POLITICS-MIDEAST: Clinton Salvages Peace Process – For Now

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 1998 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton ended nearly nine days of negotiations Friday by brokering a deal between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to put the Oslo peace process back on track.

The accord, sealed in the early hours of Friday morning, was threatened for several hours by a last-minute conflict between Netanyahu and Washington over the fate of a former U.S. Pentagon analyst, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment 12 years ago for spying for Israel.

Israeli officials told reporters that, during the negotiations, Clinton had agreed to release the spy, Jonathan Pollard, who has been granted Israeli citizenship and is considered a hero among Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters.

U.S. officials, however, denied that such an accord was reached. The impasse, which surfaced Friday morning, resulted in a four- hour postponement of a signing ceremony at the White House to unveil the new Israeli-Palestinian accord.

The snag finally was overcome when Clinton, under heavy pressure from the U.S. intelligence community not to release Pollard, promised to initiate a review of his case.

As pieced together by remarks from American, Israeli and Palestinian diplomats the agreement, hammered out at the Wye Plantation negotiating site in Maryland, met the minimum requirements for breathing new life into the five-year-old Oslo process, which has been stalled for 19 months.

The accord followed nine days of talks mediated by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and featuring the direct Clinton’s direct involvement for more than 75 hours over the period. Jordan’s King Hussein, who is being treated for cancer in the United States, also took part in the negotiations.

Under the agreement, Israeli troops will be withdrawn from another 13 percent of the West Bank as part of a long-delayed second redeployment and an additional 14 percent will be transferred from Israeli to joint control.

The land redeployment is to take place over 12 weeks but hinges on the “credible implementation of security arrangements” by the Palestinians, said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

Israel also agreed in principle to a Palestinian demand that there be a third redeployment as called for under the Oslo accords before a final settlement to determine Palestine’s final borders. The size and timing of the third withdrawal will be decided by a joint commission after the second redeployment is completed in three months’ time.

In exchange Arafat, the elected president of the Palestine Authority (PA), agreed to a series of measures to satisfy Netanyahu’s demands about Israeli security.

The Palestinians agreed to arrest 30 of 31 individuals whom Netanyahu had previously demanded be put on trial in Israel. They also agreed to exert stronger efforts to confiscate illegal weapons found in their territory and to prevent the incitement of violence against Israel and its citizens, according to knowledgeable sources.

In addition, both sides agreed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will play an unprecedented role in determining whether the Palestinians are cracking down hard enough on suspected terrorists. The agency will be charged with verifying that such individuals are indeed incarcerated and with mediating disputes involving their handling.

The Palestinians also agreed to convene a special meeting of the Palestinian Central Council within two months to amend 26 articles of the 30-year-old Palestinian National Covenant which call for the destruction of Israel.

That action would subsequently be ratified informally by the Palestine National Council (PNC) and “all relevant (Palestinian) bodies.” According to Israeli spokesman Aviv Bushinsky, Clinton would attend the PNC meeting.

Netanyahu had demanded that the PNC, which includes many foes of the Oslo process, be convened to amend the Charter but Arafat argued this had been done in 1996 when the PNC voted to “cancel the articles that are contrary” to the Oslo agreement.

The procedure finally agreed to was described by one US official as an effort to “finesse” the issue to each party’s satisfaction. Arafat exercises much greater control over the Central Council than the PNC which, according to analysts, has become increasingly disillusioned with the Oslo process and Arafat’s leadership over the last two years.

In addition, the two sides reached agreement on a number of pending issues which were not directly related to the issues of Israeli redeployment and security.

These included a final accord on opening a Palestinian airport in Gaza and also opening an industrial park; providing safe passage for Palestinians to move through two corridors between Gaza and the West Bank areas under PA control.

The agreement also provides for the signing of an accord in a month which would provide the Palestinians with a seaport in Gaza, Bushinsky said. The Israelis also agreed to release a substantial number – 750 initially – of the 3,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

The freed prisoners will not include any member of the Hamas terrorist organisation or any person with “blood on their hands…meaning they didn’t kill Israelis, Arabs – nobody,” Bushinsky said.

While these steps, if successfully implemented, will break the logjam that had made Oslo virtually comatose, they do not address the much bigger issues which remain to be resolved in so-called “final status” talks which, according to Oslo’s original schedule, were to resolve all outstanding issues by May 4, 1999.

The issues to be taken up include Palestinian statehood and its borders, the legal status of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinians who left their homeland after the creation of Israel.

The two sides , however, also did not reach any explicit agreement on two other issues which have hung over the last 19 months of impasse.

– A Palestinian and US demand that Israel observe a “time out” in its settlement and construction activity on the West Bank and Jerusalem.

– Arafat’s threat to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state next May 4 when the Oslo accord expires. Netanyahu and the Clinton administration have warned Arafat not to take such an action, and even the Israeli opposition Labour Party, which signed the Oslo accords, has called for Arafat to be flexible.

But U.S. officials admitted that Arafat’s threat and the rapid approach of May 4 played a catalytic role in persuading Clinton to hold the summit. “The issue was not discussed,” Arafat’s spokesman, Marwan Kanafani, told reporters.