Yasser Arafat’s announcement that he is ready to begin peace talks with Israel to end the 11-month-old Middle East conflict was met by Israel’s weekend deployment of F-16 jets targeting Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza and West Bank. Such is the reciprocity the Palestinians have had to deal with. While Arafat declared a cease-fire in June, the day of the Tel Aviv disco bombing, and has stated publicly that he is against any form of attack on Israeli or Palestinian civilians, Ariel Sharon has been saying that the war of independence is not over — 1948 was only the first chapter, he claims. He has explained he is a fundamental Zionist who wants permanent Israeli control over most, if not all, of the occupied territories.
Sharon has made clear, and to apparent international indifference, that all he is interested in negotiating with the Palestinians is a long-term non-belligerency agreement. What precisely would a non-belligerency agreement between an occupying power and an occupied people signify? Non-belligerency may sound like a close cousin of peace, but its essence could not be more different. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, it will mean Palestinian acquiescence in the continuing illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands conquered in 1967 and Palestinian renunciation of the internationally recognized right to resist occupation. Sharon has repeated that he would not give up one inch of occupied Jerusalem, would not dismantle one Jewish settlement, would not refrain from using new ones. That does not leave much for the two sides to talk about even if assorted outside pressures were to bring renewed high-level meetings. His only visible strategy is endless confrontation and no negotiations until the violence ends but has offered no plan for negotiation.
He knows no limits to what he is willing to do, all of it in the name of a principle accepted by the United States, which is to refuse to do anything while violence continues. And in the seldom times that the US interjects it is to block any attempts at a resolution. One should not be surprised that the United States, in defiance of a Palestinian demand, has vetoed sending unarmed observers to the occupied Palestinians territories. The US would probably give unqualified support to Israel even if it pushed three million Palestinians, live, through a meat grinder. This, therefore, seems to entitle Sharon to lay siege to an entire population of three million people, even as he and Shimon Peres go around the world complaining of Palestinians terrorism.
Indeed, the near-universal reaction of the international community to the intifada and the succession of war crimes deployed to suppress it continues to be to call for an end to the violence — with the emphasis on Palestinian violence. What will it take for the international community to recognize the problem is not resistance to occupation but occupation itself? What will it take for the international community to start to live up to the principles of international law and basic humanity which it professes to support?
The prerequisite for peace must now be to make Sharon or his predecessor willing to get serious about actually achieving peace, not simply talking about it. To some extent, the very mediation used to push negotiations forward is to blame, because so much attention was focused on keeping the process going that the goal was eclipsed. Deadlines were allowed to pass and be forgotten. The pressure was to keep the two sides talking, as though that somehow brought resolution nearer. It didn’t as the current violence shows.
An Israeli leader might finally grasp the fundamental reality and essential truth that complying with international law and relevant UN resolutions and ending the occupation is not only a viable solution but is in Israel’s own self-interest.
