Search continues for Middle East peace
PHYLLIS BENNIS and GEORGE NEGUS
ABC Australia, 3 January 2001
GEORGE NEGUS: The sorry state of the Middle East is as evident as ever and the wishful shuttle diplomacy going on between Jerusalem, Gaza and Washington continues.
Today we saw the obviously ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and that would-be-peacemaker and soon-to-become former US president, Bill Clinton, meet not once but twice at the White House.
But, if you believe just about any observer around the place with an opinion to mouth, where the whole Middle East conflict is concerned, the best we can do is hope against hope.
The pessimists, and there are plenty of them, are convinced there's absolutely no chance of an end to the nasty, on-going street war between the region's two apparently immovable objects -- the only way to describe both the Palestinians and the Israelis -- religious considerations aside -- David and Goliath certainly does have a certain ring to it.
So, should we see these latest talks between Clinton and Arafat as completely futile?
Earlier today, as the two were actually meeting, I spoke by satellite with Phyllis Bennis, head of the Middle East program at the Institute of Policy Studies, a non-partisan Washington think-tank.
GEORGE NEGUS: Phyllis, thanks very much for your time.
PHYLLIS BENNIS, INSTITUTE OF POLICY STUDIES: Thank you.
GN: Phyllis, the usual media pessimism and general sense of hopelessness surrounds this latest effort of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, but do you think it's an entirely useless exercise?
PB: It's never useless to talk.
But I think that the pessimism is well founded.
This is not a set of criteria that could result in a real peace.
We've known that for a long time since before Camp David.
And fundamentally nothing has changed.
This set of proposals that Clinton has offered still does not provide the Palestinians with the end to Israeli occupation.
It does not provide Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem.
It does not provide an end to the settlements.
It does not provide a viable Palestinian State and it does not allow for the return of the refugees.
So all in all, it maintains the violations of international law that we've been seeing for 32 years.
I don't think it has much hope.
GN: But surely talking at all is better than not talking?
PB: Talking is better than not talking, but not if it raises hopes unrealistically.
I think one of the problems that we have seen in the Oslo process over and over again starting back in 1993 with the famous handshake on the White House lawn is that it's not only a process of talking rather than fighting but talking and raising hopes enormously so that when the hopes are not realised, the fall from the expectation to the reality is even greater.
GN: This whole thing of course has been coloured by the fact that many see it merely as Bill Clinton trying to -- how can we put it -- ego-trip himself into history.
But you don't see any hope whatsoever of anything being resolved by January 20, when he goes.
PB: If Bill Clinton for whatever motivation could orchestrate a real peace in the Middle East, even if it was for the purposes of his legacy, it would be a wonderful thing.
The problem is what's our definition of peace.
For me, I look to the definition that Martin Luther King gave us and he said that peace is not just the absence of war but the presence of justice.
If we look at what's being proposed here, it might lead to a temporary pause in hostilities.
That's not peace, that's a pause in hostilities.
And I don't think that we can have any illusions that what's on the agenda here -- partial Palestinian control but not sovereignty in East Jerusalem, no right of return, 80 per cent of the settlers remaining on their land and a serious question even over the 95 per cent of the land that Clinton says will be returned to the Palestinians, we don't even know if he's talking about the entire West Bank or if he's talking about the West Bank minus the 22 per cent of the West Bank that Israel now says is made up by the new municipal borders of Jerusalem.
If that's the case we're talking about 95 per cent of 70 per cent of the West Bank.
So we're not talking about a viable State.
We're not talking about an end to settlements.
We're not talking about a right of return.
We're talking about an imposed solution that reflects Israeli interests and US interests but does not take into account legitimate Palestinian demands.
GN: Phyllis, the whole question of the 3 million Palestinian refugees returning has become a one of the sticking points of course.
It's an irony, isn't it, that this whole thing started with the wandering tribes of Israel and now it looks like it's got to the point where the whole thing is becoming unstuck because of the wandering tribes of Palestine, as it were?
