Bibliographical Information
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Transition to Palestinian
Self-Government: Practical Steps Toward Israeli-Palestinan Peace
Edited by Ann Mosley Lesch, Principal Author
(Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992)
Table of Contents |
Introduction
The initiation of direct negotiations between Israelis, Palestinians, and other
Arabs has raised hopes that one of this century's most persistent international
problems could finally be settled.This report is intended to build on this hope
with substantive suggestions, and also to present some contingency ideas just
in case, as so often before, the new hope for progress gives way to despair.
There are two premises in this report. The first is the assumption that the
negotiators are limited in their ability to generate substantive ideas by their
political constraints and by their strongly-held national and moral claims. If
progress is to be made, the negotiations must be pushed away from general
principles toward substantive and practical issues; a group of academic experts
like this one (made up of Israeli, American, Palestinian, and other Arab
scholars) is less constrained in generating such ideas. The second premise is
humanitarian: for those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian status quo,
with continued Palestinian and Israeli suffering, is morally unacceptable,
there is a need for creative ideas to alleviate the immediate suffering. Even
if the current negotiations succeed, most analysts assume that the process will
take more time than many suffering local people can afford. These suggestions
are therefore made not only to state-actors, but also to individuals and
non-governmental organizations who are morally concerned, and who can make some
immediate difference even if they cannot affect the direction of the
negotiations.
The Practical Considerations
Our starting point is pragmatic. Moral considerations aside, it is clear that
the recent momentum in the negotiations is largely due to the fact that all
parties have something to gain; the end of the Cold War between the
superpowers, and the war in the Persian Gulf have made this process unavoidable
for the key actors in the negotiations.
It is obvious, for example, that, without the active role of the United States,
the process could not have began and is not likely to succeed. While this
American role has been made easier by the absence of competition with the
Soviet Union, the recent crisis in the Persian Gulf War has made it impossible
for the US to ignore the complications that the Arab-Israeli conflict brings to
American policy in the Middle East. So long as conflict continues between
Israel and its Arab neighbors, the US economic and strategic inter-ests in the
Arab world will be difficult to reconcile with the US commitment to the
well-being of the state of Israel; only a settlement of the Arab-Israeli
conflict can relieve this inherent tension in US interests. Moreover, despite
the end of the Cold War, the US cannot disengage itself from the Middle East.
Even aside from the obvious interest in oil, the American commitment to Israel,
which entails economic, military and economic support, means that the US is de
facto involved.
While the Gulf crisis, at its core, was unrelated to the Arab-Israeli conflict,
it is clear that Iraq attempted to exploit this conflict in a way that
complicated US policy strategy. And, in October 1990, while the US sought to
maintain an international consensus on the Gulf Crisis, Palestinian-Israeli
confrontations in Jerusalem nearly derailed the US strategy. As in other Middle
East crises of the past, the threat posed by the Arab-Israeli conflict to US
interests in the region became impossible to ignore. The American effort to
push for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the aftermath of the Gulf
War is largely driven both by traditional American interests as well as by a
new self-image of the United States providing global leadership in the
post-Cold War world.
The European states, particularly through their new European Community agencies
and through the United Nations, have broad-ened their interest and active role
in Middle East affairs. Enlarging economic ties, coupled with extended
political interest, have raised the European stake in the shape of Middle East
peacemaking and resulted in their insistence in being included in the current
negotiating processes. But it remains clear that, although external parties
such as the US and Europe have significant roles to play as supporters and
facilitators of the negotiations, it win remain for the negotiating parties of
the Middle East to reach agreements and to implement them.
The Palestinian interest in moving forward is obvious: the status quo is wholly
unacceptable, and, if the past is any indication, time has only made the
Palestinian predicament more difficult. The Gulf War created new Palestinian
refugees from Kuwait, decreased funds available to Palestinian Communities, and
weakened the leverage of Palestinian allies. Any Promise of reversing
Palestinian fortunes is welcome.
Most Arab states also have interest in making immediate progress on the,
Arab-Israeli conflict. Those Arab states who joined the US-led alliance against
Iraq have to show something for this support. Most, especially Egypt and Syria,
had promised their confused populations that their behavior would lead to
settling the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Gulf war. The immediate quiet in
the region following the war is due in part to the rising hope about the
prospect of Arab-Israeli peace.
The need for Arab states to see a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is deeply rooted in the nature of Middle East politics. While most
Arab governments continue to face transnational challenges to their legitimacy,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained as one of the key issues fueling
transnationalism in the region. Settling this conflict could substantially
erode the appeal of Arab transnational movements.
Israel, too, has much to gain. Quite clearly, Israel emerged in a superior
strategic position with the destruction of Iraq's military potential, and the
absence of the Soviet Union as a patron of Arab enemies further eroded the
threat of an Arab military coalition confronting Israel. Yet, the Iraqi Scud
attacks brought home the need for an end to the state of war with Arab states.
Moreover, the economic costs of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Soviet
Jewish immigrants showed the need to cut high Israeli military expenditure; and
the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had negative implications
economically, diplomatically and militarily. With the election in June 1992 of
a Labor government led by Yitzhak Rabin, Israel is poised to take advantage of
a very favorable regional and international configuration with which to make
peace.
