When the Palestinian freedom fighters left Jordan, some sought asylum in Israel rather than risk falling into Jordanian hands. It was becoming apparent to the Palestinians that in addition to the Israelis they were also facing Arab hostility. They felt that all they could do was to attempt to set up a state on any area of liberated Palestinian soil. Fatah hardliners were against the concept of the mini-state, fearing that this might be the end of the road. Furthermore, there was the problem of the refugees, and the Jordanian plans to create a new united Arab Kingdom including the West Bank and Gaza after Israeli withdrawal. Meanwhile, the Israelis were making efforts to demonstrate by staging municipal elections that the Palestinians in the occupied territories had settled down under occupation. The PLO reaction was a series of assassinations of those whom it considered had collaborated with either the Israelis or the Jordanians and thereby undermined the Palestinians in the West Bank.
At a meeting of the Palestinian National Council in September 1972, President Sadat of Egypt urged the Palestinians to form a government in exile. It was a plan for the Palestinians to make a break from the past, to denounce terrorist acts, and to define their aims. However, Sadat warned the PLO that a government in exile might end in the same manner as, twenty years previously, the All-Palestine movement, sponsored by the Arab League, had failed. At the same time Jordan was putting pressure on the PLO in the West Bank. On 10 April 1973, Israeli commandos stormed an apartment occupied by three PLO senior officials in Beirut, killing all of them. The Lebanese authorities in the area did nothing to stop the killings. The Palestinians suspected that the Lebanese Christian leadership had helped the Israelis. Less than six months later the Egyptians and Syrians launched a full-scale war against Israel, the October War. Sadat had tried to approach the Americans for a peaceful settlement, but the Americans and Israelis had not responded and he felt that he had to do something to move the Israelis. The no peace, no war situation had to change in order for things to go forward.1
The October War took the Israelis by surprise. In ninety minutes the Egyptian forces created a bridgehead through the Suez Canal and kept their advantage the next day up to a point five kilometres east of the canal, putting Israel’s fortifications on the canal’s east bank fully in Egyptian hands. Heikal notes that the Soviets informed Sadat that the Syrians had asked them to arrange for a cease-fire on the Syrian front. Sadat felt that this put the Egyptian forces in a compromising situation. After correspondence with President Asad, the latter informed Sadat that Syria had not asked the Soviets for a cease-fire but had declared that any cessation of hostilities must be connected to a return of lands. He insisted that the Syrian forces were doing well and inflicting heavy casualties on the Israelis. Heikal notes,
What lay behind this incident was that Sadat, whether he knew it or not, had begun to prepare himself psychologically for loosening his alliance with Syria and was looking for a pretext. What he most wanted was the freedom to act alone, independently of Syria, if his contacts with Kissinger bore fruit. The fear that Syria might reject US proposals which Egypt would be prepared to accept was high in mind.
Following the October War, the UN General Assembly agreed on Resolution 238 and negotiations began between Israel and Egypt to disengage their forces. The Americans were the sponsors of these negotiations and were represented by Henry Kissinger. This was the first time that the two highest military officers of Israel and Egypt had sat face to face. These negotiations were the beginning of the peace process.
Sadat opened a channel of communication.2 On 7 November 1977 in the Egyptian Parliament in an open session, Sadat announced that he was ready to go to the end of the world, even to the Knesset, in search of peace. Chairman Yasser Arafat was present, and there was Arab disbelief at what Sadat had said. Some thought it was a political manoeuvre. To put all minds at rest, Sadat met the editors of all of the important newspapers to clarify his real intentions. He confirmed that the ball was now in Israel’s court.
On 17 November, with the help of the American administration, Sadat received a formal invitation to talks from the Israeli Prime Minister. Sadat went to Syria to meet President Asad and to persuade him not to object to his move until he saw the outcome. If it were successful then Syria should follow suit. After a long meeting between the two presidents, Syria refused Sadat’s plan. On his way back to Egypt, Sadat authorized his administration to go ahead with his planned visit to Israel and on 20 November he delivered a speech in the Knesset:3
I come to you today on solid ground to shape a new life and to establish peace. Any life that is lost in a war constitutes a huge wall between us, which you tried to build up, but it was destroyed in 1973. Conceive with me a peace agreement in Geneva that we can herald to a world thirsting for peace, a peace agreement based on the following points: ending the occupation of the Arab territories occupied in 1967, achievement of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self determination, including their right to establish their own state. The right of all states in the area to live in peace . . . commitment in the region to administer the relations amongst them in accordance with the objectives and principles of the UN Charter, particularly the principles concerning the non-use of force and a solution of difference among them by peaceful means.
You, sorrowing mother, you, widowed wife, you the son who lost a brother or a father, all the victims of wars, fill the air and space with recitals of peace, fill bosoms and hearts with aspirations of peace.
