The Road Map:
A Peace Plan or Another Palliative?
By Naseer H. Aruri
17 May
2003
Unlike the September 13, 1993 Declaration of Principles (DOP), there
is no Rose Garden ceremony or a historic hand shake. Absent also
are the Oslo euphoria and the hasty declarations of victory for
American diplomacy after 26 years of a crippling impasse. Ten years
later, the impasse has deteriorated into open war against
defenseless civilians, denied international protection by their
oppressor in collusion with the sole conciliator and self-labeled
“honest broker.” Having conquered Iraq and positioned itself to
reshape the strategic landscape of the Middle East, Israel’s chief
diplomatic backer, arms supplier, and bank roller has released
another “peace” plan that was waiting in the drawer. The Road Map
was handed to an “empowered” Palestinian prime minister on April 30,
2003 by one of the sponsors, the EU, while the US Ambassador
released the text to Israel, as if to signal the global hierarchical
order.
Unlike the DOP, which was drawn up by
Israel’s Foreign Office lawyers but sponsored by the United States,
this “peace” plan originates in a seemingly international document
sponsored by the U.S., EU, Russia and the U.N, first surfacing in
August, 2002 and retooled the following December. Some of the
forbidden terms left out of the DOP lexicon are included in the Road
Map—terms such as endgame, occupation, independent viable state,
timetable and reciprocal duties. Given all these “improvements” why
would Prime Minister Sharon and his super rightist colleagues
entertain a document, which is presumed to entail a “more generous”
offer to the Palestinians? The answer to this question has several
aspects: the first has to do with the linguistic structure and the
built-in gridlock, which invite conflicting interpretations meant to
benefit the stronger party, Israel. The second is derived from the
altered strategic landscape in the aftermath of the invasion of
Iraq, and the place of this Road Map in the Washington’s designs in
regional and global contexts. Additionally the facts on the grounds
as a consequence of new settlements, by-pass roads, the devastation
of the Palestinian economy, destruction PA institutions, and the
so-called Separation Wall have all made the imbalance of power even
greater.
CONTENT AND LANGUAGE:
This is described as “a
performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with phases, duties,
timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through
reciprocal steps by the two parties…[whose] destination is a final
and comprehensive settlement …by 2005, as presented in President
Bush’s speech of 24 June, 2002”. A Major flaw in the Road Map is the
absence of mutuality, reciprocity and sequencing, in favor of
conditionality. The language is so vague and non-constraining on
Israel that its duties will not even begin until the Palestinians
declare and establish a unilateral “cease-fire” and bring about the
cessation of all Palestinian resistance. Israel will be the judge
and Sharon can sit still indefinitely waiting for the Palestinians
to fulfill their obligations. In the absence of international
monitors, he alone will make such a determination. Even though the
Palestinian cease-fire is expected from the opposition,
Israel’s decision—when it comes—would be governmental.
The Road Maps delineates three phases
with dates and duties as well as a connection between goals and
results. Thus, phase I, which was supposed to end in May 2003, would
have seen the end of the Intifada, and the resumption of security
cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis based on the “Tenet
work plan to end violence, terrorism, and incitement through
restructured and effective Palestinian security services.” The
premise of the latest plan is that the 36-year old impasse is not
caused by an abnormal, illegal and severely repressive occupation,
but by the Palestinian resistance to that occupation. Thus, in
exchange for ending the resistance, Israel would be expected to
normalize life for the Palestinians, as if the occupation is normal
while resistance is abnormal. One might expect that normalcy would
come about as a result of the termination of the occupation, a far
more crucial task than ending the conflict, yet terminating the
occupation is not called for until the end game when the
Palestinians have met all the performance criteria.
Indeed, the threshold of
requirements for the Palestinian Authority has been raised so high
that not only the newly designated Palestinian Prime Minister who
lacks domestic legitimacy is bound not to reach it, but even Arafat
himself, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, would flunk the test
too. This is a rather asymmetrical plan, whose calculus of
reciprocity is so lopsided as to render it unworkable. If Israel,
the regional super power, had been unable to suppress the Intifada
for two and a half years, how can the decimated PA forces, led by a
distrusted cabinet minister and an untested prime minister regarded
widely as an American/Israeli choice, accomplish that task? Their
role at best would only earn them the status of a quisling and
potential promoters of a civil war.
