Israel Government White Paper Regarding Palestinian Non-Compliance with their Commitments and Agreements
(November 20, 2000)
For some time, the Prime Minister's Office had felt that the time had come to issue a White Paper detailing the extent of the Palestinian non-compliance with commitments they entered into with Israel, from the signing of the first Oslo agreement in 1993 to the recent Sharm e-Sheikh understandings. Following are excerpts from this White Paper:
Why were formal commitments important in the post-1993 peace process?
In September 1993, the PLO, as an organization, became a signatory to the Declaration of Principles and Israel's negotiating partner. This meant that on a broad set of issues, formal commitments were needed to try and ensure, as much as possible, that the PLO leadership had clearly broken with past positions, practices and patterns of bad faith, which had marked its conduct as a coalition of "Fedayee" (i.e. terrorist) organizations.
At various points in their history, the PLO and its constituent organizations were committed to a strategy of eliminating Israel as a state. (This strategy was embodied, at the time, in the Palestinian National Covenant.) They were implicated in:
- Extensive terrorist activity;
- Breach of agreements and understandings reached with host Arab states;
- Abuse and misgovernment in the zones which their "State within a State" controlled in Lebanon.
It is against this background that Israel felt obliged to demand formal commitments on some of the most basic and presumably obvious aspects of the process. Such commitments were indeed obtained; but more often than not, they were interpreted in a slippery way, particularly as regards the key issues of security, the use of violence, and the prevention of terrorism.
Against the mounting evidence of bad faith, as detailed below, Israel - and other parties engaged in the negotiations - kept alive the hope for a stable peace, based on the assumption that the process, and its momentum, would modify Arafat's stance on compliance and on the question of violence as an option. This hope has now been shattered.
Indications of Essential Bad Faith: Arafat creates a rationale for non-compliance
As early as Arafat's own speech on the White House lawn, on September 13, 1993, there were indications that for him, the D.O.P. did not necessarily signify an end to the conflict. He did not, at any point, relinquish his uniform, symbolic of his status as a revolutionary commander; moreover, in terms of the broader historic "narrative", as distinct from the official position at the negotiating table, the map of "Palestine" remained as it has always been for him, the entire territory of pre-1948 mandatory Palestine.
On various occasions, Arafat continued to use the language of Jihad, literally a "Struggle", but in the specific (religiously colored) context of the Palestinian struggle, a clear reference to the violent option. Of special interest, in this context, are Arafat's repeated references to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, signed by the Prophet Muhammad with his Meccan enemies when they were still stronger than him, and then abandoned (as he conquered the city) within a much shorter time than the Treaty itself warranted. The first such reference made public came shortly after the signing of the Interim Agreement, in the "Jihad" speech he made at the mosque in Johannesburg (obtained by the Jewish community, and broadcast in Israel in May 1994).
What Hudaybiyyah means for him was made even clearer when he spoke, a few months later, on the occasion of the anniversary of the fire in Al-Aksa (an event, in 1968, caused by an Australian madman, but often used in Palestinian propaganda as proof of Israel's evil intentions).
"Did the Prophet, Allah's Messenger, the Last of the Prophets, really accept a humiliation [as "Umar bin al-Khattab blamed him?] No, and no again. He did not accept a humiliation. But every situation has its own circumstances" (Palestinian Television, August 21, 1995).
The reference to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah resurfaced in 1998, coupled with the warning that "all the options are open to the Palestinian people" (Orbit Television, April 18, 1998). In essence, here was a rationale for accepting Oslo and the place at the negotiations, and the various commitments involved, not as the building blocks of trust and cooperation but as temporary measures, to be shed off when circumstances allow.
To Muslim audiences, such as the one he had in the mosque in Johannesburg in May 1994 (one of the first such speeches in the post-Oslo phase) Arafat - a former Muslim Brother, forced to leave Nasser's Egypt for that reason in the 1950's - spoke in the familiar idiom of Islamic radicalism.
