After the Wye Plantation accords

1. Even if the Wye Plantation accord¹ is only a necessary and inevitable step in a long and difficult process — a step that, moreover, came too late — its importance, in my view vital, should not be underestimated, if the accord is finally applied, as one must hope. And one must become aware of the pessimism surrounding it.

2. The importance of the accord lies in the fact that it represents the definitive defeat of a whole ideology of opposition to Ben Gurion’s idea of the partition of Eretz Israel. Jabotinsky’s Revisionism failed in its policy of imposing — on Israeli society as much as on the Palestinians and on the international community — the concept of the historical and political integrity of Eretz Israel.

3. Today it is altogether clear that the postponements of the accord answer to Netanyahu’s internal necessities and domestic causes, which include the fact that any progress in the peace process risks disintegrating his coalition of the right and the far right. This becomes clearer than ever if one notes a simple truth: Netanyahu obtained nothing at Wye that he could not have obtained two years earlier, as soon as the famous American initiative was placed on the table.

4. I would like here to analyze the elements in this accord that may be interpreted by Netanyahu’s coalition as a defeat. I do so only to note the internal political implications, and not to express any personal opposition. I think the accord is vital as a premise and platform for the negotiations on the definitive status of the territories.

5. So here it is:

1. For two years, Netanyahu had mobilized public opinion, the Jewish lobby in America, with his friends on the Republican far right, using the argument that a withdrawal of 13% represents a threat to the security of the State of Israel. The withdrawal is finally taking place, and of the very same percentage of territory.

2. For two years Netanyahu had blocked all progress under the pretext that the Palestinians refused to assume the principle of reciprocity. At Wye, the Palestinians made brilliant use of Netanyahu’s propaganda. They accepted the principle of reciprocity:

• They will fight Palestinian terrorism, at the same time as Israel does the same with its own terrorists. A total symmetry.
• They will fight any violation of Israeli property in the Territories, and Israel will do the same with regard to Palestinian properties. From now on, every attack by the Jewish children of Hebron against the Arab souk in the city of the Patriarchs is a clear violation of the Wye accords.

3. For two years, Netanyahu had used as a pretext for blocking the peace process the argument that the Palestinian authorities were carrying out incitement against Zionism and the State of Israel, and he demanded a firmer control of Palestinian propaganda. From now on there is an absolute symmetry. The Israeli media — for example Channel 7, the radio of the Settlers’ Council — are forbidden to engage in anti-Palestinian propaganda.

4. For two years Netanyahu had conditioned all progress in the peace process on an element he considered vital, the extradition of the Palestinian terrorists who had Jewish blood on their hands. Perhaps a morally just demand, but politically impossible. Even if Baruch Goldstein, the monstrous assassin of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, had remained alive, Israel would never have accepted his extradition to the Palestinian Authority. Why then this pressure on Arafat to assume a decision that would have helped to endanger the stability of his regime and the legitimacy of his power in Palestinian society? In the end Netanyahu had to accept reality. There will be no extradition.

But two years were lost in discussions and in a political rhetoric of confrontation. All of this serves only to prove that the Netanyahu government made us lose two precious years in which the mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians was destroyed; relations between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan were strained and more difficult than ever since peace was signed with them. The precarious bridges that had been built by the Labor government with almost the whole of the Arab world were dynamited in an irresponsible way. Israel’s relations with the international community have returned to an era one believed had vanished. The freedom of diplomatic maneuver of the United States, so necessary to combat the threats to regional stability in the Middle East, has been desperately limited by the loss of credibility that was the direct consequence of the American incapacity to make the Netanyahu government budge; and finally Israel has suffered a recession and an economic crisis that emanated directly from the paralysis of the peace process.

One of the most interesting perspectives of the Wye accords, in my view, is the full integration of the United States as supreme judge of the accords and as integrating element in the new situation. America is no longer a mediator, it is a vital element of both the conflict and its solution. Arafat has obtained a kind of strategic alliance with the United States. In my view, at Wye Plantation the conditions were created for a future American support of the creation of a Palestinian state. It is a result Netanyahu did not hope for, but which is an inevitable consequence of the fact that, contrary to the policy of Rabin — who preferred direct dialogue with the Palestinians and who religiously resisted American mediation — Netanyahu had burned every channel of dialogue between himself and President Arafat. The Palestinian national movement is embarked upon a path of strategic intimacy with the United States in the negotiations on the definitive status of the Territories. American economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority will begin a kind of vital symmetry, as in the case of American financial assistance to the Egyptians and the Israelis after the Camp David accords.