Moreover, in Phase I, the
Palestinians are expected to “immediately undertake comprehensive
political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a
Palestinian constitution [Which has been done already], and free,
fair and open elections upon the basis of those measures.” In
exchange, “Israel withdraws from Palestinian areas occupied from
September 28, 2000 and the two sides restore the status quo that
existed at that time, as security performance and cooperation
progress. Israel also freezes all settlement activity, consistent
with the Mitchell report.” One wonders how can such reforms and
elections be promulgated and conducted in numerous enclaves
separated from each other by check- points and roads rendered
unsuitable for automobile travel by the Israeli authorities.
During phase I, the Israeli
leadership is expected to issue “unequivocal statement affirming its
commitment to the two-state vision of an independent, viable,
sovereign Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside
Israel, as expressed by President Bush, and calling for an immediate
end to violence against Palestinians everywhere.” All official
Israeli institutions must end incitement against Palestinians.
Israel’s “duties” would also encompass ending home demolitions and
attacks on Palestinian civilians, improving the humanitarian
situation for Palestinians, allowing freedom of movement for
Palestinian officials, releasing tax payments owed to the PA, and
dismantling new settlements “outposts” constructed since March 2001,
when Sharon became prime minister. One might ask what the definition
of terror is, and whether it includes, in addition to Palestinian
resistance, acts of terror by settlers and soldiers against
Palestinians, including U.S. support, private and public. Would the
“terror” category include such attacks as when about 50 religious
settlers, led by Rabbi Beni Elon, the transferist Minister of
Tourism raided an Arab home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah quarters on
May 3rd and threw a child out of the broken window they had entered
by? The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition and Ha’aretz (May
4, 2003) reported on the gruesome attack in which a “two-year-old
flying baby, falling from the 2nd storey window, five meters high,
ending up in hospital traumatised.”
One
must also ask about the definition of incitement and its
relationship to self-defense, provocation and criticism. Would the
Palestinian curricula have to be scrutinized to insure that the
Palestinian narrative is excluded? Much of these “duties” recall
similar attempts to modify Palestinian political culture by Benjamin
Netanyahu at the US sponsored Wye River agreement in 1998. Would
the rhetoric of Gush Emonim and the “transferists,” inside Sharon’s
cabinet (Effy Eytam, Avigdor Leiberman, Tommy Lapid, Ehud Olmert,
Trachy Hanegbi, Uzi Landau, Benyamin Netanyahu) qualify as
incitement by the Quartet? Indeed, the National Union Alliance
parties (Moledet, Tekuma, and Israel Beitenu) ran in the elections
on a platform of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Is that not
incitement on the Israeli side? Indeed, would the
historical/biblical rights narrative by Israel be considered
incitement? Would the facts of Palestinian history under Zionism be
included in Israeli texts because the absence of which is
incitement, since most Israelis have no idea why Palestinians are
resisting?
Moreover, the frame of reference for
the “vision” of a Palestinian state is not the numerous resolutions
of the United Nations, itself a member of the Quartet which
sponsored this Road Map, but President Bush’s June 24th,
2002, speech, which was mocked repeatedly by Israeli and European
journalists as one that could have been written by Sharon. Phase II
is supposed to begin in June 2003 and end in December of the same
year, during which “efforts are focused on the option of creating an
independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and
attributes of sovereignty.” The Palestinian leadership is obligated
to act “decisively against terror,” and demonstrate willingness and
ability to “build a practicing democracy.” This phase starts after
Palestinian elections and ends with the possible creation of an
independent Palestinian state with “provisional” borders in 2003.
The most important question to be
raised here is where and how will this state be established? How
can it be viable if it is not contiguous? The West Bank is already
fractured into three Bantustans and each one of those Bantustans has
been fragmented into some 60-70 enclaves separated by Jewish
settlements, physical infrastructure and check-points. Moreover,
the apartheid inspired wall currently under construction in the
northwestern and eastern West Bank will separate Palestinian farmers
from their agricultural land and further facilitate the creeping
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and insure non-contiguity.
