Israel’s key Oslo negotiator speaks candidly on the prospects for a resolution to the Middle East’s most enduring conflict

George S. Hishmeh
Special to The Daily Star

WASHINGTON: “This is a moment of truth” for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, says the diminutive key Israeli peace negotiator at Oslo. “He has a chance to become a kind of a Charles de Gaulle or a Richard Nixon, the rightist who is taking very surprising decisions” on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Yossi Beilin, the justice minister in the former government of Ehud Barak, was referring to the late French president who settled the conflict with independence-seeking Algerians and the late American president’s pace-setting trip to communist China.
Beilin made his remark in a conversation with journalists at the offices of Americans for Peace Now. This was after talking to senior US officials in Washington last month, before new US and European diplomatic shuttles to work out how to proceed in the stalled peace process.
Beilin did not think the prospects for a peace settlement were “very high” but he said he believes the peace camp in Israel, of which he is a leading member, must “push Sharon to take a decision … And if he does not take a decision then public opinion should turn against him and say: ‘You had the chance, you were close and you have missed it’.”
And similar pressure should be applied to the Palestinian leadership. This is the moment of truth for the Palestinians, he continued: “They should give up the right of return.” Palestinians should confront their leadership and tell them that they understand that “there is no right of return … we cannot accept you as our leadership if you are insisting upon it.”
Beilin emphasized that he is not “giving up” on the prospects for peace and he was encouraged during his talks in Washington, which he said were focused on the much-discussed conference or meeting between Arabs and Israelis ­ “the only game in town right now.”
In reply to a question, he said he did not think it would be “a giant leap” for Sharon to accept to participate in a new Middle East conference that will set the framework for a political settlement. After all, Beilin said wryly, the rightist Israeli prime minister should be taken “seriously” about his intentions.
Beilin recalled that Sharon had said that “at the end of the road” there will be a Palestinian state. He also favored a regional conference which he proposed, and promised that “he is ready to pay a very high price” for peace. Beilin added, tongue-in-cheek, “of course, not dismantling any of the settlements but (nevertheless) ready to pay a high price and a painful one.”
Nevertheless, this is a good basis for negotiations, he insisted.
“I am sure an experienced mediator can go between Sharon and (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat and others and find the framework for a conference.
“If it was possible to bring (Israel’s former prime minister) Yitzhak Shamir and (Syrian Foreign Minister) Farouk al-Sharaa to the same conference (at Madrid) in 1991, no one will convince me that it is impossible to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians and even the Syrians to another conference in 2002.”
The former Cabinet minister appeared elated with the show of force by Israeli peace activists when they took part in a mass demonstration in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on May 11.
“The … demonstration was a real success story. Whether it was 70,000 or 100,000 … the square was full … It was even a surprise for us, standing there, seeing the crowd. It was a big victory for those who believe the peace camp is alive and that all the rumors about its early death were wrong.”
Beilin attributed the reawakening of the peace camp in Israel to Ariel Sharon’s policies ­ “the promises for peace and security were never fulfilled.”
Generally speaking, Beilin continued, the Israeli incursions contributed to “more hatred, more revenge” by the Palestinians who were caught in an “endless cycle.” This “vicious circle” has to be cut, he stressed.
Reviewing recent events in the region, Beilin underlined that the “most important” recent development had been the Saudi initiative.
“This is a precedent, it had not happened in the past. Some of you would remember how difficult it was to ask the Arab countries to be involved in the Camp David process during the (July 2000) Camp David summit. When the president (Bill Clinton) called them and tried to convince them to call Arafat, they were not there … They did not say anything and they did not help … The Arab League meeting in Beirut and their decision … opened a new chapter.”
Beilin emphasized: “If the Arab countries are ready to promise normalization as a result of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, it is creating a different environment, not only for Israel but also for the Palestinians. It will make it easier for them at the right moment to sign the agreement.”
As a result of the vicious circle between “terrorism and retaliation,” Beilin said he saw “a very interesting development which should be taken very seriously.” In the wake of the Sept. 11 events here (in the United States) and the “war on terror,” the Bush administration realized, he said, that it needed the support of moderate Arab regimes, not necessarily in a military alliance as happened in the 1991 Gulf war.
Equally, these Arab regimes realized that the fundamentalists posed an internal threat as well, he surmised.
Here Beilin faulted the Bush administration for thinking that stability in the region can alone resolve the problems. “I can understand the wish for stability, but I do not believe that stability is attainable if you do not have peace (in the region).”
Beilin said the wrinkle in this approach was provided by Sharon, who announced various preconditions before undertaking any step, ranging from seven days of quiet to declaring Arafat irrelevant, or that he would not deal with the Palestinian leader unless the Palestinian Authority introduced reforms.
“How can we get out of this very strange and sometimes funny circle?” Beilin asked while enumerating the various conditions of both sides. His own answer is: “By saying to the different parties: No preconditions! No preconditions!”
Here he proposed a “Madrid II, and if President George W. Bush is calling Mr. Sharon ‘a man of peace,’ I am the happiest person on earth because it should urge him to prove that the president is right and to participate in something like that.”
Beilin insisted that there should be a Mideast conference “without further delay … in Europe, or here, or elsewhere.”
The difference between Madrid I and a Madrid II is that the former was merely ceremonious, “an open-ended conference” when the participants were not clear about the solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict. “But now, we know what the solution would be.”
“This is the big difference between Madrid I and II,” he added. “We all know the solution. We may all deceive ourselves, we may tell stories, we may defer it, we may reject it too. But we cannot say there’s no solution.”
The solution, he argued, “is the Saudi initiative, the Clinton Plan, the Rogers Plan. It is all more or less the same. Two states for the two peoples based on the 1967 borders, with swaps; Jerusalem is home for the two capitals; security measures for Israel and a fair solution for the Palestinian refugees which will not be the right of return.”
Beilin said, “To ignore the solution at the (upcoming) conference would be a big mistake … I do think that either in the letter (of invitation) itself, or in a transparent side-letter to the Palestinians, it should be said that the target of the conference is to implement (UN Security Council Resolutions) 242, 338 and the Saudi initiative.”

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