The Israeli Cabinet met Sadat in Jerusalem and offered a partial withdrawal from Sinai and limited self-rule for the Palestinians. Sadat was angry because he felt that nothing had been achieved. Another meeting, in Britain, failed, following which President Carter invited Begin and Sadat to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, on 30 July 1978. After laboured negotiations, on 26 March 1979 a peace treaty was signed on the White House lawn between the Egyptians and Israelis.
The Camp David talks were more about Egypt and Israel than about Palestine. The reduction in tension between the two caused a rift in Arab relations in general and set back the Palestinian cause. The Arabs had lost the core of Arab unity, which had been represented by Egypt for many years. The peace treaty was merely a bilateral agreement between Israel and Egypt and the talk about Palestinian self-determination was completely spurious.4
The Arab reaction was to cut all diplomatic and economic ties with Egypt, move the Arab League from Cairo to Tunis and suspend Egypt’s membership. Syria now became the main player in Arab–Israeli politics and began to adopt all the different Palestinian liberation organizations. The new enemy was Egypt. Certain Palestinian factions carried out attacks against Egyptian targets. The Arab world was simmering with anger. Lebanon was entering its fifth year of civil war between the Muslims and Christians.
After the exodus of the Palestinian freedom fighters from Jordan in 1970, they took refuge in the south of Lebanon. This was not to be their permanent base, however, and a series of factors led to their eventual expulsion. These factors included the loss of Egyptian support of the Palestinian cause as a consequence of the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty. The PLO tried to compensate for this by making moves towards the new Iranian religious state, but this proved a short-lived friendship.
In the mid-1970s the PLO and other Palestinian organizations effectively controlled Lebanon. Dormant inter-religious and inter-ethnic tensions that existed in Lebanon were aroused by the introduction of this new element and exacerbated by the economic gap between rich and poor. The different fighting forces in Lebanon changed their allegiances by the day. Meanwhile the Syrians monitored the situation, eventually deciding to enter Lebanon on the pretext that they did not want a new power on their doorstep. Syria gained control of most of the country, but heavy fighting in Beirut resulted in many civilian casualties among the Palestinian refugees. The Syrians’ primary concern at first was to support the Christians. After twenty months of fighting, the PLO was dominant in the border area and West Beirut and the Christians were dominant in northern Lebanon and East Beirut. The Syrians kept the balance between the two.
However, the Christians fell out with the Syrians and looked for help from the Israelis. At first Israel supplied the Christians with arms on condition that the latter had to fight the war themselves, but matters changed when Ariel Sharon became Defence Minister in 1981. His aim was to drive the Palestinians out of south Lebanon – to stop the shelling of Israeli settlements – and to crush the PLO headquarters in Beirut once and for all.
The Israelis had two possible plans for intervention. The first was that Israel would go thirty miles into south Lebanon to secure their settlements. The second was to make a full-scale invasion of Lebanon as far as Beirut to finish off the Palestinians. The Christian old guard refused these proposals on the grounds that Lebanon still constituted part of the Arab world and they could not fight alongside the Israelis. At the same time, Bashir Gemayel5 tried to negotiate with the Palestinians by telling them to leave Lebanon and in return he would stop the Israeli invasion.
Israel was looking for a justification to enter Lebanon. The chance came when the Israeli Ambassador to London was shot and injured in the head. The Israeli Cabinet met during the night of 4 June 1982. The attempt on the life of the Ambassador was the trigger for the Israelis’ full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The assassins were not, however, connected to the PLO but to a different faction, the organization controlled by Abu Nidal (Sabri al-Banna). Security chief Shalom, Prime Minister Begin’s adviser on war against terrorism, suggested that Begin should tell the Cabinet about the Abu Nidal organization. He wanted the ministers to know that Abu Nidal was not close to the PLO and that Arafat could not control Abu Nidal. This information could not stop the invasion, however. To Begin, all Palestinians were PLO and were to be punished.
When all the information indicated that an Israeli invasion of Lebanon was imminent, Egypt was out of the picture. In 1980, Sadat asked Said Kamal, the PLO representative in Cairo, to attend a meeting. This was unusual, especially since the PLO had been anti-Sadat after the peace treaty with Israel. The purpose of the meeting was to encourage the PLO to start talking to the Israelis and try to reach a solution. Sadat suggested that any talks should not be directly with the Israelis or through the American government, but through the Jewish lobby, especially in the US. Stephen Cohen, director of an American academic institute dealing with Middle East studies and having links with all the major Zionist and Jewish organizations in the US, was named specifically as a contact. Sadat felt that Cohen was best placed to put the PLO in touch with appropriate Jewish contacts who were not members of the Israeli Government.