Moreover the phrase “provisional borders” is not a known concept in
international law. Either the state has borders, which it controls,
in which case it is independent, or it does not have them or control
them, in which case it is a controlled dependency. Oslo’s concept
of “external security,” which was assigned to Israel, came to mean
that Israel has control over the so-called self-rule areas space,
borders, air and water. Post-Oslo Israel will not settle for
anything less. At best then, this envisioned Palestinian “state”
with “attributes of sovereignty” will not be independent, nor will
it exceed 42 per cent of the West Bank, exactly what Sharon
configured during the 1980s. The new phrase, “attributes of
sovereignty” is but the latest diplomatic fiction, which extends
earlier ploys such as “sub-sovereignty,” “super-sovereignty,”
“custodianship,” “shared sovereignty,” “sort of sovereignty,” “dual
sovereignty,” and “external security.”
In the third phase,
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are to commence with the assistance
of an international conference aiming towards a “permanent status
agreement, including borders, Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements,”
thus ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict in 2005. Ending the
occupation instead of the conflict might have been a more urgent
endeavor, particularly if the Security Council adopted a new
resolution to that effect, instead of holding an innocuous
international conference without mechanisms of enforcement, due to
US obstructionism. That would have been more congruent with the
phrase which reads: “The settlement would be negotiated between the
parties based on UNSCR 242, 338, and 1397, that ends the occupation
that began in 1967.” No where do we read in the Road Map that the
illegal settlements must be dismantled and rolled back. Unlike the
so-called “outposts” built since the second Intifada, settlements
would only be frozen if the process ever begins.
Phase III also includes an “agreed,
just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue, and a
negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into
account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and
protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims
worldwide, and fulfills the vision of two states, Israel and
sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestine, living
side-by-side in peace and security.” The conference would also
“support progress toward a comprehensive Middle East settlement
between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Syria.”
Again, like Oslo, the “final status”
issues will be negotiated outside the international consensus and
without an international framework. Resolutions 242, 338 and 1397
are not adequate, since Israel has already declared the
inapplicability of 242 to the West Bank. Additionally, none of these
include Palestinian fundamental rights enshrined in countless UN
resolutions and other international instruments (resolutions 2535,
2649, 2672, 2787, 2792 recognizing the Palestinians as colonized
people entitled to independence and possessing inalienable rights,
or 3236 reaffirming their rights to self-determination, national
independence and sovereignty).
The “realistic solution to the refugee
issue” does not rest on resolution 194, article 13 of the universal
Declaration of human rights, or the Covenant on Civil and Political
rights. In fact Sharon told Army Radio on the 55th
anniversary of Israel’s establishment that Palestinian renunciation
of the right of return
``is something Israel insists on and sees it
as a condition for continuing the process.'' That means that
the process itself is being held hostage to PA renunciation.
Nor does the “negotiated resolution
on the status of Jerusalem” include resolution 194
(internationalization) or resolution 2253 of July 4, 1967, calling
upon Israel to “rescind all measures taken [and] to desist forthwith
from taking any action which would alter the status of Jerusalem.”
Given that these final status issues are the core of the Palestine
question, their resolution outside the international framework is
likely to be at least as intractable and contentious as previous
attempts at Camp David and Taba. Now that the US and Israel have
shifted the international consensus in the aftermath of the conquest
and occupation of Iraq, the Camp David and Taba deals might not even
make it to the table, the “road” to which seems to have been
effectively re-mapped, to use a favored word of the Bush
Administration and its supporters regarding its policy in the Middle
East.
America’s war for hegemony has
yielded, for the time being, a Middle East in which, as the
President’s father said twelve years ago, “What we say goes.” The
saber rattling against Syria as well as the bellicose statements
made by a number of neo-conservatives in Congress, the think tanks
and the Executive branch about Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arab
states and parties add up to a triumphalist posture in which the
regional landscape is America’s to mold, if not reconstruct,
including issues of peace and war. Thus, the first visit by
Secretary of State Colin Powell to Syria after the invasion of Iraq
has laid out conditions, warnings and requirements consistent with
imperial arrogance. An Associated Press headline sums it up: “Syria
is clear on Expectations, Powell says.” Powell told “Meet the Press”
afterwards: “There are no illusions in his [Assad’s] mind as to what
we are looking for from Syria.” He reiterated the same with more
blunt language on ABC’s “This Week” by saying: “What I said to him
is that we would be watching and we would measure performance over
time to see whether Syria is prepared now to move in a new direction
in light of these changed circumstances.” In fact, Powell’s words
left no room for diplomatic subtlety with insulting remarks such as
the US is interested in action, not assurances and promises that can
be judged by America’s own monitoring procedures. Not unlike the
Road Map’s expectation from the Palestinians, conditionality is
America’s to delineate. Syrian “performance” must conform to the
post-invasion realities, which assign new privileges to the victor
over the vanquished. The transformed realities of the Middle East
were described by Powell as “monumental,” having presumably emerged
not only because of regime change in Iraq, but also in Palestine.
