The Road Map in Historical Perspective

 

By Naseer Aruri
12 July 2003

The Road Map peace plan is America’s latest diplomatic enterprise for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it typically follows a major war, this time the war against “terror,” and against Iraq.  A detailed analysis of the Road Map will follow this historical introduction, placing it in the context of the 36-year old so-called peace process. The contextual and synoptic history provided here might help shed some light on the questions of why now and what makes this initiative different from the more than half a dozen plans submitted in the past. From their very inception in 1969, America’s peace plans for the Middle East conformed to a pattern: Wars and internal uprisings seem to provide impetus for diplomacy, more often consonant with strategic interests rather than the prerequisites for peace. The first of these was the Rogers Plan (1969) which followed the 1967 war. It was the first and last which proposed trading land for peace in accordance with resolution 242. Israel rejected it, thus setting a precedent for subsequent rejection of a string of plans, many of which did not even include a real territorial settlement requiring Israel to withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory. Not since that plan stipulated that the “extent of withdrawal must not reflect the weight of occupation,” did we hear such language emanating from Washington. In fact, terms and phrases such as “withdrawal,” “occupation,” “land for peace,” have, in effect, long disappeared from the lexicon of the US-sponsored “peace process.”

Israel’s rejection of the Rogers Plan had set an important precedent: The occupation was not to be terminated pursuant to the 1960s/70s principle of the “inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by force;” it will be subject to negotiations. Consequently, negotiations, as such, begin to emerge as a major component of Israel's negotiating strategy. Perpetual negotiations have indeed served Israel’s goals rather well, helping it buy time and establish facts on the ground as the two state solution ran its course.

Six years after the Rogers plan, in the wake of the October 1973 war, Henry Kissinger negotiated the Sinai Accord paving the way to an Egyptian-Israeli peace, leaving the fate of the West Bank and Gaza to be determined by Menachem Begin’s ‘autonomy” plan instead of resolution 242.  Carter’s Camp David peace (1978) was the logical extension of Kissinger’s diplomacy and Begin’s dictum. Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Egypt, but not from the West Bank and Gaza.

Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, President Reagan announced his plan of September 1, proposing to substitute Jordanian control for Israeli control of the occupied West Bank, which Israel summarily rejected. The Palestinian Intifada of 1987 provided the next impetus for diplomacy, thus triggering two more American plans aiming to prevent the spread of social unrest to other parts of the Arab world. Both the Shultz plan (1988) and Baker’s points of 1989 called for Palestinian elections, but fell short of calling for an end to the occupation and granting Palestinian sovereignty. Despite U.S. accommodation, Israel’s rebuff of its strategic ally and benefactor was prompt and flippant. Prime Minister Shamir accepted Shultz’s “signature” on the plan but not the plan itself. Shamir later withdrew his own plan after James Baker had designated it as the “only game in town,” leading Baker to express public anger but to assiduously refrain from imposing sanctions.

It took another major war to yield the next predictable U.S. exercise in futility, this time the Madrid conference (1991) which produced eleven fruitless rounds of talks between Palestinians and Israelis in Washington (1991-92) plus eight shuttles to the region by James Baker. At this point, we might ask why the colossal failure despite the huge diplomatic capital invested by the United States? Clearly, the rejection by Likud and Labor leaders, such as Begin, Shamir and Rabin, reflected a consensus in the Israeli body politic: occupation is not applicable to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, therefore, “redeployment” of Israeli troops was more descriptive for the situation than “withdrawal.” Otherwise, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will have to accommodate an additional sovereignty, deemed a non-negotiable option for the Zionist movement. A Palestinian sovereignty in any part of that area, no matter how miniscule, would be considered “foreign,” hence proscribed ideologically and/or biblically.

It was the Zionist movement’s need to safeguard against such a possibility that the subsequent  Oslo Accords(1993) sidestepped the two major spoilers of the Washington talks of 1991-92, thus leaving the issues of occupation and settlements outside the Accords perimeters. Pretending that the occupation and the settlements were non-issues had served Israeli strategy rather well, but turned out to be the structural flaw, which dealt the Accords a deadly blow at Camp David (2000). Moreover for Israel to admit that there was an occupation in 1967 would ultimately raise questions regarding the 1948 occupation and the origins and obligations of the Jewish state. Wouldn’t it be more expedient and suitable then to claim that the Jews are simply returning to, rather than occupying their biblical homeland?

Indeed, the first Gulf war produced Oslo in addition to Madrid, but while Madrid failed, Oslo was effectively a prolonged truce, the failure of which in 2000 hardened public attitudes inside Israel and in the United States towards peace with the Palestinians. Even the Israeli peace movement seems now to have dropped the land for peace formula from its vocabulary, preferring security as the guarantor of peace. In the course of seven years of diplomatic pretense, the Oslo process had enabled Israel to create facts on the ground, not only making the occupation permanent, thus precluding any type of Palestinian sovereign existence in a small area of historic Palestine, but also lifting the burden of making concessions away from Israel and placing them squarely on the Palestinians. With sustained help from the US media ,particularly cable television, and an almost total lack of a Palestinian media strategy, Israelis emerged in the US public opinion court as the victims of terror, who needed assurances, guarantees, and scrupulous commitments, if not verifiable performance before they even agree to consider the mere idea of a negotiated settlement. It has taken another major calamity for the Arabs-the loss of Iraq- to move the United States in the direction of diplomacy. Yet, it is not even certain whether Bush’s personal involvement will continue, and whether its continuation will ever translate into the necessary pressure that could move Israel to re-examine its 36- year old record of rejectionism. Having established himself as Israel’s foremost supporter in the White House since its very inception, and ruling with a solid base of neo-conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, George W. Bush is the least likely President to seek a confrontation with Israel and its domestic allies. Doubtless, the invasion of Iraq has created impetus for the revival of US diplomacy in the Palestine-Israel arena, but why should that diplomacy be more successful now when the imbalance of power in favor of Israel and the US has reached unprecedented proportions? It behooves all those interested in peace and reconciliation to reflect on the real causes of diplomatic failure since 1969. Embracing yet another US plan at a time when the “peace process” is in need of total overhauling and a genuine restructuring, would substitute a palliative for a remedy. This sub-text of the Road map, which demonstrates a legacy of a failed peace process, does not auger well for the future success of the Road Map.