The Moment of Truth
By Amos Perlmutter
PRIME MINISTER Tony Blair of Great Britain, the president of
the European Union, after his success in the Irish negotiations hopes to
be as successful with the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Taking a different road from his undiplomatic and radical Left
foreign minister, Robin Cook, he has succeeded where the latter utterly
failed.
Will the forthcoming summit on May 4 between Netanyahu and Arafat,
who will, with Madeline Albright's endorsement, separately meet with Prime Minister Blair endorsed be successful? I have great doubts of any serious breakthrough, unless, of course, the American president is willing to personally intervene.
The drifting away of Israelis and Palestinians from Oslo presents a
fundamental challenge to the Israeli government and the Palestinian
Authority. Are they seriously dedicated to the fulfillment of Oslo?
If not, which course will the parties take, and what can be expected
from the postponement or rejection of the Oslo principles. The
negotiations mediated by the United States between the Israelis and Palestinians
are not really over percentages of Israeli land withdrawal and
territorial gain for the Palestinians. Nor is it a military security question
for Israel.
The foremost defense analyst in Israel, Zeev Schiff of
Ha'aretz, has put forward the issue: Do both the Israelis and
Palestinians intend to advance toward the final stages of peace or
not? Is the freeze caused by the stalling of the parties a tactical
matter, or is it a serious strategic departure by both from Oslo? If
Binyamin Netanyahu's government doesn't believe that peace can be achieved
with the Palestinians except on his terms and that the original treaties
of Oslo are void, then the IDF should discourage any disengagement,
redeployment or surrender of an inch of Palestinian territory. If,
however, the government intends to achieve peace on the basis of
compromise with the Palestinians, then percentages, single or double
digit, are irrelevant. If the Palestinian Authority intends to
achieve concessions by means of violence and terrorist methods, by means of
employing international and American public pressure, then there will
be no independent Palestinian state by the end of the century.
The moment of truth has arrived. Are the parties ready to make
strategic concessions and bring an end to the fifty years of conflict
between Arabs and Israelis? The choices for both parties must be made
clear.
The optimists argue that the "squabbles" stem from the parties' negotiating
strategy to accumulate as much political and territorial gain as
possible before the final negotiations. If the pessimist argument
prevails, i.e. that neither party has political intentions to fulfill
Oslo, then the American strategy in the Israel-Palestinian conflict
must make a distinctly different posture. What is relevant now is the
political will of the parties. If they mean to achieve peace by
compromise, then the employment of America's good offices in the
negotiations would be sufficient.
But if neither has political or electoral will to come to terms on the basis of Oslo, then an American intervention becomes imperative. The parties approach the final
stages of negotiations with maximum demands and minimum concessions, which
will lead to paralysis. To overcome their lack of political will to
negotiate on their own, the U.S. should adopt a new negotiating
style.
What is necessary is an imaginative and bold American
negotiating strategy. Secretary of State Madeline Albright must
abandon the present style of diplomacy that leaves the United States to the
mercy of the self-interest of both Israelis and Palestinians. This
is not a strategy, nor is it a wise foreign policy. Rather than sending
Ambassador Ross for endless and fruitless trips to the Middle East,
President Clinton must establish a new strategy for productive
negotiations.
The president is faced with two choices to break the logjam and to
overcome the obstacles both parties have created to avoid making the
necessary and painful existential decisions. The first choice, the
penultimate, is to lean on Israel with an "American plan" which is
not a viable electoral, political or diplomatic choice for the president.
This option has already been rejected by the Netanyahu government as
a coercive effort dictating an American idea for the security of
Israel.
The most reasonable would be the second choice, that President
Clinton adopt a Camp David-style pressure cooker to seal Oslo. This
structure of negotiations would be designed to impose equal pressure on the
parties to make the required political decisions to fulfill Oslo
removed from the heavy domestic pressures they both face at home. Camp
David-style pressure cooker negotiations are needed in the absence of
the political will or electoral power of either party to make a peace
on the basis of compromise.
Before Camp David, Begin and Sadat principally agreed to achieve peace. Without Camp David and an American president's direct role it would not have been achieved. The same is true of
Oslo. The parties have declared their commitment to peace, and now it is
within the power of an American president, if he so desires, to help
achieve this goal. The era of emissaries must come to an
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