To more secular audiences he offered a possible argument for the conditional or temporary nature of his commitments by addressing them in the context of the "Strategy of Stages" for the Liberation of Palestine, as endorsed by the PNC in 1974.
References to the 1974 decision to establish a "Palestinian Authority" on any piece of land Israel would withdraw from were made by Arafat both on the White house lawn in September 1993, and on the occasion of the first session of the PA Legislative Council in March 1996 (Al-Ayyam, March 8, 1996).
This instrumental view of the commitment to non-violent means, central as this commitment may have been to the entire process, was shared by Arafat's lieutenants.
In a speech (documented on video) to a forum in Nablus in January 1996 - again, at a time when the negotiations were going forward - Nabil Sha'ath described the strategy in terms which then sounded unrealistic, but now ring familiar:
"We decided to liberate our homeland step-by-step. Should Israel continue - no problem. And so, we honor the peace treaties and nonviolence... if and when Israel says 'enough'. In that case it is saying that we will return to violence, but this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom. If we reach a dead end we will go back to our war and struggle like we did forty years ago."
Following the change of government in Israel, and three weeks before the actual outbreak of violence over the opening of the Western Wall tunnel in Jerusalem, a senior Palestinian Officer - Muhammad Dahlan, the Head of "Preventive Security" in Gaza and currently complicit in the license given to terrorist activity there - warned (Al-Hayyat, September 2, 1996) that a return to the armed struggle, with the active participation of the PA forces, cannot be ruled out in view of the impasse in the process.
In the wake of the "Tunnel" events (referred to by the Palestinians as the "Al-Aksa Campaign"), Arafat spoke at the Dhaisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, and again stressed the continuous nature of the Palestinian Jihad ("we know only one word...") and the fact that "all the options are open".
More recently - to some extent, under the influence of what was perceived as the "victory" of Hizbullah in Lebanon - references to the violent option proliferated, and indeed the training of children for the armed struggle was deliberately used - during the Camp David Summit - as a hint of what was to come if Palestinian demands were not met.
As the present crisis unfolded, it was Nabil Sha'ath again who offered an explanation as to what Arafat had meant when he said, "All the options are open". In an interview with ANN television in London (October 7, 2000) he reminded his interlocutor, "No one believed him when he used to say it...[but] The choice is not at all between options of negotiation and fighting. You can have negotiations and fight at the same time" (as did the Algerians and the Vietnamese). Hence, "the Palestinian people fight with weapons, with Jihad, with Intifada and suicide actions, and it is destined to always fight and negotiate at the same time."
Specific aspects of non-compliance
The issues listed below are by no means exhaustive. They do, however, prove that the rationale for non-compliance, as presented above, actually led to a repeated pattern of abuse, misconduct and outright violence on the part of the PA.
In this respect, the current crisis does mark a watershed. It has been preceded by previous "eruptions", including the "Tunnel" Crisis of September 1996, and the short-lived "Nakba" events in May 2000. Nevertheless, nothing in previous PA practice resembles the collapse of all existing commitments, and the systematic creation - day by day, week by week - of an atmosphere of raw emotions, fear and hatred, in pursuit of a general Palestinian and Pan-Arab mobilization.
All of this is not only in breach of the clearly stated commitments offered at the beginning of the Oslo process, but also in obvious, at times blatant, rejection of the understandings reached at the recent Sharm e-Sheikh Summit. The overwhelming pattern of disregard for both written and informal understandings (overt or otherwise), and in particular the use of an illegally armed militia - answerable to Arafat - in a Low-Intensity Conflict masked as "popular protest" or an "Intifada", all confirm that from a Palestinian point of view, the new dynamics of the "struggle" - and of the call for Arab and international intervention - take precedence over "pacta sunt servanda".
Beyond the current state of warfare, Palestinian non-compliance encompasses broad aspects of everyday practice, from school texts to car theft. Some (not all) of these are discussed here.
