Palestine After Oslo: Time As Politics

The Arab-Israeli Conflict Revisited Keys Palestine after Oslo: Time as Politics Bernard Botiveau ty. The failure of this initial peace plan, confirmed in Emeritus Director of Research, July 2000 at the Camp David II summit organized French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) by Bill Clinton, triggered a series of confrontations Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe in Palestine during the Second Intifada from 2000 The Arab-IsraeliThe Conflict Revisited et Musulman (IREMAM), Aix-en-Provence to 2005, and later, in the summer of 2007, between Palestinian factions after Hamas’ electoral victory in January 2006. The year 2017 has no lack of opportunities for his- The acknowledgement of this first failure modified torical recollection and commemorations of recent the terms of negotiation. Negotiators began speak- historical events in Palestine, from the 1917 Sykes- ing of a “two-state solution.” Less ambitious, the Picot Agreement to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, not two-state solution advocated by George W. Bush at to mention the war of 1967. The idea of the coexist- the Annapolis Conference in November 2007 ad- ence of two populations that nothing seems des- dressed the shortcomings of the Oslo Accords, tined to reconcile has gained ground without suc- which had put off discussion of the crucial issues of 17 ceeding in being translated into political terms ac- borders, Jerusalem and above all, the right of Pales- ceptable to both parties. This remains a problem tinian refugees to return. In any case, though these whose comprehension does not seem to fall within issues were on the negotiation agenda, it was too the political short term. So as not to limit ourselves late. The Intifada had left its mark: the brutality of Is- to a snapshot taken in 2017, we shall consider the rael’s Operation Defensive Shield in April 2012, es- period of approximately the past 25 years, which in pecially in the Jenin refugee camp, showed that Ari- practice amounts to the Oslo peace process since el Sharon, head of the Israeli government, had put the signature of the first self-government accords in an end to dialogue, which was confirmed by the September 1993 in Washington, as a good indica- 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. In reality, tor of the change of tested hypotheses on the pos- they were insisting on two completely separate sibility of such coexistence. states in a geographic area where only Israel would Two successive sets of problems have dominated have sovereignty over borders. In his statements, negotiations on the political future of Palestine moreover, G. W. Bush insisted on the Jewish nature since the 1991 Madrid Conference between the of the State of Israel and the Palestinian nature of Arab countries and Israel. In the context of the end the State of Palestine, which led to the fear of a pro- 2017 of the Cold War, the destabilization risk for oil-pro- ject of ethnic separation, liable to devalue the status ducing countries and the entire region after the of Palestinian Israelis. Gulf War prompted the US under Georges Bush to The first two sections of this article discuss the cir- take the initiative. Two years after Madrid, in Sep- cumstances of the decline of the Oslo process, tember 1993 in Washington, the famous Declara- whose first symptom was the regular expansion of tion of Principles was signed, creating the Palestin- Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Then, the con- ian Authority (PA). The idea was, after a certain pe- stant demand of the successive Israeli administra- Mediterranean Yearbook riod of self-government, to reach a Palestinian state tions to limit themselves to bilateral relations with Med. Med. endowed with internationally recognized sovereign- Palestine is analyzed as a negotiation strategy pro- IE viding short and medium-term advantages. Con- End of a Political Cycle: The Slow Keys versely, the Palestinians have sought foreign sup- Deterioration of the Oslo Process port, as they benefit from a multilateral approach. In Madrid in 1991, Arab delegations stated their mis- An assessment shared today by nearly all actors is trust of bilateral approaches, recalling the divisions that the Oslo Process has failed. John Kerry, the last that the separate agreements between Egypt and American negotiator before the advent of the Trump Israel in 1978 and 1979 had entailed. Administration, said in late 2016 in Washington, in a The course of negotiations has also been affected speech considered his political testament, that the by the Arab uprisings against authoritarian regimes two-state solution was “in serious jeopardy” due to in Syria and Egypt. The Palestinian population had Israel’s uninterrupted pursuit of settlement of the its eyes riveted on these movements but could not territories occupied since 1967. In his last speech participate due to their being locked behind borders on the Middle East as Secretary-General of the UN over which they have no control. They even found Security Council on 16 December 2016, Ban Ki- themselves marginalized from them: the neighbour- moon