After some initial correspondence with the PLO headquarters in Beirut, it was agreed that Kamal would meet Cohen in his private capacity, not as an official of the PLO. The PLO dismissed him tactically to free him to attend the New York Congress, an academic meeting between Arabs and Israelis, in a private capacity. In 1981, the Americans informed Sadat that Israeli patience was reaching its limits and that an invasion of Lebanon was likely at any time. Sadat summoned Kamal and asked him to convey an urgent message to Arafat that the PLO was surrounded by hostile Israeli, Syrian and Christian forces and would be squeezed between them.
On 6 October 1981 Sadat was assassinated during a military parade to mark the October War. A few months after Sadat’s assassination, Stephen Cohen arrived in Cairo for a meeting with Kamal to discuss ‘an important matter’. When they met, Cohen asked to see Arafat. The Egyptians offered a plane to take Cohen and Kamal to Beirut. It must be noted that, to Kamal’s surprise, Cohen already had contacts with Abu Jihad, then Arafat’s deputy. Kamal asked what would be the purpose of a meeting with Arafat and Abu Jihad? Cohen replied that if Sharon attacked Lebanon and pressed as far as Beirut, the PLO would be able to offer little resistance.
At a meeting in Arafat’s place of hiding in Beirut, Cohen asked Arafat and Salah Khalaf6 how long the PLO could resist the kind of attack anticipated. They indicated that they would be able to resist for six months, not counting the Arab reaction. Cohen said that the Israelis were not concerned about the regional reaction. He ended the meeting saying that he doubted that the PLO could withstand the predicted attack.
On 28 May 1982 Hosni Mubarak, the new Egyptian President, sent a further warning to Arafat that the Israelis were going ahead with their planned invasion as far as Beirut, not just the thirty-kilometre zone in the south of the country. He stated, ‘Maybe you would find it best to avert the attack now by making a political move . . . the time has come to put your sword in its sheath before it is too late.’ The PLO took no notice.
Another message came to Arafat from King Hussein, who sent his Foreign Minister to warn of imminent Israeli invasion. Arafat’s response was that the PLO was ready. On 6 June 1982 the Israeli forces pushed across Lebanon’s southern border, supported by air and naval units. Some forty thousand Israeli troops in hundreds of armoured personnel carriers crossed the border and continued moving northwards, beyond the thirty-kilometre zone. Within eight days Sharon’s forces reached West Beirut, home to half a million Lebanese and Palestinians plus the Eighty-Fifth Syrian Brigade, and laid siege for more than two months.
Sharon continued shelling the city with the sole aim of driving out the Palestinians and the Syrians. The Americans sent Habib to act as a mediator between the Lebanese government and the Israelis. The outcome was the exodus of the Palestinian freedom fighters. Arafat gave a written commitment and in twelve days the Palestinians were out. The problem then was to find somewhere to go. The Egyptians and Syrians refused to take them in. The Jordanians took in those who carried Jordanian citizenship. Some of the remainder went to Southern Yemen, Sudan, Iraq and Algeria. Arafat and his commanders went to Tunis. This was the third exile for the Palestinians – a great loss of hope as they contemplated fighting for Palestine from a distance of fifteen hundred miles. No armed Palestinians remained in Lebanon, only the refugees in the camps.
The President elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, was invited to meet Prime Minister Begin in Nahariyya in northern Israel but was assassinated by a bomb at the Phalange party headquarters before he even took office. His followers sought revenge and in September 150 Christian Phalangists entered the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. They were allowed in by the Israeli forces that were controlling movement in and out of the camps. The militia massacred between seven hundred and one thousand people (some reports say two thousand). The majority of the refugees in the camps were civilians: old men, women and children. There were certainly no armed Palestinians. There was international outcry and in February 1983 Sharon was forced out of office. Six months later Begin resigned. As a result of the Israeli invasion a total of approximately forty thousand Palestinians and Lebanese were killed, one hundred thousand were injured and half a million made homeless. The major Palestinian political and social institutions were destroyed.7
The Palestinian political and armed freedom fighters were dispersed into the Arab world, and the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, found refuge in Tunisia. The Arabs blamed Arafat for his shortsightedness. The Israelis were content that their mission had ended in the elimination of the Palestinians from Lebanon. Meanwhile, however, world media attention was focused on the Iran–Iraq war and on the situation in Afghanistan, and the Palestinian situation became less prominent. By this time much of the Arab world had developed an anti-Palestinian attitude, blaming the Palestinians for the lack of development in the Arab world and labelling them as troublemakers, or at least a burden. The refugee camps, particularly those in Lebanon, represented the depths of human misery and degradation, and their occupants were still treated as prisoners and prevented from working to earn a living. No building materials were allowed into the camps and the refugees had to carry ID cards, which were renewed by the Lebanese authorities. There was no freedom of travel, and violation of any administrative order would result in deportation or imprisonment.