Direct Use of Violence
Clearly, the most obvious breach of the Palestinian commitments involves the direct participation of its armed forces - the Palestinian "Police" (in effect, Arafat's regular army) and the various Security organs - in armed clashes with the IDF or in attacks on Israeli citizens.
The pattern evident in the current crisis had already been established in 1996, when Palestinian policemen played a major role in the extensive clashes that left 15 Israeli soldiers dead; in effect, they acted as a fighting force - even in places where only hours earlier some of them participated in the Joint Patrols with the IDF, according to the Interim Agreement.
In the recent crisis, the role of the regular Palestinian forces has been somewhat more ambiguous in line with Arafat's interest in keeping his hand half-hidden, and using mainly his militia forces - the Fatah "Tanzim" or cadres - in the firefights and attacks on Israeli targets. Local Police commanders were, in fact, given orders, at times, to re-establish law and order and restore the calm - but their actions often indicated that they felt (or rather, realized) that such instructions do not fit in with Arafat's broader support for the struggle and were therefore half-hearted in carrying them out.
In many cases, Palestinian Policemen took an active part in the fighting, in an organized fashion or as individuals, and there is no evidence (now or on previous occasions) of disciplinary action being taken against those who did so. There is evidence, moreover, as to the complicity of Preventive Security operatives - particularly in the Gaza Strip - in armed attacks on the IDF and on Israelis.
Perhaps the most serious event for which the Palestinian police bears a major share of responsibility in the recent crisis, was the lynching of two Israeli reserve soldiers in Ramallah on October 12, 2000. It was indeed a mob which killed them and mutilated their bodies, but it had been the Palestinian policemen who captured them, brought them into the Police Headquarters at the center of town, and then put up only a half-hearted effort to prevent the attack. So far, the PA did nothing to punish those responsible.
Everyday Practices
The Palestinian Security Organs - such as Preventive Security, as well as the General Intelligence Service and its arm in the West Bank, under Colonel Tawfiq Tirawi - have been involved in other violent actions in breach of the agreements, such as the abduction or unlawful arrest of Israeli citizens (in some cases, Israeli Arabs suspected as "collaborators"), and the murder of Palestinian real estate dealers (suspected of selling land to Jews).
Another salient case (outside the context of any specific local confrontation) - in which a senior PA official acted, in effect, as a terrorist - involved Brigadier-General (now a Major-General) Ghazi Jabali, the Commander of the Police Force, issuing orders for an attack - actually carried out by two of his colonels - on settlers in the West Bank in July 1997 (Yediot Aharonot, July 18 1997).
Moreover, at various "friction points" (e.g. events in Bethlehem, March 1998; the Gush Katif road in the Gaza Strip, July 1998; Khan Yunis, February 1999), Palestinian policemen and members of other organized forces drew weapons in support of violent demonstrators or in direct confrontations with the IDF [Israel Defense Forces].
In terms of its impact on Israeli society, and hence on the prospects for building the necessary bridges of trust and cooperation, it was the Palestinian failure to comply with its commitments on restraining terrorism - and in fact, the periodic courting of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad as partners in the struggle which left the most bitter legacy in 1995-1996, and now seems to be repeating itself.
Throughout the early period of consolidation in the areas under its control - from May 1994 onwards - Arafat resisted constant pressures by Israel to restrain the Hamas and restrict, if not destroy, the infrastructure established by the terrorist organization. The failure to do so put in question the basic underpinnings of the Oslo Accords; and its most evident outcome was a sharp rise in the number of Israelis who fell prey to terrorist attacks during this period.
Arafat, throughout this period, continued to embrace the Hamas, in political terms; when the "Engineer" Yahia Ayyash - the man behind many of the worst Hamas attacks - was killed, he came to pay his condolences to the Hamas leader Mahmud al-Zahhar (Al-Quds, January 6, 1996). Meanwhile, the Preventive Security Chief in Gaza, Dahlan, apparently kept his contacts with the leader of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam forces - the Hamas military arm - Muhammad Deif (a childhood friend) and broke them off only after the second bombing in Jerusalem (Ha'aretz, March 10 1996).
