First there was the Madrid conference. Then came the Oslo accords with their tortuous negotiations, with the division of Palestinian areas into various zones of Palestinian or Israeli control/sovereignty, with the final status negotiations which ultimately ended in the massacre in Jenin.
Oslo was noted for its go-slow approach in which the only thing that moved fast was the construction of Jewish settlements and the erosion of President Yasser Arafat’s credibility and prestige — a direct result of the former. Palestinians made too many concessions. They said they were prepared to forget all about the historic Palestine and the greatest larceny in history. They wanted a settlement, any settlement. All they got was more and more settlements and unsettled political conditions.
The situation continues much the same. Or if there is a change, it is for the worse. And it looks like things will get a lot worse before there is any improvement as long as Sharon and Bush remain in power. Now a new phrase is going to enter the Middle East diplomatic vocabulary: A “temporary state.”
US President George W. Bush favors the creation of a “temporary state” for the Palestinians ahead of a full-fledged state, his Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Arabic-language Saudi daily Al-Hayat in an interview yesterday. The president, of course, has not given up his objective or vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. But Bush knows, said Powell, that to reach his goal a temporary Palestinian state would be necessary. Read this in juxtaposition with what a senior Israeli official said yesterday in London. According to him, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told President Bush in talks earlier this week in Washington that he opposed the creation of a Palestinian state because it would destabilize the Jewish state. It is noteworthy that Powell in his Al-Hayat interview has declined to give a timetable for the move from a temporary state to a full-fledged Palestinian state.
But given the conditions attached to the success or credibility of this state on probation, it can be anything from 10 to 15 years. The conditions are it should secure the “confidence” of the international community (read Israel and its supporters in US Congress). Another is that it should have “effective security agencies,” meaning it should do a better job of arresting, torturing and expelling Palestinians who wish to see an end to a suffocating and humiliating occupation. Bush Monday also backed Israel’s demand that the Palestinian leadership be overhauled before meaningful peace talks can begin. Who will decide whether the “overhauling” is of the required degree or standard? Again it will be Sharon and the US. This means that whatever running Arafat, the Palestinian Authority or the new temporary state (the freak child from an unholy alliance between Sharon and Bush) does, they will still be running in circles.
Meanwhile, Israel keeps the screws tightened on Ramallah and other West Bank towns as the occupation of Ramallah, the base of Arafat, went into its third day yesterday with troops searching for “militants” after a bombing killed a teenager and wounded 14 people at a restaurant north of Tel Aviv on Tuesday. More than 60 Palestinians, including the deputy leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a local chief of the Islamic Jihad group, have been arrested in Ramallah since Israeli forces rolled in Monday.
Despite Jenin, the siege on Ramallah, incursions into Palestinian areas and all those killings, targeted or otherwise, to dismantle the “infrastructure of terror,” the violence still continues making it abundantly clear once again that what needed dismantling is the infrastructure of Nazi-like occupation. But all that Bush is prepared to give Palestinians is a “temporary state”. Sharon has ruled out any state, temporary or permanent. And the state of despair continues among Palestinians. Nothing would gladden the hearts of people and groups, on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide, who seek desperate solutions. The tragedy is that on the Israeli side these groups and individuals are led by the government itself and the world’s sole superpower is closely aligned with this government.