In short, all sides have immediate interests in making progress, but
substantial disagreements remain on the nature of a settlement, and domestic
political considerations within each polity make progress especially difficult.
Human Considerations
Aside from the obvious motivations of coinciding interests (which led our group
of Arabs, Israelis and Americans to agree on some broad outlines of a
settlement), there are also compelling humanitarian reasons to actively seek a
settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the Palestinian side, conditions of occupation are hard to bear. Under
occupation, Palestinians have no civil rights, can be arrested without charges,
have substantial economic and political constraints, and live in perpetual
uncertainty about the future. While it is easy to rationalize measures of
occupation as necessary for security and maintenance of law and order, these
measures were always understood to be temporary. Yet, for the Palestinians,
occupation is not a temporary exception to the rule but a lasting way of life;
a significant majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been born
or raised under occupation and do not know another way of life.
For the Israelis, occupation has not brought a sense of security. Attacks on
Israeli soldiers and civilians continue; the economic costs of occupation
increasingly divert needed funds from pressing domestic needs; the presence of
large numbers of Palestinians under Israeli control poses a challenge to
Israel's Jewish identity on the one hand and to its democratic character on the
other. And the absence of Palestinian-Israeli agreement has been a barrier to
concluding peace treaties with Arab states that could accommodate Israel's
security needs.
The compelling needs of the Palestinian and the Israeli people are immediate
and should be addressed even independently from the peace negotiations. In this
regard, international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and concerned
individuals have a role to play. Our report makes some specific recommendations
on this issue.
Symmetries and Asymmetries
No progress can be made without concessions by all sides. And neither the
Palestinians nor the Israelis have a monopoly on human suffering. Still, it is
very important to note that there are serious asymmetries between the parties
that require parallel asymmetries in the initial concessions to be made. For
example, while all sides have legitimate security requirements, Israeli
security requirements seem more dramatic for reasons of its small size and its
history of continued conflict with the Arab states. This entails that a
realistic settlement may require some asymmetrical concessions favoring Israel:
the degree of demilitarization, the inclusion of buffer zones, and the types of
arms-control agreements that emerge, especially in relation to weapons of mass
destruction, must all take this asymmetry into account.
Similarly, the suffering of the Palestinians, and the basic disadvantages
inherent in occupation entail that many of the early concessions pertaining to
economic assistance, territorial compromise, human rights and the building of
autonomous institutions will favor the Palestinians. It is therefore important
to keep in mind while reading this report that our focus is primarily on
economic and political issues, over which Palestinians and Israelis have many
commonalities of interests, even if those are asymmetrical. It is also
important to note that the examination of security issues in this report is
preliminary and is intended to address only those broad requirements that
pertain to the political and economic questions; in the end, it is impossible
to separate these issues. However, the American Academy believes that security
issues are so important to ending the conflict and securing a just and stable
peace that a separate study group is preparing another report that focusses on
security in much greater detail. The advantages to Israel should become even
more obvious in that report.
The Context of the Proposals
The organization of this report is straightforward. Suggestions of immediate
action to alleviate local suffering come first; these suggestions apply whether
or not the negotiations move successfully ahead. Next come suggestions about
the nature of the transitional period which cannot be made without reference to
a targeted final settlement. Since these suggestions are central to this
report, it is important to note the context in which they are made. First, both
Palestinians and Israelis have agreed that there must be a transitional period
preceding a final settlement which will be the focus of the first stage of
negotiations. Second, the suggestions in this report do not constitute
"blueprints" for a settlement. The ideas presented are made in order to help
start a substantive debate of the issues. Third, since any transitional
arrangements must make a final settlement more realizable, it is important to
discuss the principles and potential shape of a final settlement. Even if this
study group did not have a preference for one form of final settlement, the
transitional proposals would have been largely the same: since the negotiations
are based on United Nations Security Council resolution 242, which calls for
the exchange of territory for peace, and since one of the possible outcomes to
be negotiated is a Palestinian state, any transitional period must leave this
option open in future negotiations. Yet, if Israel and the Palestinians agree
on this option as a final settlement, it can only be implemented if the
transitional arrangements create more autonomous Palestinian economic and
political institutions than now exist under Israeli occupation.,
Our recommendations pertaining to the transitional stage are thus somewhat
independent from the final settlement; they are intended not to rule out any
option, including the possibility of a Palestinian state. But we do have
preferences for a final settlement; we cannot foresee an end to the
Arab-Israeli conflict if Israel continues to control the West Bank and Gaza.
And we believe that the most stable end-result is Palestinian
self-determination.
Our reasoning is not primarily moral preference but, ultimately, pragmatic, At
its core, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves both territory and the
problem of nationalism in a world of nation-states. The tragedy of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that, because each has suffered from the
national aspirations of the other, both have overlooked the striking
similarities in the rise of their legitimate national movements.