It was the political fallout (including intense international pressure) following the suicide bombings of February-March 1996 which finally led to a break in this pattern, as the PA belatedly awoke to the consequences of its conduct on this issue.
Still, in March 1997 there was once again more than a hint of a "Green Light" from Arafat to the Hamas, prior to the bombing in Tel Aviv - this is implicit in the statement made by a Hamas-affiliated member of Arafat's Cabinet, Imad Faluji, to an American paper (Miami Herald, April 5, 1997).
The next few years, in which the question of "reciprocity" took center stage in the negotiations (culminating in the Wye River Memorandum and the attached security understandings), were marked by mixed results - the pressure for security cooperation did lead to partial compliance, but no real steps were taken against terrorist infrastructures; and the "revolving door" practice - i.e., the release of active terrorists and Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihadoperators, long before they had served their terms - became (and remained) a constant problem. The PA, since its establishment, has in fact taken a consistently lax attitude towards terror activists. It did act, in periodic bursts, to arrest some of them, and to respond (until the recent crisis broke; very rarely since) to specific information from Israel or other (mostly US) sources on actual attacks being planned, but most of the time:
Its policy was to incorporate ex-Fatah "Hawks" within the various security organs. In May 1994, as it entered Gaza, the PA commissioned as policemen, among others, two brothers - Rajih and Amru Abu Sitah - wanted for the murder of an Israeli in March 1993 (Yediot Ahronot, May 27, 1994). More than 90 "hawks" - some of them murderers of suspected Palestinian "collaborators" - were recruited in September 1994 (Ha'aretz, September 10, 1994).
- A similar practice applied to non-Fatah operators. At one point, Ghazi Jabali admitted that more than 150 members of the "opposition" movements serve in his police force (Palestinian Television, June 24, 1997).
- It systematically refused, often in blatant disregard of the signed commitment to do so, to extradite even a single terrorist from the list (over thirty, at one time) demanded by Israel.
- In cases where the perpetrators of murders and other serious terrorist attacks were in fact apprehended by the PA, they were put on trial overnight and given bogus sentences, so as to render them unavailable for extradition.
Failure to Collect Illegal Weapons
Within days of the signing of the Interim Agreement in Cairo, May 1995, the Preventive Security Chief in the West Bank, Jibril Rajub, made it clear that the Agreement, while expedient for the Palestinians, given the damage done to their cause by the fall of the Soviet Union and Saddam's defeat in the Gulf War, would not oblige them to act as "Lahad's Army" (the SLA, Israel's allies in South Lebanon at the time) in restraining those who seek to carry out armed actions against Israel.
"As to the question of weapons," reported Al-Nahar on May 25 1994, "Rajub divided it into three parts: the first, those under national control, i.e. the weapons in the hands of national factions [such as Fatah] which are directed against the occupation - those we shall sanction and tolerate out of national responsibility. The second - those carried, now and in the future, for social or personal reasons, and we shall study how to deal with them. The third - weapons in the hands of suspected characters, bandits and spies, which will be collected at all costs."
This clearly meant that no serious effort would be made to implement the unambiguous commitment to collect all illegal weapons. Fatah members continued to carry arms openly, and in recent events have displayed items strictly forbidden to be held in PA territories, such as various automatic weapons and hand grenades. There are indications that
heavier weapons - bought, stolen or smuggled - are in the hands of Palestinian forces or militias.
The requirement to collect illegal weapons was therefore re-incorporated in the Wye River Memorandum, and again in the February 2000 Sharm e-Sheikh summit. The Palestinians agreed to design and implement, step by step, a detailed plan for that purpose, but in fact:
- The "Law of Arms and Ammunition" passed hastily by the PA Legislative Council in the wake of the Wye Memorandum falls well short of the requirements outlined in the Interim Agreement.