The situation in the occupied territories was even worse. A whole generation had now been brought up under Israeli occupation, a life governed by barbed wire and an armed occupying force, military orders, restriction of movement, house demolitions, land confiscations, detention, deportation and other methods of systematic degradation and demoralization aimed at wiping out Palestinian identity and rights. New settlements were being built in the West Bank and Gaza and Jewish immigrants were pouring into the country from all over the world. The occupying force paid no attention to infrastructure in the Palestinian areas. Ironically, Palestinian workers, unable to support their families in any other way, were forced to work for Israeli contractors building settlements for Jewish immigrants, at rates of pay that would have been unacceptable to Israeli workers. They were not allowed to form or join unions and at the slightest incident of protest or resistance Gaza and the West Bank were closed, preventing inhabitants from travelling to work. By blatant use of military force and economic leverage the Israelis kept the upper hand. Human rights abuses by the Israeli government were widespread but largely ignored by the rest of the world. There was, and remains, a reluctance to accuse the Israeli state of such violations because such accusation, however legitimate, attracts counter-accusation of anti-Semitism.
In 1982 Sinai was returned to Egypt, and East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were formally annexed by Israel. The Israelis insisted on referring to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. Camp David offered little hope, being primarily concerned with the relationship between Israel and Egypt, rather than Palestinian issues. The situation was one of frustration and desperation.
By the mid-1980s the mood in the occupied territories was one of simmering frustration. New peace proposals involving Jordan, Egypt and Israel were not promising. The US Secretary of State visited the Middle East with the aim of meeting some prominent Palestinians, but pressure from the street prevented this. At this point, Palestinian anger and frustration boiled over and the Intifada was born. A community materially and morally subjugated realized it had nothing left to lose. This was an uprising of the people, armed only with stones and crude petrol bombs, against one of the most sophisticated and well-resourced armies in the world. Young boys with stones confronted Israeli soldiers with automatic weapons, like David standing in the face of Goliath. The momentum of the Intifada was maintained and proved problematic to the Israelis. Suddenly an issue that had been almost dead was back in the headlines. The Israelis tried to target the leaders of the Intifada, but the solidarity and organization at street level protected their identities. The Israelis inflicted heavy casualties on the Palestinians and committed abuses towards young Palestinians, but this only served to fuel Palestinian rage. As film of young boys confronting armed soldiers began to appear on television screens worldwide, Israel’s friends began to question the legality of Israel’s actions. Israel began to lose some of the moral high ground in the propaganda war.
The Israelis kept trying to find ways to stop the Intifada. Domestic politics required some kind of military success against the uprising, and the most effective way they could devise was to kill one of the leaders of the PLO. It was said that Khalil al-Wazir, Arafat’s deputy, had great influence in the towns of the West Bank and that his word was law. In March 1988, Yitzhak Rabin, as Defence Minister, took the decision to assassinate al-Wazir in Tunisia. On 16 April several Boeing 707s took off from a military base south of Tel Aviv. One of these carried Rabin and other senior Israeli officers and was in constant communication with the team of assassins in another aircraft. Two more 707s acted as fuel tankers, thus eliminating the need to land en route. Early on 16 April a ground team located al-Wazir at his villa. They killed his driver and his two armed guards, entered the house, found him in his office, shot him twice in the head and twice in the heart and left.
The killing of al-Wazir was a loss for the PLO, but did not affect the Intifada. At first the Palestinians in Tunis were not aware who had initiated the Intifada, nor did they have any idea how long it would last. Some eight months after its initial eruption, Arafat realized that he could use it to revive the Palestinian cause after the setback of Lebanon. Edward Said8 describes how the momentum of the Intifada and its success in creating a clear civil alternative to the Israeli occupation regime necessitated a definitive statement of support by the Palestine National Council (PNC) for the Intifada as an end to occupation and a relatively non-violent movement. This required an unambiguous claim for Palestinian sovereignty on whatever Palestinian territories were to be vacated by the occupation, with any settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis being based on UN resolutions. The main issue was that the PLO should change its aim from that of a liberation movement to that of an independence movement, especially in the light of Jordan’s withdrawal of all claims to the West Bank in 1988 to break legal and administrative ties.
The Intifada brought about more radical change within the PLO. The time had come for the PLO to change its policy. It was the time to grasp the chance or lose it. At the nineteenth session of the Palestine National Council, which took place on 12–15 November 1988 in Algeria, known as the ‘Intifada Meeting’, Arafat proclaimed the creation of the State of Palestine with the holy city of Jerusalem as its capital, and accepting Resolutions 242 and 338. Up to this point the PLO had denied the right of Israel to exist, but pressure was on them to accept the two resolutions. By accepting the right of Israel to exist, Arafat put the ball in the American court. This was not enough, however, to persuade the Americans to engage in discussion with the PLO. In order to start negotiations, the Americans required one further condition: that the PLO should renounce terrorism.
