July, 2003

The Road Map and Possibilities of Peace

Haidar Abdel-Shafi

If the Palestinian Authority desires to deal with the Road Map, it should first consider that Israel, since the time of its establishment, has never gone back on the claim made by the Zionist movement at its first conference, namely that Palestine as a whole is Jewish land. It should thus be assumed that Israel still adheres to this idea and is only waiting for the right opportunity to achieve it.

The Zionist movement, aware that its claims are not legal, decided to use force as a means to achieve its aims. In this context, Israel has built a strong army - said to be the fourth most powerful in the world. The movement has also endorsed a fait accompli strategy to face the outside world, establishing material realities on the ground, ie settlements, in order to force the international community to accept the unacceptable. It is worth mentioning in this regard that Israel, following the 1967 occupation, which it claimed as a defensive measure, began immediately to apply this strategy by building settlements in the occupied territories, starting in the sensitive regions around Jerusalem and Hebron. The UN condemned this as illegal and considered it an impediment to peace, as was reflected in resolutions 2851 -of 20 December 1971- and 2949 -of 8 December 1972-. Israel, however, overlooked these resolutions.

The UN and the international community at large were unable to impose penalties as a result of Washington's support of Israel. It is a shame that the democratic world did not react to Israel's flagrant violation of the resolutions, and that the Arab world, with its important geographic position and substantial resources, also failed to take measures against Israel's aggression and the biased US stance.

Israel capitalised on this situation to enhance its settlement programme, especially around Jerusalem and Hebron and in Jordan's Al-Ghawr region. Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat's initiative for peace, which resulted in treaties between Israel and each of Egypt and Jordan, encouraged Israel to continue its settlement programme, oblivious to all legal and political considerations as well as the prerequisites of the aspired peace.

In view of these factors, the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Movement -PLO- had to confine Palestinian demands to the minimum: a Palestinian state within the borders of 4 June 1967 - in other words, less than a quarter of Palestine - with Jerusalem as its capital and which would have effective authority over all borders, crossing points, airspace and shores. It was hoped that this would satisfy Israel and encourage it to contribute to the achievement of peace. Israel, however, continued to be evasive and to hold to the ideas proposed in the first Zionist conference. It should be noted here that Israel is still without any official recognised borders. When asked once about the borders of Israel, former prime minister David Ben-Gurion said: they are wherever Israeli soldiers stop.

When the US government called for the Madrid conference, following its intervention to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, a majority of the Palestinian national council voted to participate, hoping that the US would take a balanced stance as a sponsor of the negotiations. As the US had intervened in the Gulf to liberate Kuwait from an occupation of a few months, it was hoped it would help Palestine, which had been occupied for more than 20 years. These hopes quickly vanished, though, with Israel refusing to stop its settlement activities, as stipulated in Resolution 242, and with the US, as sponsor, not compelling it to do so.

The PLO should have suspended its participation in this negotiation process, but it did not. We were not aware that these negotiations were a prerequisite for the resumption of secret negotiations in Oslo. Hence, Israel resumed its settlement activities, doubling their size, while Palestinians were negotiating to implement the Oslo accords. Ironically, the Oslo accords contained no mention of Israeli transgressions.

For all these reasons, the intifada came as a clear message: there is no use in negotiating with the balance of power tipped so much in the favour of Israel. We must fight to defend our right to self-determination. It was and continues to be important to control the spontaneity of the intifada, and organise it in order to enhance its positive aspects and reduce the negative ones. The only way to achieve this is to combine all the political forces in one organisation that takes united decisions regarding resistance activities. Unfortunately, neither the Palestinian leadership, nor the various political forces on the Palestinian scene, took up this task, and the intifada remained uncontrolled. This gave Israel more power to execute flagrant excesses against the Palestinians, destroying lives, property and livelihoods.

It is within this context that the US government presented the Road Map, which includes the following terms:

- A comprehensive and final settlement for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

- An independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state, living in coexistence with Israel

- An end to the occupation that started in 1967

- Special consideration for the initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia

The officially declared Palestinian position, which accepts the establishment of a Palestinian state within the pre-4 June 1967 borders, corresponds to these objectives. The problem lies in the Israeli position, which uses the fait accompli strategy to achieve illegitimate objectives. The settlement policy Israel started shortly after the 1967 occupation, which was condemned by the UN, was designed to provide pretexts for Israel not to respond to these humble Palestinian demands. The Road Map does not frankly and effectively address this Israeli strategy and this explains the Palestinian hesitance to accept the plan, which calls for disarming the Palestinians of all means of defence without any Israeli obligation to provide the Palestinians with a minimum level of rights.
Despite these considerations, and our doubts regarding Israeli intentions, we do not object in principle to the acceptance of the Road Map, but we must stubbornly insist on the establishment of a viable, defensible Palestinian state.