- On the ground, Palestinian action has been very limited, as no plan was submitted; on some occasions, visible raids were made against specific arms merchants in the West Bank and Gaza (for local/personal reasons).
- No further reporting was made to the monitoring commission. The use of illegally held weapons - particularly in the hands of the "Tanzim" - thus became a key problem in the present crisis. It is also a problem for Palestinian society at large: regular reports on the extensive use of such weapons at wedding parties, etc., has given rise to sharp debate. The answer, as propagated by the nationalist media, "turn all your gun barrels towards the enemy."
Incitement and the Perpetuation of Hatred
Since the Palestinian leadership continued to look upon the current situation as transitory, no systematic effort was made to re-educate Palestinian youth, or the public at large, as to the need to accept Israel as a neighbor and peace as a value. It took a long and sustained effort to introduce some change and remove explicit anti-Jewish texts from Palestinian school books, and even so, they do not include any map showing Israel or even Tel Aviv as a city. As indicated above, there is only one map of Palestine in use - and displayed in huge format everywhere. Schools and institutions of higher education are used to perpetuate this historic narrative. The question of education and incitement was raised at the Wye River talks, and a joint committee was established to discuss it, but not much action was taken - it was impossible to bridge the basic conceptual gap - and the committee soon became defunct. The extent of Palestinian efforts to perpetuate hatred and rejection of Zionism and Israel (and all too often, in more popular usage, "the Jews") is too broad to cover, beyond certain glaring visual examples. In the run-up to the present crisis, two key officials played a salient role in stressing to the Palestinian public the impossibility of any compromise and the need to prepare for a confrontation:
- Hasan al-Kashif, the Director-General of the PA Ministry of Information, and a daily commentator in both the electronic media and Al-Ayyam, has been arguing that since the Palestinians cannot possibly accept the Camp David offers (or any other departure from the Arab interpretation of 242), they should prepare for a prolonged struggle (and hoard food);
- Sheikh lkrimah Sabri, Mufti of Jerusalem, kept up - in the context of the discussion on the future of the Temple Mount, during and after Camp David - a steady flow of incitement and hatred, raising fears (despite 33 years of Israeli rule) that the Jews plan to destroy Al-Aksa and rebuild their temple, and the struggle for Jerusalem has begun.
Once the actual violence erupted, incitement took an unprecedented form, designed to instill hatred and to mobilize "the Arab masses". It was marked, by visual and highly detailed displays of the dead and injured, including guided televised tours to the morgue, and close-ups of the wounds. Woven in with nationalist songs: "Where are the millions [of Arabs], where are Umar and Saladin [armed conquerors of Jerusalem]?" - this mix is broadcast without respite for days on end, broken only by the news and by political talk-shows (where participants, and even more so the callers, vie with each other in the intensity of their anger, hatred and plans of action against Israel).
In the final statement read by President Clinton at the recent Sharm e-Sheikh summit, both sides were clearly expected to have committed themselves to put an end to incitement as well as to violence. That did not happen. For a few hours there was some toning down in Palestinian television coverage of what was described as "a peaceful intifada", but as night fell and the Tanzim kept shooting, the propaganda machinery took its cue and the constant parade of suffering and death resumed.
The suffering is real enough; so is the use made of it. It is increasingly obvious - even to Palestinians? - that the mix of violence, and the political exploitation of suffering, requires children to be pushed forward into harm's way.
Other Aspects of Palestinian Non-Compliance
On a broad range of other questions, the Palestinians either knowingly ignored or at least failed to implement the commitments they undertook, and their conduct further undermined the very bridges of trust and cooperation which the interim period was supposed to build.
The Size of the Palestinian Police
The number of Palestinian policemen (in effect, soldiers) is in constant breach of the Interim Agreements. When the overall situation was last reviewed, in March 2000, it continued to exceed the agreed number - 30,000 - by more than 10,000, and only 20,000 of them have had their names submitted for Israeli vetting and approval as required.