When Arafat met the Swedish Foreign Minister, Sten Andersson, the latter presented him with a letter from the US Secretary of State, George Schultz, indicating that if the PLO issued a statement renouncing terrorism, this would open the door for talks between the US and the PLO. Arafat answered that he would take their offer to the UN General Assembly, which was to be held in New York on 13 December. However, the US refused Arafat an entry visa, and the whole General Assembly was therefore moved to Geneva for this specific purpose.
Schultz set out exactly what Arafat had to say and made it clear that any deviation would make the US offer void. This put the PLO in a difficult position, since it considered itself a nationalist resistance movement rather than a terrorist movement, and preferred to ‘denounce’ rather than ‘renounce’ terrorism. The Americans would not consider the slightest alteration, however. On 7 December 1988 Schultz received a signed statement, which read, ‘The Executive Committee of the PLO condemns individual, group and state terrorism in all its forms and will not resort to it.’ Arafat indicated that he would make a speech at Geneva saying exactly the same thing.
Arafat gave his speech at the UN General Assembly in Geneva and did not change the words but transposed them in such a way as to make the statement ambiguous. He thought he could get away with this, but Schultz noted the changes and reported them to President Reagan.
The Swedish Foreign Minister informed Arafat that the Americans were not satisfied and that they would have to find an alternative occasion for Arafat to deliver what the Americans dictated. Anderson suggested that Arafat should hold a press conference and make the declaration that the Americans demanded. Arafat remained reluctant, but at a dinner with the Egyptian Ambassador, Musa, later Foreign Minister, it was agreed that Arafat should go ahead with the declaration. The press conference took place, but Arafat gave it a theatrical ending by looking into the camera and asking, ‘Do you want me to do a striptease now?’
The PLO had met the requirements for talks with the US, and these started on 16 December 1988 in Tunis. They were suspended shortly afterwards, however, because a group linked with Abul-Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF), carried out an attack on the beach in Tel Aviv in May 1989. The US used this as an excuse to break off talks on the grounds that the raid had violated the conditions on which they were based.
By August 1988 a cease-fire had been implemented in the war between Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein was portraying this as an Iraqi victory, but the country was seriously damaged and depleted and in need of funds to rebuild its infrastructure. Iraq’s main source of income was oil, but oil prices on the world market were depressed owing to massive overproduction. Iraq and some of the OPEC countries tried to press for a reduction in production but Kuwait refused. Both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had provided financial support to Iraq throughout the Gulf War, but Saddam Hussein was now hostile to the good relationships that appeared to prevail between Kuwait and the US and resented the apparent lack of appreciation of Iraq’s sacrifice in preventing radical Iranian rule from spreading to the rest of the region. Iraq asked America what its reaction would be if Iraq were to annex Kuwait. As late as July 1990, the US Ambassador to Baghdad, April Gilespie, told Saddam Hussein that the USA ‘had no opinion’ about the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait.
On 2 August 1990 the US issued an ultimatum to Baghdad to withdraw their forces from Kuwait. The whole world, including most Arab countries, realized that the American ultimatum was serious, especially since it was now obvious that America was the only remaining superpower, the USSR being in the final stages of its collapse. Arafat made a dangerous mistake by appearing to throw in his lot with Saddam Hussein. He believed that America would not attack and that the crisis would be resolved through negotiation between the Arab countries. When the Iraqi forces were defeated in April 1991, Arafat and the PLO were left, along with Jordan and Yemen, separated from the majority of Arab countries that had been against the Iraqi invasion. The PLO lost the financial support of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Large numbers of Palestinians had been working in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the majority, particularly in Kuwait, had their contracts terminated. There were many reports of revenge attacks against Palestinians in Kuwait, including torture, beatings and killings. Large numbers of Palestinians were forced out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, many of them settling in Jordan. Jordan was struggling to cope at this point, since this influx was combined with refugees fleeing Iraq.
A further blow to the PLO came with the assassination of two key leaders by the Abu Nidal group on 14 January 1991. No one wanted anything to do with Arafat or the PLO, but at the same time the Arab masses observed that the USA was imposing a double standard. Iraq’s violation of international law was punished without mercy and UN resolutions were imposed by force, but Israel’s breaching of UN resolutions which had made a mockery of the United Nations since 1949 was ignored. Israel had been illegally occupying territory, annexing lands and defying the UN for decades, but no punitive sanctions were imposed against it. Moreover it has had a nuclear capability that has not been subject to the same investigation by weapons inspectors as have Iraq’s military programmes.
