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Co-Opting the Plo: a Critical Reconstruction of the Oslo Accords, 1993-1995

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Co-Opting the Plo: a Critical Reconstruction of the Oslo Accords, 1993-1995 CO-OPTING THE PLO: A CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE OSLO ACCORDS, 1993-1995 Peter Ezra Weinberger Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement of the PhD in International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London 2002 1 UMI Number: U172053 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U172053 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This study analyses the Oslo Accords, the interim self-government agreements signed between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation' Organisation (PLO), during the period 1993-1995. It suggests that the Israeli recognition of the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people did not translate into an acceptance that the Palestinians possessed an equal national right to the territories that both peoples claimed. The acceptance of the PLO as a strategic partner ironically served to consolidate Israel’s post-1967 settlement presence in the West Bank and Gaza strip. It provided Israel with the means to achieve a separation of peoples without a withdrawal from the occupied territories, to keep the land but not its indigenous population. Through the structure of the Palestinian interim self- governing agreements, the Rabin government sought to ‘persuade’ the PLO to abandon its goal of Palestinian statehood through a complex co-optation process. In this situation, Israel would control the terms and momentum of the interim period, bringing the PLO into a position of substantial authority under its aegis while simultaneously creating an irreversible fait accompli that would impel the Palestinian leadership to forego its demands for sovereignty and settle for an alternative, permanently sub-sovereign final status arrangement instead. But in contrast to preceding analyses of Oslo, this study argues that these circumstances cannot be wholly interpreted in Realist terms, as an instance of traditional power politics or an act of shrewd statecraft. It is undeniably true that the key Israeli leaders at the time, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, were manipulating the Oslo Accords to their own ends, but this deliberative process cannot be fully explained at the level of agency. It must instead be understood as reflecting a new logic of rule that has been explicated in the works of the theorists Gilles Deleuze and Michael Hardt. 2 Table of Contents Introduction: Unstated Continuities of Political Outlook 5 Chapter One: Assessing the Oslo Accords 16 Contradictory Intentions 16 Sloppy Diplomacy? 26 The Issue of Mediation 38 Reliving Myths Through Oslo 51 Chapter Two: A Changing Economy of Power 60 New Forms of Order 60 Control Societies: Breakdown and Transformation 70 Additional Principles of Control 78 Relevance of Deleuze and Hardt to the Oslo Accords 92 Chapter Three: ‘Modulatory* Predispositions 96 Prone Toward Ambiguity 97 Asymmetrical Recognition 106 Gradually Diminishing Concessions 119 Chapter Four: Mapping Co-optation 138 Oslo: The ‘Modulatory* Foundation is Lain 138 Phased Diminishment of Expectations 164 Chapter Five: An Extra-Dialectical Condition 179 Differing Conceptions of Security 179 Personalised Authoritarianism 182 The Security Relationship: An Extra-Dialectical Condition 188 A Quasi-Gramscian Programme 208 Chapter Six: Implications for Conflict Resolution . 215 Improved Co-optation? 215 Strategic Cosmopolitanism 225 Conclusion: Circuit Breakers 245 Maps 259 Palestinian Autonomous Area, Gaza Strip 1994 259 Oslo II Map, Outlining Areas A, B, and C 260 Bibliography 261 3 Acknowledgements This thesis is in many ways an outgrowth of my work with the Washington DC based organisation Nonviolence International and its Jerusalem affiliate, the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence, during 1994-1996. I wish to thank Basima Adawin, Mubarak Awad, Sami Awad, Sami Jundy, Lucy Nusseibeh, Hazem Qutteneh and Hussam Shaheen, who befriended me and showed me a world that forever changed my life. I would like to acknowledge Max Ticktin of George Washington University, whose personal example demonstrates the centrality of peace and justice within the Jewish tradition. I want to thank Michael Salla of American University, who first introduced me to many of the critical thinkers who are explored in this work and who encouraged me to pursue my PhD. I wish to thank my supervisor, Mark Hoffinan of the London School of Economics, for his