Another beginning
"It is not all that we wanted, but it is a beginning", were the words chosen by senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath to describe the signing of the accord between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel on May 4 in Cairo.
The event was overshadowed by the triumphal events in South Africa. Both events are steps along the road to freedom for the oppressed in those lands; but as Shaath's words testify, the signing of the accord records a moment in the struggle and not its termination.
The accord will implement the deal signed on the lawn of the White House in September and allow for limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. It returns some of the lands captured by Israel and illegally held ever since the war in 1967. For some 700,000 Palestinians, this is the first taste of autonomy since the state of Israel was created in 1948.
Many issues remain unresolved, including the size of the Jericho enclave. As part of the accord, Israel will release 5000 Palestinian prisoners, but the fate of a further 3500 remains unsettled. The Palestinian authorities are denied external security or foreign affairs powers.
PLO chair Yasser Arafat will not be accorded the title of Palestinian president. Israeli spokesperson Uri Dromi complained, "The Palestinians should stop pushing for the attributes of statehood" — an example of how far the struggle has to travel before a truly autonomous Palestinian homeland is forged.
But there is no turning back the process. The banner at the head of a march in April by two generations of Israeli army generals proclaimed, "Peace is Israel's real security". In demonstrating their support for Yitzhak Rabin's peace moves, the generals were jeered by a group of young religious zealots who taunted the warriors with cries of "traitors and cowards". This incident accurately paints the picture of an Israeli society at war with itself. In Israel as in South Africa, those who continue to defend the status quo are now generally viewed as frenzied extremists.
Like its ANC counterpart, the PLO has creatively used mass struggle and negotiation to divide and weaken the resolve of the oppressors. As a result, in both cases there is a new beginning.