This goes some way towards explaining the rise of militant factions in the Arab world and the call for changes in the Arab regimes which would allow a holy war to be carried out against Israel. The rise of Islamic movements in the occupied territories was one of the main factors that undermined the PLO. In 1987 when the Intifada erupted, many groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the PLO, claimed that they were responsible. The Intifada was, however, an explosion of the anger of the real Palestinian population, the masses living under occupation. Nevertheless, as a result of the Intifada the Muslim Brotherhood held a meeting in Gaza in December 1987 with prominent Muslim leaders. Six of these formed the first Hamas leadership, which established committees in the political, security, military and information spheres. There was no definable point where a decision was made to form the Hamas movement, rather it emerged over time. Hamas is led by a consultative body whose members live inside and outside the occupied territories.
Another Islamic movement has also come into the equation. Islamic Jihad is a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood. The founders of the movement were very much aware of the militant trends. Many of them had studied in Egypt and been exposed to militant Islamic groups such as the Salih Sirriyya group, affiliated with the Islamic Liberation Party which in 1974 attacked the Egyptian Military Technical Academy. Salih Sirriyya was considered to be one of the founders of Islamic Jihad, which was established officially in 1980. The theory put forward by Islamic Jihad was that Palestine had been lost because of corrupt and opportunistic, non-Islamic Arab leadership, and that the Arab nationalist movements were the product of Western influence against the Islamic nation. The relationship of Islamic Jihad with the PLO was somewhat ambiguous.
The surge in the number and diversity of players in this turbulent area gave the Americans a sense of urgency, making it imperative that they do something or risk losing their influence in the Middle East, especially after the showdown with Iraq. On 6 March 1991, President Bush stated, ‘A comprehensive peace must be grounded in Resolutions 242 and 338 and in the principle of territory for peace.’ This principle had to be elaborated, and at the same time the legitimate political rights of the Palestinian people had to be provided for. If the US administration had applied these more vigorously from the outset, Arafat might not have been driven into the arms of Saddam Hussein.
In October of the same year, James Baker met with a group of prominent Palestinians in the occupied territories, including Hanan Ashrawi and Faisal al-Husseini, aware of their links with the PLO. One of the main difficulties was to find a way to make Palestinians and Israelis meet together. The Israelis refused outright to talk to the PLO. An agreement was reached whereby the Palestinians would be represented by a Jordanian–Palestinian delegation and the PLO would be excluded. As a compromise, however, the PLO was to be allowed to choose the members of the Palestinian delegation, and Israel was to have no veto. But the Israelis still refused to meet certain members of the Palestinian delegation. The sponsors sent a letter of invitation to Israel, the Jordanian–Palestinian delegation, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as to the European Community, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the UN, who were invited to send observers.
The aim of these talks was to reach an agreement within a year on arrangements for a five-year interim period during which negotiations were to begin about permanent status on the basis of Resolutions 242 and 338.
Faisal al-Husseini stated that the Palestinian position in agreeing to the exclusion of the PLO did not affect the status of the organization as the sole representative of the Palestinians involved at every stage of the process. Help was offered to the Palestinians from many sides, especially from Egypt, which was able to give advice based on the experience of Camp David and which provided training in how to handle the Israeli style of negotiation. Many members of the European Community also gave valuable advice.
The Madrid Conference was attended by the Palestinian delegation, a number of prominent Arab leaders, President Bush and the Israeli Prime Minister, Shamir. At the first session, Dr Saeb Erkat nearly caused a diplomatic crisis by insisting on wearing the kufia (the distinctive Palestinian head-dress). Arafat, based in Tunis, curtailed the issue by asking the delegation to exclude Erkat from the conference. Arafat used to fly the delegates daily from Madrid to Tunis on the basis that if he could not attend the conference the delegates would have to come to him.
The achievement of the Madrid Conference was that Arabs and Israelis sat together at the same negotiating table. Madrid established a two-track system that was to become the pattern in subsequent negotiations. The first track was the multilateral negotiations in which Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab states and other interested parties outside the region could join in discussion of a number of key Middle East problems, including water, the environment, arms control, refugees and economic development. These multilateral talks initiated at the Madrid Conference resumed in earnest in Moscow in 1992.
The second track was the bilateral track in which Israel negotiated in Washington with each of its Arab neighbours: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians.
When the Washington talks began, a kind of ‘corridor diplomacy’ took place, involving the exchange of memos between parties in separate rooms. The situation was one of continual change. In 1992, during the general election in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, leader of the Labour Party, made a pre-election promise to talk directly with the PLO and Arafat. In this context the joint delegation in Madrid was a strategic necessity for the Palestinians. After the announcement of the election results and the defeat of Likud after fifteen years in power, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared that he was retiring from politics. The PLO began to talk through informal channels to the new administration in Israel. In spite of the change of government, in order to maintain some continuity, the Israeli negotiating delegation did not change. Within a year of the beginning of the negotiation, eight rounds had taken place but nothing had been achieved.
