MIDDLE EAST:
Conflict Could Be Resolved Without Ceasefire, Says Palestinian Analyst
Marcelo Jelen
MONTEVIDEO, Mar 3 (IPS) - The Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be resolved
even without a ceasefire, despite the demands set forth by the governments
of Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, Marwan Tahbub, a former Palestinian
ambassador in Mexico and Central America, told IPS.
Tahbub, who describes himself as an "independent" in the Palestinian
political map, follows events in his homeland from his current residence in
the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, where he teaches at the university
and is the academic secretary of the local political science association.
Today he says he is sorry that he cannot visit Jerusalem - where he was
born in 1946, two years before the creation of Israel - as often as he
would like, besides the fact that he is only allowed by Israeli authorities
to visit the Jewish state on a tourist visa.
"I think I'll go back to live there, although not right now, only once the
issue of the city is solved in the negotiations," he said in an e-mail
interview.
Up to 1989, Tahbub represented the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)
in various countries and international forums like the United Nations, the
Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 (developing countries) and the
International Parliamentary Union.
He was also an observer member of the Palestine National Council, the
parliament in exile, from 1976 to 1989.
Tahbub, who writes columns for the Madrid newspaper El País and articles for
other publications, says late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was not the
"warmonger" that Israel and the United States made him out to be.
"Most national liberation conflicts have been negotiated without a
ceasefire," said Tahbub, who holds a degree in political science from the
Complutense University in Madrid.
IPS: Israel and the United States depict Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas
(Abu Mazen), as a reasonable politician who takes a more conciliatory stance
than Arafat, who they dismissed as capricious and contentious. Does that
reflect reality?
MARWAN TAHBUB: History has shown how similar they actually were. Both were
co-founders of Al-Fatah, the first organisation to mount resistance to the
Israeli occupation and the backbone of the current Palestinian institutions.
It was Arafat and Abu Mazen who built bridges of dialogue with Israeli
political and social leaders in the 1970s, and who engaged in the Oslo peace
process in the 1990s.
In 2000, both of them rejected the Camp David proposal set forth by then
Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. president Bill Clinton, under
which the Palestinian territories would have shrunk by 20 percent, lost
their natural border with Jordan, and been divided into three "bantustans"
(a reference to the isolated black "homelands" with limited self-government
created by South Africa's former racist apartheid regime).
The problem with the peace process was not the attempt to cast Arafat as a
warmonger, which he never was, but Israel's stubborn refusal to recognise
that it is an occupying power and to recognise the other side as the victim
of its "scorched earth" policy.
Nor does Israel accept U.N. resolutions as the basis for a negotiated,
peaceful and fair settlement. Stigmatising Arafat was aimed at justifying
the refusal by Israel and the United States to see the negotiations through
to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
IPS: You know Abu Mazen and you also knew Arafat. What differences do you
see between them on the political and personal levels?
MT: No one is just like anybody else...The personal differences between the
two may be reflected in the political sphere, although individuals make
history within a social, economic, cultural and political context. An
individual, no matter how charismatic, has an influence within reasonable
limits, but does not build history.
Arafat was a warm person. It was hard for him to live without his people. He
always visited the children of those who died. He liked speeches. He had a
prodigious memory: he remembered each person's name and personal details.
Abu Mazen is different. He is more reserved. He is, although only in
appearance, colder. As you see, these differences were no hurdle to peace,
as Israel and the United States want to make us believe.
IPS: Last month's attack on a Jewish settlement in the Gaza strip right
after Abu Mazen agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, as well as a suicide
bombing of a Tel Aviv disco, threw his authority into doubt. Is it possible
to negotiate in the midst of Palestinian attacks and Israeli military
actions?
MT: Most national liberation conflicts have been negotiated without any
ceasefire. We can name, among others, the examples of Algeria and Vietnam.
There is no rule making a ceasefire a prerequisite, as Israel and the United
States are insisting.
In legal terms, the end of the occupation is what will mark the end of
hostilities.
Nor is it true that the Palestinian leaders are fuelling the hostilities in
order to strengthen their position in the talks. Abu Mazen, when he was
Arafat's prime minister, brought about a two-month truce, through dialogue.
Sharon then set out to hunt down leaders of Hamas and other groups, and
committed a series of murders. They killed entire families.
