Palestinians offered conflicting Arab advice as
‘reform’ debate intensifies
The subject of “reforming” the Palestinian Authority (PA) looms large in both
the news and opinion sections of Arab newspapers, amid fresh diplomatic moves by the US
and Egypt in particular ostensibly focused on the aim of overhauling the Palestinian
security forces in conjunction with reviving some semblance of peacemaking.
Commentators debating the topic are quick to point out that the “reforms” many
Palestinians are eager to see instituted bear no resemblance to those that the Israelis
and Americans are trying to foist on them with the plain cooperation of various Arab
players.
Abdelilah Belkaziz writes in the leading Gulf daily Al-Khaleej that, as defined by the US
and Israel, “reform” means chiefly four things:
First, curbing the powers of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom they view as the
main impediment to the PA performing its Oslo-designated function of crushing resistance
to the Israeli occupation, by turning him into a mere figurehead leader.
Secondly, consolidating the PA’s security agencies and “decoupling” them
from the national decision-making process, so they operate in keeping with the Oslo
provisions rather than on political orders.
Third, taking control of public funds and international aid out of the PA’s hands, on
grounds of ensuring that the money is not used to pay for “terrorism,” under the
twin slogans of financial transparency and international (read American) supervision
of external aid.
And finally, “tailoring the Palestinian negotiating delegation to Israeli
specifications,” both in terms of its composition and its authority to make decisions
independently of Arafat’s directives.
Essentially, says Belkaziz, the idea is to strip Arafat of political, security, financial
and diplomatic control i.e., of what Israel and the US perceive as the capacity to use
the PA to “pursue the goal of national liberation, which they thought had been buried
at Oslo.”
For their part, the Palestinians the national forces, the public at large, plus, to a
certain extent, forces within the PA have a radically different concept of
“reform,” one aimed at consolidating the “national character” of the
PA, turning it into a genuine nucleus of a future state, and preventing it from being
transformed into co-enforcer of an occupation that denies them self-determination.
As they see it, the security forces need to be reformed in a way that turns them into
effective protectors of the Palestinian people against Israeli aggression, not protectors
of Israel’s security, Belkaziz writes.
The Palestinians want corruption eliminated, those responsible for it held to account,
transparency at every level of officialdom, the appointment of personnel on merit, and an
end to cronyism, with the aim of rebuilding the PA’s legitimacy in the eyes of the
public.
And they want institutional government, broader participation in decision-making,
reactivation of the Legislative Council, the independence and authority of the judiciary
to be respected, and the renewal of their local and national representative bodies via
free elections.
It is clear that these two conceptions of reform are so far removed from each other that
there is no prospect of reconciling them in the foreseeable future, Belkaziz writes.
Mohammed as-Sammak, of the Beirut daily Al-Mustaqbal, urges the Palestinians to take a
leaf out of Lebanon’s book and refuse to submit to Israeli and American dictates. He
agrees that the “reforms” that the Americans have in mind for the PA are
unacceptable to the Palestinians. The idea is essentially for the CIA, in cooperation with
Israel’s Shin Bet, to revamp the Palestinian security forces and cultivate new
commanders and personnel to equip them for their “new role” of protecting
Israel’s security by preventing any Palestinian resistance actions, and also acting
as the CIA’s eyes and ears in Palestine.
The combination of continuing Israeli military pressure and American arm-twisting is
designed to force the PA to choose between two unpalatable options “submission or
ruination,” Sammak says.
“In 1983, Lebanon was faced with the same choice, but it did not submit. It paid the
price of ruination until it achieved liberation. This does not mean that some of us did
not weaken in the face of Israel’s aggression and the accompanying American threats.
Many knees did bend, many necks bowed and many fingers were raised brandishing pens poised
to sign on the dotted line exactly as is happening today in Palestine. But, at the same
time, a different position emerged, one that advocated steadfastness in the face of the
Israeli occupation and the American threats until the threats receded and the occupation
ended,” he writes.
“Lebanon didn’t liberate an inch of its soil through negotiations, not because
it opposes negotiations in principle, but because the imbalance of power between Lebanon
a militarily feeble country that had been singled out for aggression and Israel
the world’s fourth-largest military power, further strengthened by US support made
any negotiations a matter of dictation on the part of the Israeli occupier and submission
on the part of Lebanon,” Sammak explains.
“Lebanon liberated its soil through resistance and paid a high price for that. The
Palestinians have paid, and are paying, even more. But if the PA were to agree now to
negotiations in which the occupier lays down his terms and imposes his will, that would
push it to the brink of the precipice which the Lebanese government reached in 1983,”
he argues.
