,
> allowing it to annex parts of the West Bank containing about 80% of the
> settlers. He thus accepts the Israeli interpretation of UN Resolution
> 242, which calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from
> territories occupied in the recent conflict." Territories, says Israel,
> not all territories.
> 2. The question of Jerusalem: The US has never recognized Israel's
> annexation of Jerusalem, but now Clinton is proposing that the two sides
> divide the city on an ethnic basis. He also grants Israel partial
> sovereignty in the Haram a-Sharif (the "Noble Sanctuary" containing the
> al-Aqsa Mosque), aka Temple Mount, likewise conquered by Israel in 1967.
>
> 3. The question of refugees: Clinton accepts the Israeli proposal,
> recognizing the reunification of families as sufficient fulfilment on
> its part of UN Resolution 194, which calls for the restoration of all
> refugees. (Family reunification accounts for a very small number.)
> The bottom line: America sides with Israel in its long-standing contempt
> for international covenants.
> And yet one can also look at the Clinton paper from a different angle.
> The proposals he makes to the Palestinians - on some of which Israel is
> ready to sign - are quite far-reaching compared to anything ever offered
> before. Take, for instance, Israel's agreement to the division of
> Jerusalem. Such an idea was taboo till now both for the Labor Party and
> the Likud. In 1996, we recall, Shimon Peres lost the election largely
> because of a Likud scare campaign, claiming he would divide Jerusalem.
> And Ehud Barak, in 1999, ran on the slogan: "A united Jerusalem under
> the sovereignty of Israel."
> Or the West Bank: Yitzhak Rabin planned to return only half. The Clinton
> proposal talks about more than 90%, and Barak seems willing.
> Despite such unprecedented Israeli concessions, Yasser Arafat has
> difficulty saying Yes. The reason does not have to do with the content
> of the proposal. His reluctance stems rather from the fact that the
> Palestinian people have lost all faith in the "peace process".
> What has gone wrong and why? The failure of the Camp David summit in
> July was certainly a landmark, but the answer begins further back. After
> withdrawing unilaterally from Lebanon in May, Barak strove with all his
> might to achieve a breakthrough on the Palestinian track. He knew that
> the US elections were coming, and he wanted to get the most out of the
> sympathetic Clinton regime. Israel is a country with enormous economic
> potential, but she cannot enter the global market in a major way as long
> as the conflict goes on. Barak became obsessed with achieving the
> "declaration of an end to the conflict". Disregarding impediments, he
> forged full speed ahead.
> The impediments came from escaping coalition partners. On becoming prime
> minister, we recall, Barak did not want to include the Arab MK's in his
> government. The only remaining alternative was to set up a coalition
> based on the moderate-to-extreme right wing, including the settlers'
> party, Mafdal (aka National Religious Party), Natan Sharansky's
> immigrants' party (Yisrael ba'Aliyah), and the Mizrahi orthodox party of
> Shas. The erection of such a government was a slap in the face to the
> Palestinians, the Arab world, and the Arab voters in Israel. (The last
> had cast 95% of their ballots for Barak.) Upon hearing rumors of what
> was to take place at Camp David, however, the three right-wing partners
> deserted within a week, leaving Barak in command of only 30 seats in the
> 120-seat Knesset. On the international scene, indeed, the Israeli PM
> could appear as a rare sort of statesman, who would risk his office for
> the sake of peace. His electoral weakness, however, would impede Arafat
> from taking major decisions. A wise businessperson does not put all the
> money on someone facing bankruptcy.
> Barak did not heed his right wing, but he didn't heed Arafat either. The
> latter begged Clinton not to call a summit, because his situation wasn't
> ripe for major decisions. The Territories, he knew, were on the brink of
> explosion, and he lacked sufficient authority to make concessions. Yet
> Barak did not let Clinton rest until he got his way. As for Arafat,
> dependent on the US as he was, he could not refuse the invitation - and
> dragged his feet to Camp David. It wasn't surprising, then, when the
> summit failed. He couldn't sign a single clause, whether with regard to
> the settlements or the refugees' right of return. He chose to break up
> the talks, however, precisely on the issue of Haram a-Sharif. This was
> the safest way out. He knew the Arabs would back him in insisting on
> Palestinian sovereignty there. No Arab leader would ever yield Islam's
> third holiest shrine to Israel. He told Clinton it would cost him his
> head, and he hoped that the other Arab leaders would back him, taking
> the heat off.
> After the failure, matters began to assume their own momentum, beyond
> the control of either Israel or the PA. With the new intifada, the very
> thing surfaced that Arafat had whispered in Clinton's ear: "The
> Palestinian street is mad as hell, and it ain't gonna take it any more."
>
> The voice of the street has forced Israel to bend on the issue of
> Jerusalem. But this is the voice that nonetheless still prevents an
> agreement, because of its insistence on the refugees' right of return.