Neither Jews nor Palestinians sought nationalism as an ideal end. Many of the
Zionists in nineteenth-century Europe were egalitarian universalists who sought
full and equal citizenship in a Europe that advocated these same ideals. But
the rise of geographic and ethnic nationalism, and the prevalence of
anti-semitism, made their dream impossible, their ideal unattainable. These
Jewish intellectuals, persecuted and excluded because of their Jewish
ethnicity, awoke to an uncompromising reality: in a world of nationalism, one
can attain relative normality only by having one's own nationalism manifesting
itself in one's own homeland. Nationalism was thus, not an ideal, but the
necessary compromise with a nonegalitarian, world of nationalism.
Many Palestinians, having suffered the consequences of Zionism, have found it
difficult to accept the reality and the legitimacy of Jewish national
aspirations - the fact that Jewish identity, for the Jews, is not merely
religious and ethnic. But so too have many Israelis failed to recognize the
national aspirations of the Palestinian people, despite the many similarities
in the rise of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism.
Palestinians made homeless by the conflict with Israel in 1948 initially
fought, not only for their distinct national identity but also for justice, for
the right to return to their homes, and for broader Arab ideals. But several
decades of continued conflict and suffering have taught the Palestinians a
lesson that Jews learned a century ago. Despite an international rhetoric of
justice, and a regional rhetoric of Arab solidarity, the world in which they
live is a world of nation-states. Whereas states like Syria and Egypt professed
Arab and Islamic objectives, the interests of their nation-states always came
first. Palestinians on the other hand, like their Jewish counterparts, learned
that, ideals aside, relative normality in a world of nation-states can only be
attained by having one's own nationality reflecting itself in one's own
national homeland.
The rise of Palestinian nationalism has, ironically, opened the way for
Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. While implementing the literal return of
Palestinians to their homes within Israel is incompatible with Israel as a
Jewish state, Palestinian nationalism, if actuated in a national homeland in
part of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), can coexist with the Jewish state
of Israel.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taught us anything it is this: one
cannot solve the national problem of one people by creating a national problem
for another. Jordan cannot become the national homeland of the Palestinians,
even if half of the Jordanian population may be ethnically Palestinian; what
will become of the national aspirations of the Jordanian half? Whether or not
Jordanian nationalism (or, for that matter, Palestinian, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, or
Israeli nationalism) existed before the twentieth century is strictly
irrelevant, as nation-states in the region have become an inescapable reality
today. Both Palestinian and Jordanian nationalism must be recognized.
Similarly, the reality of Zionism as a Jewish national movement makes it
impossible to contemplate an option which does not leave Israel as a state with
a Jewish majority.
For those who ultimately seek more egalitarian solutions, our more limited
recommendations offer some hope. Recognition, legitimacy, and acceptance may
appear merely symbolic, but they are much more. Only after Palestinians and
Israelis accept the national legitimacy of each other can both sides hope to
transcend their national dilemmas. It is with the pragmatic recognition of
these historical dilemmas that our suggestions about the shape of a final
settlement are made.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Civic and Political Institutions
The Status Quo
Military Government in the OT * Changes from the Pre-War Situation *
Quasi-Independent Institutions * Restrictions on Institutional Development *
Palestinian Political And Civic Activities
Negotiating Phase
Differing Positions * Political Measures * Israeli-Palestinian Interaction * The
Role of the PLO * External Actors
The Interim Period
Principles Underlying Self-Rule * Elections * Deevelopment of Administrative
Structures * Interface with Existing Institutions * Educational System * Health
Services * Contact with Israelis * The Roles of External Actors
The Long Term Status
Scope of Palestinian Authority * Return of Palestinians * Jerusalem *
Settlements
II. External and Internal Security
The Status Quo
Israeli External Security * Israeli Internal Security * Palestinian Insecurity
in the OT * Palestinian Insecurity in the Diaspora
Negotiating Phase
Alleviating Israeli External Security Concerns * Israeli Measures to Promote
Security in the OT * Application of the Fourth Geneva Convention * Palestinian
Confidence-Building Measures
The Interim Period
Israeli Accords with Arab States * Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian Security
Relations * Internal Security in the OT
The Long-Term Status The Regional Arab-Israeli Security Regime *
Israel-Palestine-Jordan Security Regime * Israeli-Palestinian Security System
III. Economic and Resource Issues
The Status Quo
Israeli Constraints on the OT Economy * Palestinian Efforts to Develop Their
Economy * Job Creating Efforts * Technical Research * Credit Institutions *
Community Groups and Coordinating Bodies * Arab and International Funds
Negotiating Phase
Confidence-Building Measures * Policy Changes * Palestinian Efforts *
International Agencies * Israeli Interest in Economic Improvements and
Potential Trade
The Interim Period
Removal of Barriers * Labor Mobility * Financial and Monetary Authority *
Economic Planning * Agriculture * Key Industries to Expand * Utilization of
Land resources * Electricity * Local Water Development * Regional Water
Projects * The Practical Considerations * Human Considerations * Symmetries and
Asymmetries * The Context of the Proposals * Israeli Trade with the Arab Worlds
* External Agencies' Roles
The Long-Term Status
Resources and Infrastructure * Long-Term Development for the Role of the PLO *
External Aid * Trade Arrangements for Palestinians and Israelis
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