Criminal Activity under PA Auspices
The Interim Agreement of 1994 committed both sides to cooperate in preventing crime and to exchange information; the Wye River memorandum in 1998 added a specific Ad Hoc Committee to discuss their economic relationship, including "Cooperation in combating car theft".
In fact, however, car theft and other forms of criminal activity continue to thrive, often on such a scale that it is no longer possible to argue that it could go on unless sanctioned to some extent by the Palestinian Police and security organs. There are indications that they take their cut on this "industry" (most of the 45,000 vehicles stolen in Israel in 1997 are assumed to have ended up in the PA areas, stripped for parts or even "appropriated" by PA functionaries - Ha'aretz, August 21, 1998) - and that a well placed call to senior Palestinian officers can in fact retrieve a stolen vehicle.
Other forms of criminal activity that the PA regularly ignored or even sanctioned involve financial fraud, large-scale excise tax schemes (one of which involved the Preventive Security Chief in the West Bank, Jibril Rajub - his Israeli accomplices were arrested and convicted) - intellectual property crimes, and marketing sub-standard products.
Failure to Protect Holy Places
On two major occasions, during the recent crisis, PA forces failed to uphold their Interim Agreement obligations - and in the case of Joseph's Tomb, a promise just given to Israeli commanders in the Nablus area - to protect holy Jewish sites.
Following Israel's decision to evacuate Joseph's Tomb - so as to avoid further bloodshed - it was looted, torched and in parts dismantled. Local Palestinian commanders openly stated that no Israeli would set foot there again, and indeed, one man who apparently wanted to visit the site was brutally murdered, and a group of hikers (including women and children) "suspected" of coming too near to the Tomb, were shot at, wounded and one was killed.
Moreover, in October 12, 2000, Palestinian Police failed to prevent the desecration of the ancient "Shalom al Yisrael" synagogue in the Jericho area, which was looted and partly torched.
Belated attempts to undo the damage seem to have been made largely because of the severe international reaction to these failures to uphold Palestinian commitments (let alone recognize Jewish religious sensitivities - an atmosphere made worse by the crude arguments, used by Arafat and others to dismiss any Jewish claim to the Temple Mount).
The Shattered Assumptions
What does this all add up to?
The very nature of the Oslo Process assumed that over time, if not overnight, a new reality of bilateral relations would be created on the ground, with an open prospect to Palestinian sovereignty in sight. This would lead Arafat away from the option of violence and "struggle" (which he and others in the PA continued to articulate). This has not happened.
An Irreversible Choice for Peace?
In a recent article, written as a letter to Arafat ("Time to Choose, Yasir," October 6, 2000) the American columnist Thomas Friedman called upon him to choose who he is: a peacemaker or an unregenerate revolutionary.
The evidence presented in this document - along with his conduct in recent weeks - strongly suggests that this choice has not yet been made; or else that the PA leadership has opted for violence, in response to the call for "hard decisions" placed upon it after the Camp David summit. Arafat had let it be known to the Fatah movement, his key political and paramilitary instrument, that he expects them to act (and take up arms); and this action was supported and sustained by the heated intensity of the incitement dished out by Palestinian media organs - papers, radio stations, and above all by Palestinian Television.
The option of an armed "intifada" has been long in preparation, both in terms of planning (as overall evidence, including the indications from intelligence sources, has been showing well before the actual outbreak of violence), and in the manner in which Palestinian and Arab public opinion was worked up against the possibility of compromise on the key issues.
A Stake in the Welfare of the Governed?
Another assumption which sustained the process was the hope that as the PA became an established "government", its choices in the future would be colored by the need to provide for the best interests of the governed - even if the evolution of democratic politics in the PA was far from complete.
