Ahmad Nimer
The Geneva Accords, an unofficial framework for negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, were released in mid-October 2003. Despite a relative lull in media attention, the accords are an extremely significant development.
Top Palestinian and Israeli supporters of the accords visited Washington in December and the US administration has given open encouragement to the process.
Despite the fact that neither Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon nor Palestinian President Yasser Arafat have officially supported them, the accords reveal a great deal about the direction in which future negotiations might move.
The accords were negotiated by top Palestinian and Israeli figures, most prominently Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Palestinian Authority minister of cabinet affairs and Yossi Beilin, former minister in an Israeli Labor Party government. Both have been involved in previous negotiations including the Oslo Accords.
The substance of the Geneva Accords is largely based on a plan put forward by US President Bill Clinton in 2000, as well as the so-called Taba negotiations of the same year. These initiatives broke down when Clinton's Democratic Party lost the US presidential election of that year.
The most striking feature of the Geneva Accords is the confirmation it gives to critics of earlier negotiations processes such as Oslo. The accords indicate that those who have claimed that the negotiation process was intended simply to legalise the dependent Palestinian cantons in the West Bank were right. These isolated and fragmented groups may be called an independent state, but would remain completely dependent and under the control of Israel.
The text of the accords
Several key problems must be resolved in order for Palestinians to gain independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Illegal Israeli settlements, inadequate water supply for Palestinians, the inability of Palestinian people to travel freely, and the exile of Palestinian refugees.
These are the issues provoking the bedrock of Palestinian opposition to the occupation as they are an integral part of Israel's subjugation strategy.
By deliberately leaving these key issues to "further negotiations", Israel has used the decade since the beginning of the Oslo Accords to establish infrastructure and political mechanisms for "remote-control" — i.e. control without direct military occupation.
Israeli settlements
Massive housing areas constructed on confiscated Palestinian land now hold more than half-a-million Israeli settlers. Their location is strategic. Based on plans drawn up immediately following the Israeli occupation in 1967, they are placed between major Palestinian population centers in the north, centre and south of the West Bank. During the decade following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the number of settlers has more than doubled.
Under the text of the Geneva Accords, most of these settlements would remain in place and be annexed to Israel itself. The settlements involved are the major Israeli settlement blocs — not the small tent outposts used when the Israeli government wants to give an impression of dismantling settlements — and house around 300,000 Israeli settlers. Despite the fact that there are "land swaps" included in the Geneva Accords, the continued existence of these major blocs and their annexation to Israel means that freedom of movement between major Palestinian areas would be severely curtailed. It should be stressed that this has been the intent of settlement construction since 1967.
Water
Water is the second major issue that gives Israel control over the future Palestinian cantons. Israel has confiscated over 70% of West Bank water supplies and the major water aquifers lie in areas to be annexed to Israel. The Geneva Accords do not give clear direction to resolve this, referring to previous agreements which have maintained Israel's control over Palestinian water supplies.
Borders
The Geneva Accords call for a "demilitarised Palestinian state", despite making no similar claim on the Israeli state (with its nuclear arsenal). While border crossings would nominally be under Palestinian control along with a multi-national force, at all crossings, an "invisible" Israeli presence will monitor persons moving in and out.
Under Oslo, the same procedure meant that the crossing between the West Bank and Jordan would be outwardly staffed by Palestinians, but Israeli soldiers would sit behind darkened one-way windows and give the final say on who may leave and enter. Such an arrangement is a striking analogy to Israel's vision of "remote-control" for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel will also be allowed to maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley, as well as "early warning systems" — presumably meaning military bases — in Palestinian areas.
Refugees' right of return
More than 4 million Palestinian refugees remain stateless. The the right of these refugees to return to the homes they were evicted from in 1948 is central to the Palestinian struggle. Article seven of the accords, however, gives Israel the right to determine how many and which refugees have the right to return to their homes.
Furthermore, the accords specifically state that fulfilment of article seven would be considered implementation of UN resolution 194, which calls for the right of return. It is for this reason that Palestinians widely rejected the Geneva Accords and massive demonstrations were organised across the West Bank and Gaza Strip (as well as refugee camps in Lebanon) in protest against "selling out the right of return".
Soon after the release of the accords, the Union of Youth Activities Centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a grassroots refugee grouping widely supported in refugee camps, stated: "A small group is reinventing history. We say to those who negotiated in hotels on the Mediterranean and at the Dead Sea, there is a wide diversity of history, civilization and 'existence' between the two seas. Once again, the political acrobats are negotiating on behalf of the refugees, pretending they are applying UN resolutions. The people did not give them the authority to abandon the right of return. We invite them back into the national consensus if they adhere to international resolutions, not abandon them."
Every major refugee organisation came out in condemnation of the accords following its release.
The accords do not use the word "occupation", despite the UN recognising the Israeli occupation in several resolutions. Moreover, the accords also state that, once their provisions have been fulfilled, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be settled in "...all its aspects." Such a phrase means that any future struggle would be considered illegitimate under international law.
Future prospects
It has been widely asserted by the Zionist "left" and others that the accords offer a way forward and a change in direction. Such an assertion is nonsense. It is clear that the accords aim to legalise and make permanent a dependent patchwork of Palestinian cantons that will be a state in name only. It is a direct continuation of policy initiated in 1967, aimed at controlling the land without the direct political and economic costs of overt military occupation.
The policy of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's government and that of the accords' supporters differ only in form, but not in content. The military policy of the Sharon government is necessary to impose the apartheid vision embraced within the accords on the Palestinian population.
The current construction of the Israeli Apartheid Wall is a classic illustration of how the "peace process" requires a military fist. The wall follows almost exactly the outline of the cantons envisaged by the accords, including the annexation of Israeli settlements. The wall permanently establishes the same borders that the accord also promotes.
The clear rejection of the Geneva process by the Palestinian population — reflected in the fact that Yasser Arafat could not openly endorse the accords — means that resistance to the Israeli occupation will continue. The current intifada was a rejection of precisely the same politics as those promoted by the accords.
Israel's military strategy over the last three years has been to impose the same solution by force; a strategy of starvation, killings and economic strangulation designed to force the Palestinians to submit.
As long as the Palestinian people refuse the imposition of Israeli apartheid — then there will be no contradiction between the policy of the current Israeli government and the negotiators of the accords. The reaction to the accords on Palestinian streets also indicates the inherent flaws of a process that continues the basic logic of previous negotiations — flaws which were instrumental in initiating and maintaining the Palestinian uprising that recently entered its fourth year.
From Green Left Weekly, January 21, 2004.
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