On 17 December 1992, Israel deported 415 Palestinian members of Hamas across the border into Lebanon. This incident overshadowed the negotiations. Following a great deal of effort by the Arabs and PLO, the Security Council adopted Resolution 799 regarding the return of the men who had been deported to Lebanon. The negotiations were not making any progress until Shimon Peres sent two of his officers to contact the PLO representative in London. The PLO had a number of working groups that met in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan. They handled different issues, such as water, refugees, economic development, environment, security and arms control.
It was the Norwegians who succeeding in creating the appropriate atmosphere for negotiations, not only by their attempts to reconcile the viewpoints of both sides, but also by creating a friendly climate. On 11 February 1993 the Israeli delegation presented a draft which the Palestinians accepted in principle. The newly elected President Clinton was keen to keep the negotiations on track. On the other hand the Palestinians also wanted the Washington talks to carry on, for fear that if they stopped, the momentum of the Palestinian effort would be lost.
The informal talks in Washington and Oslo had reached a crucial point – at which the parties might withdraw or real progress might be made. The main problem for the Israelis was still recognition of the PLO. Peres and Rabin were opposed to this step, but they continued talks without actually recognizing the PLO. On 19 August an agreement was reached between the government of Israel and the Palestinian team in the Jordanian–Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace conference. The Israelis felt they had to inform the Americans of the breakthrough in Oslo. The Israeli Prime Minister asked Shimon Peres to go to the US, accompanied by the Foreign Minister of Norway and the team that had conducted the agreement. In America the news was received with joy and it was suggested that it should be made public. On 9 September 1993, Arafat sent a letter to Prime Minister Rabin confirming that the PLO recognized the State of Israel, was committed to the peace process and renounced the use of terrorism and other acts of violence. Furthermore, he affirmed that those Articles of the Palestinian covenant that denied Israel’s right to exist were inoperative and no longer valid. Rabin responded in a letter to Arafat, outlining that the government of Israel had decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and that it would commence negotiation with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.
Before the ceremony for the signing of the Oslo agreement, a problem arose because the agreement in Oslo had been made before Israel had officially recognized the PLO. As a result the wording of the agreement stated that it had been made with the government of Israel but did not mention the PLO. Arafat insisted on having the words ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’ inserted in the documents to be signed or he would not go ahead. After the intervention of the Americans and the efforts of Peres, the Israelis agreed to alter the documents to indicate that the agreement was between the ‘Government of the State of Israel’ and the ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’. The signing of the Declaration of Principles and the famous handshake between Arafat and Rabin took place on the White House lawn. Both parties expressed their wish that the bloodshed should end and a new age should begin in which they would work towards peace.
As Edward Said continues to emphasize, this left the Palestinians very much the subordinates with Israel still in charge of East Jerusalem, the settlements, sovereignty and the economy. The peace plan raised many questions and was unclear in its details. Israel agreed to allow limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. Palestinians would be allowed to handle health, internal security, education, the postal services and tourism, but the Israeli army would be deployed around the main cities and Israel would control the land, water, overall security and foreign affairs as they affected the ‘autonomous’ areas. For an unspecified future period, Israel would dominate the West Bank, including the corridor between Gaza and Jericho, the Allenby Bridge to Jordan and all the water and land, a good part of which had already been taken.
In August 1995, negotiations were under way in Eilat in an attempt to reach another deal. In September 1995 the Oslo II agreement was signed in Washington. Israeli forces began to withdraw from six major West Bank cities, although the redeployment of forces around Hebron did not take place until three months later. In reality Oslo II offered the Palestinians nothing, but restricted Palestinian residents and separated them from each other and from Israel. The issue of land and settlements still had not been discussed. Only a few months later, Rabin was shot and killed by a right-wing Israeli extremist at a rally for peace in Tel Aviv.
The Palestinian leaders feared that Peres might not be able to enforce the agreement for Palestinian self-rule if he succeeded Rabin as Prime Minister. The great shock came, however, when Likud won the Israeli elections under an extreme right-wing leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel rejected the legacy of Rabin, and the hopes of the Palestinians of creating an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza were shattered. The concessions offered by the Labour Party were small and achieved with difficulty, but Netanyahu was not in favour even of these. His policies damaged the fragile peace process and caused anger among the Palestinians and other Arabs. He allowed further expansion of the settlements and supported the opening of a second entrance to an archaeological tunnel in Jerusalem which ran along the western foundation of the Aqsa Mosque. Later he sent a team of assassins into Amman to assassinate the leader of Hamas. This attempt failed and Netanyahu was forced to apologize to Jordan for this blatant violation of its sovereignty. Netanyahu also changed the plans for withdrawal from Hebron in a manner contradicting the Oslo agreements.