This assumption, too, has been brought into question over time, and shattered by recent events. In addition to broader problems arising from the PA's mismanagement of public and economic affairs, specific aspects of its policy towards Israel - above all, the failure to deliver on the restraint of terrorism and terrorist infrastructure - obliged Israel to apply restrictions on the freedom of movement and employment of Palestinians. It is particularly young people who are easily mobilized by Hamas.
It was easy enough for the PA to blame Israel for the consequences of these restrictions; but at their root was Arafat's persistent ambiguity on his security commitments (and indeed, when these were more strictly adhered to - under pressure from outside - economic life in the Palestinian governed areas improved significantly, as in 1998-1999).
The Palestinian leadership's disregard for the welfare of the governed has now risen to a new level. The thrust of Palestinian propaganda in recent weeks is unmistakable: suffering, particularly the death of children, has become instrumental as its rallying cry to its own people and the Arab world. Thus, it has systematically exploited the tragic death of the child Muhammad al-Durra at Netzarim junction - where he was caught in the crossfire of a gUN battle. The PA deliberately misrepresented his death as a "cold-blooded execution", often several times an hour throughout its television broadcasts.
In effect, this strategy feeds upon further suffering and disruption - including self-induced economic hardships - while Israel actually seeks to ensure supplies to the PA areas. The tactics of the Fatah "Tanzim" (militia) are also apparently designed to bring about further suffering upon civilian populations - as made evident by their use of Beit Jala - a Christian community - to fire on Gilo in Jerusalem, with the full knowledge of the consequences for the (unwilling) residents.
Give and Take at the Bilateral Table?
At the core of the present strategy, as clearly stated in Arafat's speech at the Emergency Arab summit in Cairo (October 21), is the threat that there will be no regional nor international stability unless Palestinian demands are met, and the call upon the international community to replace the current structure of the process (the US, according to Arafat, having failed to impose "International Legitimacy" in its Arab interpretation) with a mechanism of coercion.
Palestinian suffering is thus made the focus of an appeal to the UN including an abuse of the "Uniting for Peace" procedure (which enables the UN General Assembly to overrule the Security Council), and a spurious call for the Security Council to send forces, Kosovo-style, to "protect the Palestinian Territories" - all in an obvious effort to walk away from the negotiating table and avoid the tough choices involved.
Evidence for such concepts of "Internationalization" being worked on by Nabil Sha'ath, the PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, has been available for well over a year (e.g. his statement to Al-Ayyam, an official PA organ, on May 9, 1999); the current drive for an international commission of inquiry is part and parcel of this design.
The Root Causes
What has led Arafat and the PA leadership to opt for violence and incitement as an instrument of policy? A consistent pattern of behavior over several weeks, with a clearly defined set of goals ("Internationalization" of the conflict) and with the means (televised Palestinian sacrifice and suffering) apparently well-tailored to achieve them, cannot be simply dismissed as a passing aberration or a "caprice". Within the limits of what modern political science calls "bounded rationality", Arafat's gamble is risky, but not irrational.
Still, to understand the root causes for this choice - or rather, the Palestinian refusal to choose, once and for all, the path of peace - it is necessary to point out, albeit briefly, some of the recurrent themes in Arafat's political conduct over the years.
Arafat's Strategy of Avoiding Choices
Throughout his tenure as a leader of Fatah movement and the PLO, Arafat attached particular importance to the principle of maintaining "Istiqlal al-Qarrar", i.e. his ability to avoid becoming anyone's "agent" (and there were many in the Palestinian arena identified as working for some Arab or foreign interests).
A key element in his ability to do so, at least until a major crisis forced a choice or a decision on him, was the constant manoeuver between the poles of any regional or international system in which he worked - Egypt and her rivals in the Arab world, the Cold War protagonists, the Syrians and their enemies in Lebanon.