PB: Well the problem is the Palestinians were forced out of their land.
The question of the legitimacy of the lost tribes, as you say, is a very different matter.
I don't think we can reply on God to write real estate contracts in this day and age.
I think we have to look at international law.
And international law says that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem is unlawful.
That those territories that were occupied in 1967 must be returned and that people must be allowed to go home.
Resolution 194 passed in 1948 said the Palestinians have the right to return to their homes.
Not that they have the right to return to some other state, not that they have the right to be rehabilitated in the countries to which they sought refuge, but to return to their homes.
Now, I think there's a lot of negotiation that can go on, there's a lot of possibilities for making arrangements for how to implement the right of return in ways that will be as less disruptive rather than more disruptive.
GN: Phyllis, let's talk about that.
Because if Clinton can't do anything anything before January 20, and the Middle East is quite clearly a low priority where George W.
Bush is concerned, what's left for us therefore if this is a breach of international law, as you say?
And why isn't the international community via the UN intervening in this situation?
PB: Well unfortunately, up until now the US has refused to allow the UN to play the role that it has insisted the United Nations play play in so many other conflicts -- to be the arbiter of negotiations, to be the venue for peace talks.
The only glimmer of hope that I see in this very dismal time is that, with the new administration coming in which has a less clear imperative towards supporting Israel as its top of its priority in international affairs, that will be paying more attention to Iraq, for example, than to the Israel-Palestine conflict, that maybe there's a chance that the UN will be allowed for the first time to play the role that it should be playing.
This is an issue in which the international community for many years has had a wide ranging set of consensus positions.
And it's time the US stood back and allowed Kofi Annan and the UN take the lead, rather than controlling the diplomacy in such a way that it guarantees failure.
GN: Phyllis, is it possible that this whole situation is a generational problem?
That when this generation of leaders, be they Palestinian or Israeli are gone, that the next generation of leaders might say "Enough is enough."
Maybe we should be looking, say, 5 or 10 years down the track where the whole Middle East conflict is concerned?
PB: I think that's a little unrealistic, George.
I think this is not a problem of generations, it's a problem of occupation.
What we are seeing -- this is now a third generation of Palestinians growing up as refugees.
And it's this third generation that is talking once again, but in a far more realistic way, about their right of return.
They are not their grandparents, the ones who were actually expelled from their homes in 1948 and who maintain this set of romantic illusions about the glories of ancient Palestine.
And this is not their parents who fought the first Intifada and fought for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza alone.
This is now the third generation, and they're saying: "We want to go back.
We know it's not going to be easy.
We want to go back.
We have to figure out where will the water come from?
How will we attach the electrical grid?"
They're very concrete this new generation.
They're the Internet generation among Palestinians.
Even in the refugee camps, the youth groups have Internet access with other refugees in Lebanon, and in Syria and in Jordan and here in the US.
And this is a new generation that's looking at the right of return in a new way.
They're looking to their ties with their colleagues and friends and cousins who are Palestinians living inside Israel, and saying, "Maybe it's now time that we should be looking to a future even beyond a separate Palestinian state, to a time when there could be one state for all of the people who live here.
Not one people occupying the other, but a state of equality -- not a state for only Jews, for Jews all around the world -- Jews like me who can pick up and move to Israel tomorrow and get all the benefits of citizenship -- when the Palestinians who were expelled from their homes can't even go back for a visit."
GN: Phyllis, if we can end on a personal note, do you think there are many Jews who think the way you do about this situation?
Who are as conciliatory?
PB: I think there are many.
I think there is a political culture that makes it difficult.
But, for me, it's not just about being Jewish.
It's about being a human being and seeing what occupation has meant for generations of Palestinians.
To me, that's what makes it unacceptable.
GN: Well, let's hope that your suggestion of the UN intervening works out to be the case.
PB: I hope so.
GN: And thanks for talking to us, Phyllis.
PB: Thank you.