Palestinians have bitter experiences in this respect. Last month's attack in
the Gaza Strip was the result of Israeli provocations in a period of
relative calm achieved by Abbas. Because of the indiscriminate shots fired
by the Israeli army, two mentally disabled people were killed, along with a
three-year-old girl who was eating breakfast with her family and a
10-year-old girl who was in school.
I'm not saying this to justify Hamas' actions, but to underline that just as
it takes two to tango, it takes two sides to maintain a ceasefire.
But Israel doesn't want a bilateral ceasefire agreement that would be
binding on both parties, with mechanisms for monitoring, oversight and
arbitration, as the Palestinians are suggesting.
IPS: But is it possible to impose a truce on the armed Palestinian
organisations to ease the dialogue with Israel?
MT: There are two ways of imposing a ceasefire. There is the approach of
Israel and the United States, which are demanding that Abbas dismantle,
disarm and crack down on the Palestinian organisations, both the religious
ones and the non-religious ones. That is, that he act like a security agent
for Israel, and spark a civil war.
The other route is the one proposed by Abbas: not only to hold talks and
reach agreements, but also to share the political decision-making
responsibility among everyone.
Sharon, with all of his military might and power to repress, has been
incapable of putting an end to the cycle of violence. By contrast, through
dialogue, Abu Mazen seems to have been much more effective. Generally, the
oppressed tend to have a much clearer vision, compared to the blindness of
the oppressor.
IPS: What state or international institution could be accepted by the
Palestinians and Israel as a reliable and trustworthy peace broker? The
United States? A United Nations weakened by the war on Iraq? A European
Union that isn't on the best of terms with its old ally across the Atlantic?
MT: Since 1974, the Palestinians have insisted on holding an international
U.N.-sponsored conference with all of the concerned parties: the U.N.
itself, the United States, the Arab countries, the European Union and
Russia, among others.
But both Israel and the United States have rejected this international
framework. For them, the Madrid Conference of 1991 was only a step towards
moving the negotiations to Washington, and making them bilateral, between
Israel and the Palestinians, under U.S. supervision.
By demanding bilateral talks, given the weakness of the Palestinian side,
the United States and Israel maintain the right of veto. They have held
negotiations when it suited them and have frozen them when they saw fit.
The Israeli and U.S. effort to block or minimise European participation has
been constant, regardless of the state of relations between Washington and
Europe. But the conflict zone is on the southern flank of Europe and Russia.
That is, they are more legitimate participants in the talks than the United
States.
With respect to the U.N., aside from the question of its weakened
condition...it must serve as the framework for the talks, as in all
negotiations. In the face of the huge, and very real, threat of a unilateral
U.S.-dominated world order, the U.N. has become virtually the only
possibility for continued human coexistence.
IPS: Would the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem - or part of
it - as the capital and the return of the exiles bring about a period of
lasting peace? Or would that open a Pandora's box of new Israeli and
Palestinian demands?
MT: You would have to add to that the Israeli withdrawal to the borders that
existed on Jun. 4, 1967. Then the answer would be yes. The first solution
proposed by the Palestinians, in 1968, was a bi-national democratic lay
state encompassing the entire historical territory of Palestine: what are
today Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Only a minority of Israeli society backed the idea.
So in 1974, the Palestinians proposed the idea that will supposedly be
accepted now: two states coexisting in peace.
A large part of the Palestinians who are in favour of the second solution
are also in favour of the first, because they both foresee coexistence
between two states evolving towards one bi-national state or towards a kind
of Benelux...
We must not be afraid of peace. The door to peace can open many doors of
coexistence in plurality, discovering and respecting the 'other'. But in the
Israeli mentality, the Masada complex - a complex of persecution that can
lead to collective suicide - converges with the discriminatory factor of
conceiving of Judaism not as a religion or a community of faith, but as an
ethnic group, a nation, a people, just as Western anti-Semitism sees it.
This lies behind the concept of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, of
creating in Palestine "a state as Jewish as England is English and France is
French", made contemporary by Sharon when he demands recognition of "the
Jewish character of the state of Israel".
That is, there is no place for Palestinians.
+More IPS Middle East coverage (http://ipsnews.net/middle.asp)
(END/2005)
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