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		Non-fiction and essays

			University essays

	History Second Year

	History of Palestine and Israel 384

During the WWI era, what was the role of international diplomacy in creating the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine? (HST 384, Autumn 2002) With Lord Balfour’s Declaration of November 2 1917, it appeared the Zionist movement into Palestine had received the blessing of Great Britain, one of the world’s Great Powers. However, far from being a simple endorsement, it demonstrated the influence that Britain could wield in the Middle East, for as Edward W Said suggests: “Balfour’s statements in the Declaration take for granted the higher rights of a colonial power to dispose of a territory as it saw fit.”# However, the Balfour Declaration was not the extent of international diplomacy in relation to Palestine. There were correspondences between Arabs and the British, Jews and the British, and perhaps more significantly between Britain and France. For while previous to the World War I period there had been tensions between the Arabs and the members of the Yishuv in Palestine, it was the involvement of Britain most notably, but also France and the United States to a lesser extent that led to the conflict being practically unsolvable. Their negotiations over what to do after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual outcome of the mandates would widen the wedge already driven between the two peoples. The international community had become irrevocably involved in deciding the fate of Palestine and its people. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, since the 1880s, the population of the Yishuv had been growing in Palestine. For these first immigrants, their relationships with the native Arabs varied between three points of view. There were those who wished to integrate with the Arabs and work alongside them. There were the separatists who wished to isolate themselves from the native peoples, and between these two extremes, Jews who adopted a “live and let live” attitude. While there were incidents of violence against both peoples, there was still the possibility for the two communities to co-exist in relative peace. As Europe drew closer to a war, the situation had been gradually deteriorating, which stemmed in part from the diverging ideologies of the Arabs and Jews: “The Arabs sought instinctively to retain the Arab and Muslim character of the region and to maintain their position as its rightful inhabitants; the Zionists sought radically to change the status quo, buy as much land as possible, settle on it, and eventually turn an Arab-populated country into a Jewish homeland.”# However, it was with the increasing interest of Britain and France in the Middle East that the situation was exacerbated. The correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Cairo and Sharif Hussein of Mecca demonstrates the typical attitude of Europeans to non-Europeans in the age of imperialism. In McMahon’s letter of October 24, 1915, he finalizes the offer of establishing a united Arab state after the war, provided that Hussein enlists the Arabs to help defeat the Ottoman rulers. It is the area of Palestine that caused the most controversy, for while Hussein deemed it had been mentioned in the letter, McMahon and the British government later denied it. They were justified in doing this because the language of the letter had been vague, referring to “portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded.”# These limits could be interpreted in different ways, and caused resentment towards the British among the Arabs in Palestine. The nature of international diplomacy can be seen in the contrast between the vague boundaries of the McMahon-Hussein correspondences and the specific nature of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Not only did this divide up land already promised to Hussein as part of the Arab kingdom, it was also much more specific in reference to what territory each side would control. The agreement included a map showing the areas under British and French control, something not included in dealings with Hussein, and also details of port access and railroad construction.# This reflected a shift in the attitude of the British government, now under David Lloyd George toward greater interest in Palestine. According to Sykes, “the important thing was to have Britain appear to back self-determination in order to extend their own influence in the area.”# In the final division of the Middle East at the end of the war, it would be closer to that described in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, with only scant attention paid to the previous agreement with Hussein, suggesting a lack of diplomatic clout on the part of the Arabs. Arguably the most significant piece of international diplomacy comes in the form of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917. As the conflict progressed and intensified, both sides looked to the document as the source of their legitimacy on the part of the Jews, and for the Palestinian Arabs, how their position had been abused. The crucial part of the Declaration states the following: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.”# This further complicated the situation of who would be in Palestine after the war, for now it had been promised to not only the Arabs and the British, but a place would have to be found for the Jews. This legitimization of the Jews’ right to be in Palestine would cause a great deal of resentment towards the British and the Jews on the part of the Palestinian Arabs, especially as the Jewish presence grew ever larger. Said takes a view that probably reflects the general sentiment of the Palestinians: “both the British imperialist and the Zionist vision are united in playing down and even canceling out the Arabs in Palestine as somehow secondary and negligible.”# As would often be the case, the Palestinian Arabs felt denied any say whatsoever in what happened to them and their land, and as such would breed further discontent towards the interlopers coming amongst them. It must be said that Arab attempts at getting involved in international diplomacy were far from successful, and in fact probably served to hinder their cause rather than help it. This can be seen in the dealings of Emir Feisal, the son of Sharif Hussein. In his post-war agreement with the leader of the Zionist movement Chaim Weizmann, he appeared to welcome the idea of more Jews coming to Palestine: “All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale…In taking such measures the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights.”# This displays a similarity to the Balfour Declaration in that the Arabs are added almost as an afterthought, after the seemingly more important issue of the Jewish influx. Feisal continued his negotiations with Jews, attempting to make himself a player on the world stage by bypassing the European powers and dealing directly with American Jewry. Feisal’s correspondence with Felix Frankfurter in March 1919 appears to reinforce his welcoming of Jews into Palestine stating that neither the Arab nor Jewish movement “can be a real success without the other.”