Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal

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СКАЧАТЬ these changing regional dynamics was a weakened PLO. The PLO’s ill-fated decision to support Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait cost the PLO US$120 million in annual donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Confiscation of Palestinian deposits in Kuwaiti banks brought the PLO’s losses to about US$10 billion. As punishment for Arafat’s solidarity with Saddam Hussein, Kuwait summarily expelled 400,000 Palestinians. These financial losses completely undermined the organization’s ability to sustain itself, and by 1993 the PLO had closed a number of its offices in Tunis and elsewhere because of lack of funds.8 The grassroots Intifada, which had commenced in the WBGS at the end of 1988, and the ascendance of the local PLO leadership, also challenged the continued relevance of the exiled PLO leadership to developments in the occupied territories.

      At the Madrid peace conference, the Palestinians did not attend as an independent delegation under the auspices of the PLO, but as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The conference set in motion bilateral negotiations between Israel and its neighboring countries, including the Palestinians. Simultaneously accompanying the ten rounds of negotiations between Israel and the PLO in Washington, DC, was a second track of negotiations: Israel and the PLO were secretly negotiating in Oslo.

      The Oslo Accord’s Inadequate and Problematic Provisions

      The fourteen meetings in Oslo culminated in the 13 September 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles. The DOP began:

      The Government of the State of Israel and the PLO team (in the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference) (the “Palestinian Delegation”), representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.9

      The DOP was not a peace treaty, but rather an agenda for negotiations covering a five-year “interim period” that would lead to a permanent settlement. The agreements outlined the principles that would govern relations between Israel and the PLO for the five-year period. They were nonbinding, and they stipulated that “nothing in the interim would prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations.” After the first two years, final status negotiations would begin on the most critical issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—namely, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, water rights, borders, and security arrangements.

      The main provisions of the DOP included the establishment of a “Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority”—what would become known as the Palestinian Authority, or PA—for Palestinians residing in the WBGS, an elected legislative council, withdrawal of the Israeli military from parts of the WBGS, and a final permanent settlement within five years from the signing of the Interim Agreements. The DOP also stipulated that the permanent settlement would be based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Within the first two months of the DOP’s implementation, the Israeli military would commence redeployment from Gaza and Jericho, and would be replaced by a Palestinian police force responsible for Palestinian “internal security and public order.” At a later point Israel would redeploy from the major Palestinian population centers—Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, and Hebron. Shortly after the Israeli military redeployment, Palestinians in the WBGS would hold elections for a Palestinian Legislative Council. In the interim, Israel would control the borders. Finally, the agreement called for the establishment of a joint Israeli-Palestinian Economic Cooperation Committee to carry out economic development programs for the WBGS.10

      In many ways, the DOP resembled previous proposals relating to Palestinian autonomy, such as in the Allon Plan and Camp David Agreements, but for the notable exception of the PLO’s participation. Supporters of the DOP pointed out that the agreement de facto implied Israel’s formal recognition of the PLO, allowed the Palestinians to administer their own affairs, and addressed the Palestinians inclusively “as a people.”11 Critics pointed out that the Palestinians had not received any guarantees for a future independent, sovereign, viable state, as well as no guarantees for a halt to Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories. The DOP also failed to address Israel’s illegal claim to the “occupied territories”; rather, the DOP identified the territories as “disputed territories.”12 One of the most damning critiques of the PLO was that it had allowed itself to be transformed from a liberation movement into a governing body in the WBGS.13 Key Palestinian leaders pointed out that the Executive Committee and other representative bodies of the PLO—“the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”—were absent from the negotiations, and that unknown names of little relevance to the organization’s structure and their advisors were negotiating on behalf of the Palestinian people.14

      Absent from the DOP and all the implementation agreements that followed was any recognition of the Palestinians’ historic grievances. The ambiguity enshrined in the political settlement was not unique to these agreements. This lack of precision, often referred to as “constructive ambiguity,” is a common feature of political settlements that address substantive causes of the conflict.15 The most striking feature of the DOP’s constructive ambiguity, however, was that it compromised the lowest common denominator of consensus among different Palestinian groups and political organizations: the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.

      Not surprisingly, then, the Oslo peace process and related initiatives did not receive solid support from the Palestinian leadership and Palestinians in the territories and diaspora. According to a Center for Policy Research poll, 38 percent of Palestinians in the WBGS opposed the DOP and 20.4 percent were not sure how they would evaluate the agreement.16 On 3 September 1993, Arafat convened the PLO executive committee in hopes of ratifying the DOP. Some of the most prominent members of the PLO, such as Mahmoud Darwish and Shafiq al-Hout, resigned and a number of members abstained. The cabinet resolution in favor of the DOP passed by only one vote, compared to sixty-one in favor and fifty opposed in the Israeli Knesset.17 Prominent Palestinian intellectuals, as well as political organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the leftist PFLP and DFLP, opposed the DOP. Even former PLO negotiators, most notably Haidar Abdel Shafi,18 and to a lesser extent Hanan Ashrawi, were vocal in their opposition to Oslo. The PPP did not outright reject the Oslo Accords, but adopted more of a wait and see approach.

      A series of agreements followed that effectively outlined the nature of implementation after the DOP. Among the most important of these agreements was the Paris Protocol,19 Gaza-Jericho First Agreements, the Oslo II Agreements, and the Protocol concerning redeployment from Hebron. The two parties signed the Paris Protocol in April 1994; this agreement outlined the economic arrangements between the two parties, including issues related to the customs union, import tariffs, trade taxes, import licensing regulations, and trade standards. One month later, in May 1994, the two parties signed the Gaza-Jericho First Agreement, also known as the 1994 Cairo Agreement. These agreements gave the Palestinians autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho and established the Palestinian self-governing entity, the PA.20 On 27 August 1995, the parties signed the Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities, which put the PA in charge of labor, commerce and industry, gas and petroleum, insurance, postal services, local government, and agriculture.21

      The two parties then signed the Interim Agreements on Implementation of the DOP, Oslo II, on 28 September 1995. The Oslo II Agreements fully detailed the interim arrangements between the two parties during the next five years and the transfer of certain powers to the PA. These agreements established institutions of self-government including a legislative council and an elected “President,” and also elaborated on redeployment arrangements outlining how the WBGS would be divided into three distinct areas—A, B, and C—each with different security and civil power arrangements. There would be four different phases of Israeli military redeployment from the WBGS. By the third military redeployment, Area A would consist of approximately 17.2 percent of the West Bank. In this area, the PA would be responsible for internal security СКАЧАТЬ