support and guidance during this endeavour. I am especially indebted to the following friends and colleagues, whose feedback proved to be invaluable in the development of this thesis: Kathlean Fitzpatrick, Louiza Odysseos, Ralf Rettig, and Carlos Yordan. I am grateful to Bettina Hernandez, Alex Kepnes, Sujith Kumar, and Matt Taylor, who pushed me to continue in times of doubt and despair. Lastly, I want to thank my parents, Sam and Beth Weinberger, who never wavered in their support for me. 4 Introduction Unstated Continuities of Political Outlook It is unedifying to besmirch the reputation of a slain leader. The shock of political killings frequently creates an aura of inviolability and tends to stifle critical assessments of the legacy of the statesman in question. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 4 November 1995, for example, is often viewed as the first of a series of calamitous downturns to the achievement of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Rabin was undoubtedly murdered because of opposition to the sweeping political changes that his administration had begun to implement as part of the Israeli-Palestinian conciliation process. In stark contrast to his ultra-nationalist predecessor Yitzhak Shamir, Rabin both recognised the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and assented to its incorporation as the seat of an interim self-governing authority. However, both Rabin’s detractors during his time of office and his later eulogisers failed to understand the entirety of his intentions regarding the Palestinians. A noted scholar of Israeli- Palestinian relations remarked in 1994, for instance, that ‘[b]y starting the withdrawal from occupied territory, Rabin is not leading Israel to commit suicide, as his critics on the right claim, but laying the only secure foundation for peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians’.1 It is thus believed that Rabin had come to accept the inevitability of a Palestinian state, that it was the logical outcome of a process of compromise in which Israel was to receive security guarantees in exchange. From such a standpoint, Rabin’s positive legacy was undermined by a number of spoiler events that followed 'Avi Shlaim, ‘Prelude to the Accord: Likud, Labor, and the Palestinians’ Journal of Palestine Studies 23 no. 2 (Winter 1994), 19. 5 his assassination, namely sensational acts of terrorism commitment by Palestinian Islamic militants and the dubious commitment to peace of the Likud government that came to power in June 1996. But instead of emphasising how markedly different the Rabin government was from its predecessor and successor, it is worthwhile to examine its innate similarities to them, how its recognition of the PLO was only seemingly transformative and in fact represented unstated continuities of Israeli political outlook. Rabin: Ambiguous Intentions Yitzhak Rabin’s approach toward the Oslo Accords was puzzling. According to his advisers and members of cabinet, he never discussed the long-term implications of the interim agreements that he reached with the PLO. He kept all his deliberations on this monumental matter to himself. This almost unbelievable development has been explained as a function of Rabin’s personality and style of leadership. It was noted in 1995 in this regard that: Rabin, who never viewed himself as a politician, disparages, distrusts, and tends to ignore party functionaries. He holds the reins of power tightly in his grip and is considered to be a “lone wolf’ because he rarely takes his colleagues into his confidence.3 If Rabin had any additional strategic goals or any clear vision where the Oslo process should go, he simply did not share these thoughts with others. The cabinet member Shimon Shitreet prodded Rabin several times to discuss the impending plans of the government, particularly Israel’s future borders, but to 2Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel’s National Security (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): 152. 3Myron J. Aronoff, ‘Labor in the Second Rabin Era: The First Year of Leadership’ in Robert O. Freedman, ed., Israel Under Rabin (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995): 137. 6 no avail.4 Yossi Beilin, one of the key Israeli architects of the Oslo Agreements, commented in this respect that: For Rabin, the absence of a discussion on the permanent arrangement was a political preference. After his death, I sat with Leah Rabin and said to her, “If anyone could know what Rabin was thinking of as a permanent settlement you are the one.” She said to me, “Look, I can’t tell you. He was very pragmatic,
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