However, there exists an element in this new American presence that must be analyzed from a different perspective. It is a question of the integration of the C.I.A. into the mosaic of security guarantees. It may appear that the C.I.A. is arriving not exclusively to safeguard and guarantee the security protocols signed at Wye, but to reinforce the stability of Arafat’s regime against its internal enemies: Islamic Jihad, Hamas, not to mention Syria and its agents. It may be interpreted as the fact that the C.I.A. is arriving to support a regime that is not sufficiently democratic, that is sometimes perceived as corrupt. It is a situation that risks separating the military and political elites of the embryonic Palestinian state from the people, who might then feel closer to the communal roots more authentically represented by Hamas. In my view the only way in which the American intervention can be vitally positive is through the opening of a kind of economic New Deal and of a democratic participation that allows the whole of Palestinian society to accede to a better future.

The Wye accords nevertheless pose a serious and even dangerous challenge to Arafat. They oblige him to advance his total war against Hamas and Jihad, something that, in my view, he is trying to avoid before the creation of the Palestinian state within acceptable borders. A civil war in Palestine at a moment when the prospects of an accord on the definitive status of the Territories are vague and hazy, and at a moment when the Netanyahu government continues to pursue a policy of colonization in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank and continues its policy of compensation and reconciliation toward the far right, may shatter Palestinian society without its managing to obtain the borders it hopes for from this difficult process. Throughout history, nationalist movements have sometimes had to divide in order to reach the goal of independence — this was the case with Zionism. In Arafat’s case, he is required to shatter the Palestinian national movement even before the prospects of a reasonable accord can be realized. And, in order to convince his government to accept the Wye accords, he speaks of a series of unilateral conditions that the Palestinians must accept — the vote by the PNC on the Charter, the question of the unilateral declaration of the Palestinian state, the condition that the third redeployment will concern only 1% of the Territories — which are not part of the accords signed at Wye. And even with this arbitrary interpretation of the accords, the Prime Minister fails to convince his Likud colleagues in the Cabinet to support the framework of the Wye accord. All of this serves only to transmit to Israeli society and to public opinion in general the image of a government that feels infinitely more comfortable in a situation of confrontation than on the road to reconciliation.

One of the gravest problems in the current situation is the curious and paradoxical fact that even when the Netanyahu government manages to sign an accord that is no doubt important and even historic for a government of the right, the level of mistrust is such that the Arab world does not respond and regional tension, contrary to the peace policy of the Rabin government, remains at a high and dangerous level. Moreover, Netanyahu takes a step toward peace within the framework of a logic of confrontation. The rhetoric continues to be directed against the internal and external enemies. He signs an accord but he builds at Har Homa and at Ras al-Amud and he insists on defending the expansion of the settlements throughout the West Bank. The fact that the channel of negotiation with the Syrians remains totally blocked and that the Arab world in general has lost all confidence regarding the intentions of the Israeli Prime Minister has destroyed, for the moment, the prospects of recovering the dialogue and the good relations that existed during the Labor years with the Arab countries. Netanyahu’s peace lacks a culture of peace; it is a peace without spirit, without momentum, without hope. He pursues a preparation for war more than a true architecture of peace.

In any case, the difficulties and challenges of the immediate future are enormous. The Labor party, even when the general policy of the government does not deserve parliamentary support, has decided to facilitate for it the parliamentary guarantee necessary for the application of the accords, but the right and the far right will do everything in their power to avoid the implementation of the accords signed in Washington. At the same time, that tacit alliance that always exists between the fanatics on both sides will inevitably encourage the terrorism of Hamas and of Jihad. Those who seek pretexts or excuses for not respecting the accords should not meet with great difficulties, if one adds to these obstacles the fact that the Netanyahu coalition is in full disintegration. One arrives at the conclusion that the prospects of the Wye accords are extremely hazy. Which obliges us all to continue exerting our moral and political pressure both on the Palestinians — who must do everything humanly possible to remove all the pretexts that the immobilist right seeks in order to kill this precarious peace — and on the Israelis, who must accept that the Wye accords, imperfect as they inevitably are, are the last opportunity to create a credible platform for the negotiations on the definitive status of the Territories.

A friendly or hostile Palestinian state.

The negotiations on the definitive status will be extremely difficult, whether with a government of the right or with a government of the left. There exists among many Israelis on both sides a cliché according to which the Palestinian problem has no solution. The difficulties and the obstacles are insurmountable. It is a matter of Jerusalem², of the refugees, of the settlements, of the Palestinian state, and so on. It is altogether possible that the traditional structure of Israeli peace policy — Rabin, Begin — is ill-suited to dealing with the Palestinian problem. The difference between the right and the left, it seems, lies not in the type of peace accord they are capable of obtaining, but in the degree of disaster it produces before assuming the inevitable decisions. Without the Intifada we would not have arrived at Madrid and at Oslo, and without the Yom Kippur War we would not have arrived at Camp David.

The best thing one can wish for our two countries — Palestinian and Israeli — is that their leaders finally take to heart that famous maxim of Metternich, who said that every great leader passes through the test of concessions. As for me, if you will allow me to correct the grand master of diplomacy, I would add that true leadership is obtained not only through concessions but through the timing in which one makes them. The great leader is the one who assumes the difficult decisions before the catastrophe, and not after.

Notes