But the leading London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat says that if the Palestinians
are to make progress, they must first unite behind a shared vision of what they want to
achieve and how they propose to achieve it. The paper calls, in its main editorial, for
the PA and the various Palestinian factions to join forces around a common platform,
implying that they should renounce attacks on Israeli civilians as a key part of that
process.
Asharq al-Awsat says many respected Palestinian figures have been demanding that a
conference of all Palestinian factions be convened to “unify the Palestinian
voice” and “agree on the means of struggle in a manner that is binding to
all.”
The paper takes note of what it says is a growing debate among Palestinian politicians and
intellectuals about “the operations that are carried out against Israeli civilians
and the effect they have on international support for the Palestinian struggle to be rid
of the occupation.”
“This debate is legitimate, and should not be stifled under any pretexts,” the
paper says. “It must be allowed to take its course, for it is not right for one or
two factions to monopolize the Palestinian arena and marginalize the others. Nor should
the voice of the intelligentsia and of the distinguished political and intellectual
figures in Palestinian society be ignored, for ultimately they are the conscience and
cream of the Palestinian people, and their voice must be heard.”
Moreover, “guerrilla operations against the occupation should be carefully calculated
in compliance with the requirements of the Palestinian struggle and the Palestinian
people’s strategic interests, which no party other than the leadership is in a
position to be fully cognizant of,” it says.
There have been some “confusing” episodes recently that ultimately serve the
exclusive interests of the Israeli occupation, “such as when some operations occur
that the Palestinian leadership is compelled to denounce and disown, whereas Israel for
its part insists on blaming those operations on the Palestinian leadership,” Asharq
al-Awsat says.
“The fact is that, in light of the political efforts being made and the ideas being
proposed on the regional and international stage, it is hard to imagine any serious quest
unless the world is able to deal with a united Palestinian front that has a clear and
agreed vision,” it says.
Elsewhere, Egyptian analyst Hassan Nafa says efforts to revive the peace process are
doomed under current circumstances.
With the Sharon government uninterested in peace, the Bush administration lacking any
vision of it, and the Arabs espousing a peace package but lacking the means to implement
it, there simply is no “peace option” for the Arabs at the moment, he writes in
the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.
They have no “war option,” for many reasons, and maintaining the status quo is
no longer an option either.
The Arab states are therefore in a “real and embarrassing dilemma,” Nafa says.
They want a quick final settlement to unburden themselves of the Palestine problem that
has become a direct threat to their security like never before, but are incapable of
creating the right conditions for one by conventional diplomatic means, or imposing one by
force of arms.
The Arab Peace Initiative may have been “helpful” in that it provided the Arabs
with a common peace platform to rally around, but it is not capable of changing the
situation on the ground, Nafa writes.
“This initiative resembles an endeavor to tempt a delinquent child (Israel) with a
big prize (ties with Saudi Arabia) if he stops behaving anti-socially,” he writes.
But this reasoning is fundamentally flawed, “for the delinquent child is fully
convinced that he is capable, using all the weapons he has been spoiled with, of getting
‘Mama America’ to secure him the prize without having to change his
behavior.”
Having already offered the “prize,” it will be hard for the Arabs to withdraw
it. But if they want the international community to take them seriously, they will have to
“show a measure of justified anger” and demonstrate that they are determined to
punish that child if it keeps misbehaving.
“We thus have to think of new and unconventional ways of putting pressure, not just
on the US alone, but on the entire international grouping which failed, to its shame, even
to secure access to the occupied Palestinian territories for the UN’s Jenin
fact-finding team,” Nafa writes.
Trying to open fresh negotiations with Israel while the occupation persists would sooner
or later take us back to square one, for amid the political deadlock that would ensue, any
bombing incident would be sufficient to “restart the hellish cycle of action and
reaction,” he says.
There would, however, be a big chance of martyrdom operations ceasing altogether if
international forces were to deploy in the occupied Palestinian territories in the place
of the Israeli Army. Even if they did not, in such circumstances they would no longer
enjoy the kind of sweeping public support they do now, so their advocates would become
isolated.
Nafa suggests that the Arab states formally demand such a deployment throughout the Arab
territories occupied by Israel in 1967, placing them under UN trusteeship as a prelude to
negotiating a comprehensive peace settlement under UN auspices.
To this end, they could call for a special summit meeting of the 15 Security Council
member states. And if their demand is blocked, they should all be prepared to take
“serious measures” to compel the international community to take them seriously,
such as collectively suspending their membership in the UN.
Other unorthodox measures of this kind could be considered too, says Nafa.
“Is that too much for the Arab states to do?” he writes. “Is it not worth
at least trying out such unconventional measures before we go searching for other ways to
pre-empt the dangers which the dark days ahead hold in store?” Copyright © The Daily Star |
