BY AHMAD NIMER
RAMALLAH — The public announcement of the US-backed "road map" a few days after the inauguration of Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen's new cabinet has been met with vocal opposition from leading Palestinian political activists.
While Abu Mazen and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat have both strongly supported the road map and called for its immediate implementation, the mood on the Palestinian streets is highly skeptical of the intent and likely outcome of a return to negotiations.
The road map outlines three phases from its inception until a permanent status agreement in 2005. These three phases will be supervised and facilitated by the so-called quartet — the US, Russia, European Union and United Nations through direct negotiations, as well as a series of international conferences held periodically throughout each phase.
The overriding priority of the road map is clearly an end to Palestinian resistance and a return to the status quo that existed prior to the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000.
The first phase outlines this process in some detail, Palestinians are to unequivocally reiterate "Israel's right to exist in peace and security" and end all "armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere". They are to do this by rebuilding a security apparatus which will target groups involved in Palestinian resistance, and, as explicitly outlined in the road map, this will occur under the direct supervision of the CIA in collaboration with Egyptian and Jordanian security forces.
Once this process of rebuilding a Palestinian security force guaranteeing Israeli security has progressed satisfactorily, the Israeli army will withdraw "progressively from areas occupied since September 28, 2000, and the two sides restore the status quo that existed prior to September 28, 2000".
At the end of phase I, a transitional phase takes place between June and December 2003. This phase is "focused on the option of creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty". Nowhere during this process are the actual borders of this state to be defined, nor is there any explanation of what is meant by "attributes of sovereignty".
Phase III begins in 2004 and ends with a "permanent status agreement in 2005", This includes final agreement on the key issues of borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements.
Since it occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967, the central issue for Israeli political and military leaders has been how to control the Occupied Territories without direct military occupation of Palestinian towns and villages. Direct military occupation is not only expensive, but also has been met with frequent Palestinian uprisings and armed resistance against the occupation.
The solution arrived at was codified in the various Israeli ruling class plans, the most important of which was the 1967 Allon Plan, named after Israeli general Yigal Allon. This stated that the West Bank should be divided into three cantons which would be given "self-rule", i.e., Palestinians would be given control over internal matters such as education, health, social and municipal services but final authority would rest with Israel through its control of borders, economic activity, water and other resources.
There were two key steps to realising this plan — colonising large settlement blocs which would prevent free Palestinian movement between the different cantons and the establishment of a Palestinian leadership subservient to Israel.
The first step began in earnest during the 1970s and '80s when large Israeli settlements were constructed on confiscated Palestinian land. These settlement blocs now house thousands of Israeli settlers and are in many cases larger than the Palestinian towns they surround.
Roads connecting these settlements are off limits to Palestinian drivers (identified by the different colour license plates they are forced to use), while checkpoints and military camps complete the system of control of Palestinian movement.
The second step — cultivating a Palestinian leadership willing to act as an intermediary between the Israeli government and the Palestinian population — proved to be more difficult. Initial attempts by the Israel to turn village and municipal leaders into the Palestinian national leadership (the so-called "village councils") were met with a campaign of assassination of these leaders by Palestinian activists.
During the first intifada, which began in 1988, this resistance extended to a widespread boycott of the Israeli administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a popular uprising that was to continue for several years.
The first intifada ended after the 1991 Gulf War. The 1993 Oslo Accords, negotiated secretly by the exiled Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Israeli government, gave the Israelis what they had been seeking for years.
The PLO was allowed to return to Palestine to establish the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was given "self-rule" over the majority of the Palestinian population while Israel continued to control most of the Occupied Territories' economy, all borders and natural resources. Israel was relieved of the burden of direct military occupation, but continued to exercise total control over the Palestinian population.
During the years after the Oslo Accords, this process of control extend into every aspect of Palestinian life. Palestinian exports and imports remained under Israeli control and with no independent economy after decades of deliberate de-industrialisation of the Occupied Territories, Palestinians were completely reliant upon the Israeli economy for both employment and basic goods.
Israel controlled all movement from the Occupied Territories to the outside world through border crossings which were ostensibly staffed by Palestinians but in reality controlled by Israeli security forces literally sitting behind tinted windows of the border control. Even Palestinian passports and identity cards were issued by the Israeli government despite the fact they bore Palestinian emblems.
Israel also embarked on a massive program of settlement construction in order to define the final borders of any Palestinian state. The key issues of the conflict — borders, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem — were deliberately left until years later for final resolution as Israel extended its actual control on the ground.
In May 2000, it looked as though Israel's end goal would be achieved at the Israeli-Palestinian summit which was held under the auspices of the US government at Camp David. According to individuals who attended the summit, a final agreement was almost reached on the borders of the Palestinian "state" — a patchwork of cantons divided by Israeli settlement blocs.
However, Arafat felt that his political and even physical survival would be seriously jeopardised if he agreed to the Camp David deal. He knew that there was massive opposition within the Palestinian population to any deal which gave up on the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their lands and homes from which they were expelled in 1948 with the establishment of the Israeli state.
It was this popular opposition to the Oslo process which exploded a few months after the Camp David summit and became known as the second intifada.
Throughout the second intifada, Israel has attempted to destroy the uprising through horrific policies of collective punishment, mass arrest campaigns and strangulation of normal Palestinian life through closures, curfews and massive restrictions on movement. Its aim has been to return to the Oslo process, with a Palestinian leadership willing to acquiesce to Israeli demands and a brutalised population willing to accept a "sovereign state" made up of a series of "bantustans".
The road map is a virtual copy of earlier agreements and plans aimed at achieving the Israeli strategy outlined above. As far as the Israeli rulers are concerned, the critical feature of any final agreement is the relinquishment of the Palestinian refugees' right of return.
The Israeli rulers realise that this issue is at the core of the Palestinian struggle because it strikes at the heart of the Israeli state — a self-defined Jewish state whose continued existence depends on ensuring that its Arab citizens always remain a minority.
For this reason, the road map utilises a formulation that has been widely used in the past as "code" for relinquishing the right of return — "an agreed, just, fair and realistic solution to the refugee issue".
There are signs though that Israel recognises that without an explicit rejection of the right of return from the Palestinian side any new agreement could eventually burst apart on this issue. On May 7, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that a precondition for Israel's acceptance of the road map was just such an explicit announcement by the Palestinian leadership.
Under the road map, Israel is to return to its pre-intifada positions and agree to dismantle settlements built since March 2001. This dismantlement of settlements is presented as an Israeli concession. In reality, it will have no practical effect on the massive settlement blocs which now exist.
Most importantly, the road map makes no mention of Israel's current construction of a 9-metre high concrete wall that is being built on confiscated Palestinian land and which is to entirely surround the three Palestinian cantons in the West Bank.
While the PA has accepted the road map and Abu Mazen has been widely praised in the Israeli press for his apparent willingness to repudiate the right of return, opposition to the road map is widespread among Palestinian political activists. Even sections of Arafat's ruling Fatah party have expressed opposition to the plan, particularly as it is expected that Palestinian security forces will soon begin a campaign of arrests against activists wishing to continue the intifada.
Even if the US, Israel and the PA succeed in crushing the present intifada, the implementation of the road map will simply lay the seeds for a third intifada — and the inevitable resumption of Israel's 55-year-long colonial war against the Palestinian nation.
From Green Left Weekly, May 14, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.