President Clinton stepped in to save the peace process. The Palestinians and Israelis were invited to the Wye River Conference Centre in Maryland to try to reach an agreement. After nine days of negotiations, Clinton invited Arafat and Netanyahu to the White House to sign an agreement and King Hussein was invited too as a long-term major player in helping to secure the agreement. He left the Mayo Clinic where he was receiving treatment for cancer to attend the ceremony.9
The essence of the treaty was the strengthening of Israeli security, expansion of the area of Palestinian control in the West Bank, and enhancement of the opportunities for Israeli and Palestinian people alike. This agreement continues the progress made towards bringing a lasting peace to the Middle East, including the following:
1. A comprehensive security agreement designed to stop violence in the region and strengthen Israeli security.
2. Redeployment of Israeli troops from an additional thirteen per cent of the West Bank.
3. Transfer of an additional 14.2 per cent of jointly controlled territory to Palestinian control.
4. Reaffirmation of changes in the Palestinian Charter to delete language calling for the destruction of Israel.
5. The release of 750 Palestinian prisoners.
6. The opening of an airport in Gaza and an industrial zone.
7. The opening of corridors of safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank.
8. Discussion on the opening of a sea port in Gaza
9. Israeli approval of additional reunification of Palestinian families.
10. Permission for students in Gaza to travel to the West Bank and vice versa.
The question that might be asked is ‘What have these agreements meant for Palestinians?’ In reality the Palestinians have achieved little. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has the trappings but not the substance of government. New issues have arisen, including human rights abuses by the PNA itself and misuse of funds provided by Western donor countries for the building of infrastructure such as the airport (which is in any case largely controlled by the Israelis). The Palestinians in the diaspora have been excluded to a great extent from the entire process and this is a source of deep resentment.
Despite the agreements, the Israelis remained all too ready at any time to react to words or actions by stopping the negotiations or by closing the Palestinian territories, demonstrating the farcical nature of negotiation between unequal parties, one of which can exert its overall control of the situation at any point.
Nothing moved until the summer of 1999 when the discredited government of Netanyahu fell and Ehud Barak and the Labour Party were elected. This gave fresh hope that the peace process would come back on track. Since the election, new negotiations have been conducted in which Egypt has played go-between. On 4 September 1999 an agreement was signed by the Prime Minister of Israel and Arafat in the presence of Egypt and Jordan to implement the Wye River agreement.
The Sharm al-Shaykh agreement was signed on 5 September 1999 and dealt with the following:10
1. The Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian area would take place in three stages on 13 September 1999, 15 November 1999 and 20 January 2000, respectively. There was also a verbal promise to withdraw from specific areas yet to be designated. This differs from the Wye River agreement, which was supposed to comprise two phases on 2 October 1999 and 15 November 99.
2. Palestinian prisoners. The Sharm al-Shaykh agreement provided for the release of 350 prisoners in two groups, whereas the Wye agreement provided for the release of only 102.
3. Final settlement. There would be continued negotiation in two phases, the first being up to February 2000, and the second final agreement to take place within a year of the beginning of the negotiations.
4. Port of Gaza. Construction of this was agreed to commence in October 1999. The Wye River agreement had appointed a committee to conclude the agreement for the port.
5. Bypass roads. The southern bypass road was to be opened on 1 October 1999 and the northern passage four months later when the Israelis had designated the control points. [These ‘bypasses’, actually highways with controlled entry and exit points, allow Israeli traffic to cross the country without passing through Palestinian towns. It might reasonably be suggested that they serve mainly to entrench the Israeli siege mentality.]
6. Martyrs Road in Hebron was to be opened in two phases. The wholesale market was to become a trade market, and a committee was to be activated to organize community prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
7. Security. The Palestinians’ obligation undertaken at Wye River was to be implemented, that is, the Palestinian police would be responsible for arresting anyone wanted by the Israelis. A plan was put forward for the collection of all weapons, and a list of the Palestinian police force was to be compiled.
8. Economy. A committee was to discuss a range of issues including car theft, Palestinian debts and Israeli purchase tax.
Jordan secured a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. This treaty contained a preamble, thirty articles and five appendices dealing with land, borders, water, security and other issues. At the time of the Madrid Conference and during the following year, the Israelis began to show some willingness to return the Golan Heights to Syria, but the assassination of Rabin and the installation of Likud sent the negotiations with Syria into deadlock. With the Labour Party back in power, the negotiations have started again, albeit in slow motion.