basically said the same thing, finding it de- ing revolts were aware of Palestinian aspirations to plorable that the number of settlers had quadrupled The Arab-IsraeliThe Conflict Revisited independence but remained essentially focused on over the 23 years of the Oslo process, and pointing national objectives. Haven’t Palestinians been mar- to Israeli settlement activity as an element crippling ginalized from these events, on both the regional negotiations.1 In Israel, whether they are in favour of and international levels? the acceleration of the settlement movement, such Is there a way out of this situation? This is the topic as extreme right-wing parties, or against it, such as discussed in the majority of contributions to this humanitarian NGOs, it can be stated that Israeli set- year’s “Keys” section of the Yearbook. One idea tlements are irreversible. The opponents themselves proposed in Israel (cf. the Yossi Alpher article in this often consider that ending this illegal occupation of section of the Yearbook) is to seek Arab contribu- land would require distributing it, accompanied by 18 tion by inverting the previous priorities: instead of compensation. And then there is the radical ap- considering that settling the Palestinian conflict proach of annexation, which would eliminate the is- would help normalize relations with Arab League sue, but of course without resolving the central po- countries, such Arab League-Israel normalization litical problem, which remains one of an occupied could help settle the conflict itself. Nothing is less population deprived of its fundamental rights. certain, in reality, insofar as this normalization (tat- This situation, which threatens Palestinian and Is- bi’) has always been broadly rejected in the Arab raeli societies, has its timeline. The first fracture, un- world due to the occupation of the Palestinian Ter- doubtedly irremediable, in the development of the ritories. Beyond the legitimate consideration of the peace process inaugurated in the summer of 1994 international balance of power and regional risks as- by the arrival in Palestine of Yasser Arafat and part sociated with the increasingly harsh neighbouring of the PLO, was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin authoritarian regimes, can the issue of the condition on 5 November 1995. The Israeli elections following of Palestinians be avoided today? In an anachronic this event in 1996 brought the leadership of Benja- colonial situation, is it conceivable that the rights of min Netanyahu along with a right-wing administra- Palestinians be dissociated from those of Israelis? tion openly hostile to pursuing the peace process, (cf. N. Rouhanna’s article in this section of the Year- obstructing the application of Palestinian self-gov- 2017 book). Renewed interest in an approach of inclusion ernment established in the Oslo Accords. Whereas between the two societies, despite the difficulty of these accords envisaged the proclamation of a Pal- its implementation, suggests that the political peri- estinian state on 5 May 1999, that is, exactly five od of negotiation and compromise remains so cru- years to the day after they began to be implement- cial that it seems impossible to carry out an equita- ed, the process was deferred several times. Apart ble separation today. from the signature of the Protocol Concerning the Mediterranean Yearbook 1 Med. Med. Over the course of 23 years, he stated, the number of settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories had gone from 110,000 (in 1993) to IE over 400,000 (in 2016). Cf. www.un.org/apps/newsFr/storyF.asp?NewsID=38663#.WXsWhelpzIV Redeployment [of the Israeli Army] in Hebron on 15 PA, Mahmud Abbas. Regarding the wars launched January 1997, the first Netanyahu Administration by the Israeli Army against Gaza in 2008-2009, Keys made no territorial concessions until 28 October then in the summer of 2014, they confirmed the 1998, the date of the Wye Plantation mining agree- stagnation of the Oslo Process despite repeated ment, i.e., for exactly 29 months, that is, half of the diplomatic initiatives. interim period of five years established to prepare the proclamation of the State. Failure of Multilateralism in Negotiations in Palestine and Disengagement An assessment shared today by of International Actors nearly all actors is that the Oslo This brief chronological overview suggests the risks Process has failed involved from the start of the Oslo Process. The interim agreements signed in 1993 engaged the “international community” with a solemnity as great as The Arab-IsraeliThe Conflict Revisited The Oslo peace process practically came to halt, the one surrounding the 1979 peace treaty between which confirmed the failure of the “last chance” sum- Egypt and Israel. However, at the time, the Palestin- mit convened in Camp David in July 2000 by Bill ians were weakened by their allegiance with the Clinton, with the presence of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein regime during the First Gulf War Ehud Barak, then Israeli Prime Minister, followed by and they had to compromise much more than they the one in Taba in 2001.

Load more