Middle East
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Push Comes to Shove
With final status talks officially underway, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will now turn their attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict’s most daunting issues: the status of Jerusalem, borders between the Palestinian areas and Israel, a Palestinian state, refugees, Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and control of resources such as water. Although February 2000 has been set as the deadline for concluding a framework agreement, both sides have been chronically unable to hold to negotiating timetables set by the Oslo peace agreement.
Coverage in the regional press has focused on likely outcomes of peace talks and the probable negotiating positions of both sides. On the issue of borders, Israeli journalist Ben Caspit, reports in Tel Aviv’s centrist Ma’ariv (Oct. 22) that Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat can be expected to take maximalist positions on final Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza.
For Barak, this means an initial offer to recognize a Palestinian state within territory expected to be under control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) by January 2000—probably 70 percent of Gaza and 18 percent of the West Bank. Then the PA will articulate its demand for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. A final agreement, if one is reached, will rest on the extent to which each side is willing to meet the other. Caspit believes Barak’s final offer will be 65 percent of the West Bank.
Resolving the fate of Palestinian refugees will be even more difficult. In London’s liberal Guardian (Oct. 9), David Hirst says the mood among refugees regarding final status negotiations is bitter and pessimistic. He quotes a resident of Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest refugee camp, as saying, “We are certainly not on Israel’s agenda, and I doubt if we’re on Arafat’s either.”
Caspit contends that, at best, Israel would allow for the repatriation of a limited number of refugees “to areas under the PA’s control,” with the majority “rehabilitated in their current place of residence.” But it is uncertain whether Palestinian refugees will gain permanent status in Lebanon, where they are persona non grata and seen as a political threat. Caspit reports that refugees will be allowed to repatriate in Israel only in cases of family reunification—a number he puts at about 50,000.
Eclipsing the negotiations has been the ongoing debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Writing in London’s newsmagazine Middle East International (Oct. 29), Graham Usher describes Barak’s highly publicized efforts to dismantle “outpost” settlements in the West Bank as largely cosmetic, masking the continued expansion of existing settlements and confiscation of Palestinian land.
Usher says that the housing ministry issued 2,600 settlement construction tenders during Barak’s first three months in office, compared with an annual average of 3,000 under Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