>
> The succession of events described above gives rise to several
> questions. Why, upon signing the Oslo pact, could Arafat afford to
> ignore the voice of the people - but not today? And as for the course
> he has taken - arriving at the threshold of a permanent-status
> agreement, then returning to the use of force - did he plan it thus from
> the start?
> Seven years ago the PLO leaders were in deep distress. All the states
> that border Israel, Syria too, were then in America's pocket. Far
> removed from the Occupied Territories, short on funds and lacking a
> strategy, the PLO found itself on the verge of annihilation. Israel took
> note of its distress, realized the possibilities and threw the leaders a
> lifeline. This was the Oslo Accord. It is founded on the following
> short-sighted Israeli logic: In the first stage, we'll co-opt their
> leaders. We'll set them back on their feet, but not as revolutionary
> heads of a national liberation movement, rather as rulers of an entity
> with only the external trappings of a state. We'll create material
> inducements to tie the new ruling elite to us. In this way, even if a
> conflict of interests arises between the leaders and the street, the
> former will find it in their interest to restrain and suppress the
> latter.
> According to this scenario, there was no point in discussing topics
> basic to the conflict, such as the question of the refugees or that of
> Jerusalem. For in any case, Israel had no intention of ever approaching
> a radical solution to these problems. She hoped that by the time they
> arose, if ever, the PA (Palestinian Authority) would by firmly in
> control - and would be able to impose the agreement in accordance with
> Zionist interests. Yet Israel's self-assuredness and its contempt for
> the Palestinian side were so extreme - as expressed, for example, in the
> continuing closure, or in the lopsided economic arrangements of the
> Paris Protocol - that the new "Tunisian" partners did not have the
> minimal conditions for reining in the people and implementing the plan.
> Arafat, for his part, accepted Israel's dictates. Either he had lost
> faith in ultimate victory or he did not want to wait for political
> conditions to change. The long-sought state would be one in name only.
> When Israel offered its aegis to a Palestinian dictatorship, similar in
> form to that in other Arab lands, Arafat did not balk. From 1993 until
> the present, he did not move a finger toward building the infrastructure
> that would be needed to remedy decades of plunder. Instead, he took up
> where Israel left off, allowing his minions from Tunis to do the
> plundering instead. He busied himself with becoming the despot the pact
> envisaged.
> With the al-Aqsa intifada, a crucial change has taken place. When
> Palestinians repudiate the American proposal, it is not the details they
> are rejecting - it is the whole apparatus. This apparatus is the New
> World Order that the US tried to impose in the wake of the Gulf War.
> (See "The Solution", this issue, p. 14.) The Oslo pact is part of this
> Order. Israel's regional supremacy is axiomatic: not only to Israel,
> also to America.
> It is no coincidence that the question of the refugees arises now.
> Arafat tried by hook and crook to avoid it during the last seven years.
> In Israel's concept, the Oslo pact was intended to foreclose the right
> of return. The PA chief, by virtue of his prestige, was supposed to
> market the Israeli position. The fact that such a question gets to the
> table at all, therefore, spells doom for the process. Its rise is in the
> nature of a "work accident". The Palestinian movement will lose its
> raison d'?tre if it yields on the right of return. If Israel yields, it
> will lose its ?tre.
> To begin with the Palestinians: to surrender the right of return would
> amount to annulling the cause that has justified the whole long struggle
> for liberation. In late 1947, the Palestinians rejected the UN Partition
> Resolution because they viewed it as an unjust decision, solving the
> problem of one people at the expense of another. On top of that evil, in
> the following year, Israel expelled most of them from their homeland.
> The Palestinians haven't struggled so long in order to build a state for
> Arafat's "Tunisians", but rather a state that would have the power to
> bring the refugees back to their homes.
> As for Israel, if it opens its doors to five million Palestinian
> refugees, each who takes the opportunity will thereby diminish the
> state's Jewish character - a process that could, in principle, go on
> until the state disappears. What is more, if Israel merely admits
> responsibility for the refugee problem, it will thus acknowledge the
> moral stain that is inherent in its very existence.
>
> History is unkind to leaders. It is hard to fix the exact point when the
> orchestra takes over, and the conductor waves the baton a fraction of a
> second behind. But this has happened here.
> The arrogance of Barak toward the needs of the Palestinians, together
> with Arafat's indifference to their suffering, have now rendered both
> irrelevant. Anything the Israeli PM offers today will be met with
> suspicion and rejection. And Arafat, no matter how defiant a pose he may
> strike toward Clinton, will never again have the trust and respect that
> his people granted him before Oslo. The treadmill these leaders are
> walking has lost its gears. The Palestinian people will have to find
> itself an alternative apparatus. That is the challenge we face in this
> new year.
>
>
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