America’s military “victory” did not only enhance its regional
hegemony, but supposedly elevated its super power status in such a
way as to render the aspirations of big powers such as Russia,
Germany and France for autonomous roles in the global arena rather
subdued, hence a green light for unconstrained US unilateralism in
the Middle East.
What then are the implications of the
regional and global contexts for the prospects of the Road Map as a
process to solve the Palestinian-Israel conflict? The Road Map
makes an explicit reference to a “comprehensive Middle East
settlement between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Syria.” Mr.
Powell said that he asked Assad to terminate the presence of what he
described as Palestinian terrorist groups in Syria, a condition
already met by Assad. There is little doubt that the ultimate
success or failure of the Road Map in Palestine would depend on a US
decision to empower Mahmoud Abbas to deliver to a small segment of
his Palestinian people besieged in the occupied territory relief
from Israeli repression under the guise of an “independent, viable
state”. And to facilitate a credible agreement to the larger
segment—the refugees and exiled—that will not allow the refugees to
become a lethal demographic weapon against the Jewish character of
Israel. For that to happen, we should look at two scenarios, the
first is optimistic, while the second is perhaps more realistic.
The first one is predicated on the
assumption that the outcome of the Iraq invasion would enable Bush
to argue that the presumed Iraqi “threat” to Israel and the US has
been decisively averted, hence the time has come to stabilize the
region under US auspices and in accordance with the US agenda. Such
a move would not be dissimilar to the President’s father’s failed
policy twelve years ago. This scenario assumes that Israel’s
domestic proponents would refrain from challenging Bush, since he
has already proven to be the most ardent champion of Israel to sit
in the White House. And yet, Bush does not want to risk losing the
Jewish vote as his father did in 1992, hence whatever pressure he
might muster would have to be divided between Sharon and Abbas with
most of it falling on the latter.
The second scenario is that, not
unlike previous US plans ongoing since 1969, the Road Map is the
latest un-implementable plan. Both Bush and Sharon are perhaps
betting on Abbas’ easy to predict failure, hence the built-in
gridlock in the Road Map, which could guarantee the failure and
enable Sharon and his successors to negotiate for two to three more
decades. Such a strategy has become part and parcel of Israel’s
approach to a negotiated settlement. Itzhak Shamir was the first one
to admit it publicly when he revealed that his embarkation on the
Madrid conference twelve years ago would usher in ten years of
negotiations without ever coming to an agreement. Oslo was then the
best example of protracted negotiations, in which Israel kept on
trying to re-negotiate what has been negotiated, in pursuit of the
Zionist consensus that the area lying between the Jordan River and
the Mediterranean Sea can only accommodate a single sovereignty. In
that context, negotiations as such become Israel’s favorite strategy
enabling Israel to conquer land and resources in “peace times” and
to declare the Palestinian leadership recalcitrant and irrelevant
not deserving to sit on the table before ending “terror.”
Should the first one succeed, the
domestic requirements would have to be conducive to a 2004 electoral
victory for Bush and his Party. And yet, Sharon could always stall
until the beginning of the election season. The odds, however, favor
the second scenario, which is more consonant with both the
post-invasion realities and America’s diplomatic record in the
region since 1967. Given that the dooms day scenarios about open
rebellion in the Arab street did not materialize, and given that the
prospects of a protracted Iraqi resistance seem remote in the
immediate term, with much gloating in the neo-conservative ruling
circles in Washington, the question remains now whether a diplomatic
initiative in Palestine is even a priority for the Bush
Administration. Bush’s commitment to the success of the Road Map
would have to be weighed against a net political deficit that would
ensue from the combined efforts of the Israeli lobby, bolstered by
Evangelical and neo-conservative forces well entrenched in the
ruling elite.
