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The Trouble with Wye By Zalman Shoval, Washington Times 6 January 1999 Abba Eban once said that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." It seems that the present Palestinian leadership is determined, once again, to prove him right. It's been more than nine weeks now since the Wye River Memorandum was signed with great hopes in the White House -- but the results, so far, have been disappointing. The memorandum and the not-always easy nine-day conference which preceded it, were an honest and determined effort by President Clinton and his team to get the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track. Agreement wasn't reached easily, and some matters had to be couched in ambiguous language. What was completely unambiguous, however, was the imperative to create a mechanism to verify Palestinian compliance with their commitments. This may require some explanation. Basically, the Wye Memorandum is no more than an amplification of the Oslo agreements -- an "improved Oslo," as someone termed it. None of the Palestinian undertakings at Wye were really new ones. Most of them had already been included in the original Oslo and Hebron agreements, or in a letter which Chairman Yassir Arafat had written to Israel's late Prime Minister Izhak Rabin. The only trouble is that while Israel had handed over to the Palestinian Authority 27 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian promises had remained on paper. In light of past experience, and though Israel now agreed to transfer another 13 percent of its land, it was decided that each part of the phased Israeli pull-out would only occur after Palestinian compliance with their legal commitments commensurate with that same phase. This would include handing over and destroying illegal arms, reducing the numbers of their so-called police force (actually a mini-army), putting known murderers behind bars, effectively fighting terrorism and destroying the terrorist infrastructure, stopping anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda and incitement, and annulling the so-called Palestinian National Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. To make sure this time that all these conditions would actually be carried out, a sort of "check list" or phased "time line" juxtaposing Palestinian compliance and Israeli withdrawals was made an integral part of the agreement. At first, everything seemed to go well, with the Palestinians signaling their intention to live up to their understandings -- and Israel completing its initial withdrawal. But soon after, the Palestinians went back to their old devices. Whether this was so because the Palestinian Authority had been either unwilling or unable to adhere to its various undertakings -- or whether its leaders were led astray by misplaced hubris after the president's visit to Gaza or the euphoria after last month's "donors' conference" in Washington which had heaped them with additional billions of dollars, the outcome was the same. Though some of the bilateral and trilateral committeescontinued their perfunctory meetings and though there has been some progress in the economic field, the planned high-level engagement with the Israeli side practically came to a halt. Indeed, the third phase of the above mentioned "time-line" was due to have been completed by Dec. 18, but most of the Palestinian obligations of this phase are still awaiting implementation. Nor has the Palestinian Authority resumed "full bilateral security cooperation" as required by the agreement. Although there were some initial efforts to collect illegal arms, at this point there is scant evidence that the Palestinian Authority has gone beyond that. These illegal arms include land-mines, mortars, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. At the time of writing, Israel and the United States have not yet received the list of the excess members of the Palestinian police --though the list has been promised. Not only have none of the terrorist organizations like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad been outlawed, but the house arrest which had been imposed after the Wye Conference on Hamas leader Sheik Yassir was lifted, and about half of the 400 Hamas activists which had been arrested in October have now been freed. Only a few dozen remain in jail. All this seems to prove that the Palestinian Authority has gone back to its pre-Wye "revolving door" stratagem. Also, the inflammatory statements against Israel go on as before -- often in the Palestinian Authority's own official media -- not to mention statements by some of the leaders themselves. The fact that the Palestinian National Council did nullify the relevant clauses in the Palestinian National Charter -- important and commendable as this was -- does not in any way mitigate the seriousness of their less than complete compliance with their other legally entered obligations. But one of the worst, and potentially most harmful, breaches of the agreement was the large-scale outbreak of Palestinian violence on the prisoner issue while the Palestinian police studiously averted their eyes. At the Wye Conference, Israeli leaders had made it clear to their Palestinian interlocutors that neither murderers of either Jews or Arabs nor members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be released. None of the above could conceivably be classified as merely political prisoners, all of them having been directly involved in the willful killing of hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Israel, just as the United States, does not take murder or terrorism lightly. The Palestinian leadership was fully aware that this was Israel's position, but perhaps because the former hadn't been sufficiently candid with its people back home, it now tried to rewrite the script. Violent riots against Israeli troops and civilians broke out -- often instigated and led by Mr. Arafat's own Fatah organization. Moreover, Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders periodically announce their intention to declare statehood unilaterally in May 1999 -- which could undermine everything that has been achieved so far. The Israeli government, supported by the overwhelming majority of Israel's public, has backed the Wye agreement -- though, ironically, it has just lost its parliamentary majority as a direct result of that. But Israel's adherence was always based on the principle of reciprocity, of mutual fulfillment of all obligations -- nor could it be otherwise. Unfortunately, at this stage one does not yet have a convincing answer to the question whether the Palestinians ever intended to genuinely go through with the Wye River agreement in the first place. Could it be that, putting a false construction on the nature of U.S.-Israeli relations, they hope that American pressure on Israel will enable them to shirk their undertakings to Israel? Needless to say that if they do, totally misunderstanding the nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, they would be grossly mistaken. Or maybe they just hope that the Israeli elections will produce a government more amenable to their positions? Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Wye River accord, though certainly not dead, is bogged down and precious time is being lost. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, peace is perceived not only as a matter of expediency, but as an aim in itself. However, also in purely pragmatic terms, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, important as it is to Israel, the United States and the world as a whole -- is absolutely vital for the Palestinians. It's up to them to prove Mr. Eban wrong this time. Zalman Shoval is the Israeli Representative to the United States. |
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