In recent years, this pattern of "fence-sitting" and indecision evolved around two polarities:
- Playing the US (with which he established a dialogue in December 1988) vs. Iraq (which he came to see as a heroic Arab counter-balance to US power). To some extent, this tactic is still at work. While speaking favorably of Clinton (as distinct from the US Congress) at the Emergency Arab Summit in Cairo, Arafat also endorsed the call for the lifting of sanctions on the "Suffering Iraqi People". Pro-Iraqi sentiments, including the fervent call of demonstrators for Saddam Hussein to "hit, hit Tel Aviv" (with chemical warheads) are indeed rife among Palestinians even now, despite the lessons learned from the disastrous choice in 1990-1991.
- Playing the dialogue with Israel (and the formal obligations detailed above) vs. an ambivalent attitude towards the Hamas, terrorism, and the use of violence: the consequences of this way of keeping his options open, and avoiding any implication that he now "belongs" to Israel (like the former SLA in Lebanon) have become manifest in the recent crisis.
Diverting Attention from Domestic Failures
In recent months - well before the Camp David Summit, and not necessarily in connection with Arafat's positions in the negotiations - a broad body of evidence (albeit vague and circumstantial, given the lack of reliable tools to analyze Palestinian public sentiment under an authoritarian power structure) indicated that much of the PA's initial credit with its own "constituency" has been spent: Khalil Shikaki's surveys of Palestinian opinion found that Arafat's approval rates have been falling steadily - well below 40% - and that a vast majority of respondents thought of the PA institutions as venal, corrupt and incompetent.
At the core of the problem is the system of centralized economic monopolies, dominated by Muhammad Rashid (Khalid Salam) and his PCSC - with a monopoly of several basic commodities (Guardian, April 27, 1997); the al-Masri family and their holding company, PADICO; and the varied economic interests of the Security "bosses", Dahlan and Rajoub.
The results are clear to see: in a climate hostile to real competition and to transparent free market practices, blatant disregard for personal property, bribery, corruption and mismanagement of domestic and aid funds, as well as the lack of compliance with commitments to refrain from those customs have been well documented by the PA's own public monitoring department, the "donor countries" and numerous NGOs.
The most striking proof of the PA's mishandling of its population can be found in the lack of care for its most needy population - the refugees. Not only does the PA insist on not using any portion of its budget towards improving their living standards, it is demanding that the international community increase its support for it. It is not surprising that Arafat may have felt more comfortable igniting a nationalist struggle and pinning the blame for future deprivations on Israel than focusing on the urgent need to reform the Palestinian system.
Conspiracy Theories and Miscalculations
Another recurrent pattern which does color Arafat's judgement, at times - and was certainly evident in the manner in which he "explained" the current crisis to the Emergency Session of the Arab Summit - is his tendency to weave conspiracy theories (Mu'amarat) and use them, with a thin line separating fact from fiction. Thus - as an example - in a series of interviews in March and April 1995, including a fascinating meeting with a sympathetic Israeli and American audience, Arafat raised the argument that a secret Israeli organization - an "OAS" within the GSS...working through the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was in fact responsible for a series of terrorist attacks such as the bombing in Beit Lid (in which 22 Israelis died). It should be noted that this fantastic argument came (already then) in conjunction with a warning: any attempt by Israel to stall on the peace process - because of the security "excuse", as he saw it - would have a terrible effect on Israel's standing in the world.
"King Hussein will not go on with you, the Egyptians will not, Senegal will not, Mandela will not, if the process with us fails ..." This mixture of wild conspiracy theory, and the threat that Israel, the region and the world will know no stability unless his demands are met, was central, more recently, to his speech in Cairo, where he blamed Israel and the IDF for having conspired for more than a year to prepare the "butchery" of the Palestinian people: hence the urgent need for international protection to be introduced into all "Palestinian Territories".
The danger implicit in such manipulative assertions and "claims on reality" is that they can easily develop into a major misreading of the situation and a harmful miscalculation, as was the case in 1995, when Arafat absolved himself in this manner from any serious effort to curb terrorism; and might be the case now.
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