# At this point, with Palestine under British administration and the Third Aliyah well underway, swelling the ranks of the Yishuv, the misguided dealings of Feisal seriously hurt the Palestinian Arabs’ cause and bred further resentment towards the newcomers. Legitimacy from the British was one thing, but coming from an Arab, it was quite another. The final aspect of the post-war period to consider is the King-Crane Commission’s recommendations to President Woodrow Wilson as to what should be done with Palestine. This report in August 1919 was perhaps the last warning about the possible effects of the implementation of the mandate over Palestine. Warning that the Balfour Declaration could not be strictly followed, the Commission stated that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine” and perhaps more worryingly “no British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms.”# Despite the objections raised by the Commission and by the General Syrian Congress which felt obliged to protest “against any private arrangement aiming at the establishment of Zionism in the southern part of Syria [i.e. Palestine]”# it was again as a result of international diplomacy that the recommendations failed to sway President Wilson. Not only did it threaten French and British objectives in the region, but also propaganda related to Zionism in the United States and Russia.# Again it seemed that international rather than local interests were more important in increasing tensions between the Arabs and Jews. By 1920 the British Mandate was getting underway, and would lead to further division and conflict among Arabs and Jews, however it must be noted that it was not entirely as a result of international diplomacy. The Third Aliyah, the influx of Jews between 1917 and 1923 had brought a predominantly socialist group of European Jews to Palestine. Their view of Zionism was focused on labor, and the creation of a self-sufficient Yishuv. This soon became the dominant form of Zionism, and left no place for the Arabs in what was foreseen as the Jewish national home. Coinciding with the emergence of Arab nationalism that gradual spread in the period before the war, this led to further separation of the two communities. As Arabs experienced new feelings of collective identity, they began to shift from a reluctant acceptance of Jews as being a help to the economic development of the country to being an intolerable colonial intruder. However, without the negotiations and diplomacy of the Great Powers, it is questionable whether the conflict would have become as polarized as it eventually became under the mandate. It is important to note that there was already antagonism between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine before the serious involvement of the international community. However what seems apparent is that as a result of diplomatic relations between the Great Powers and with both peoples, the conflict was intensified and accelerated. What had previously been a squabble over land as another people came into the country had now become a question of the immigration of the Jewish people to establish a national home in Palestine. The role of Britain cannot be understated, for in the agreements of McMahon and Hussein the Arabs thought they had been promised the land, while later the Jews had been promised a national home in the Balfour Declaration, albeit more specifically. However, both of these promises were superceded by the Sykes-Picot Agreement that had carved up the entire Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. This would eventually lead to the British Mandate over Palestine, which was arguably the true beginning of the conflict between Arabs and Jews, for as Morris notes: “from a persecuted, maligned minority the Jews had become the future masters of the country, part of the machinery of the British administration.”# Without the diplomacy that resulted in the British administration in Palestine, it is questionable how the limited numbers of the Yishuv could have become anything more than a minority, and how the Arabs, unskilled in the diplomatic game could have lost their land to the newcomers. 1967 (HST 384, Autumn 2002) The appearance of the Middle East was dramatically changed following the Six-Day War of 1967. By decisively defeating its Arab neighbors, Israel was able to take and occupy the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank from Jordan, including East Jerusalem. However, for the Israelis this was not simply the acquisition of territory. These areas, especially the West Bank and Gaza contained over one million Palestinians that would now come under Israeli control. Following the outbreak of hostilities, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 that sought to resolve the problems resulting from the War, and the continuing problem of the Palestinian refugees. Despite the intentions of the UN, it was unable to address the conflict in a manner that would please any of the sides, partly because its measures were inadequate, but mainly for the disparity in the fundamental interests of the parties involved. In examining documents from the various parties during the period between the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 and the 1967 War, the difficulty in coming to a solution that could be agreed upon by all sides becomes glaringly apparent. The independence of Israel was declared on May 14 1948, and the language used in the document partly reveals why the Arabs took less than a day to attack the newly born state. Only three years removed from World War II, the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish psyche was not yet fully accepted, but it is still mentioned in the justification for creating a Jewish state: “The recent holocaust…proved anew the need to solve the problem of the homelessness and lack of independence of the Jewish people.”# The Arab world was seen as being analogous to the Nazis, and by the time of the 1967 War, the Jewish attitude towards the Holocaust had become “never again.” This can partly explain the Israeli desire to increase their territory, and indeed their stance after 1967 was that the territories were taken in self-defense; one of the reasons Resolution 242 was a failure. There are other parts of the declaration that suggest Israel’s permanency in the region, such as reference to the UN’s recognition of Israel, therefore giving the State a degree of international legitimacy, and suggesting it is the equal of the neighboring Arab states. The Declaration refers to the “wanton aggression” prevalent within the Arab population in Israel, and request that these people “preserve the ways of peace.”# This language attempts to lay the blame on the Palestinians for any violence that may occur, and the closing remarks reinforce the Israeli commitment to peace, but also the fact that they will not be removed from the region: “We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to co-operate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.”# After the war of independence finished, Israel saw their country as being surrounded by a sea of hostile Arab states that wished to destroy the fledgling nation. Their population was small, and in order to encourage its growth, the Law of Return was passed by the Knesset in 1950. This document illustrates the need for more Jews to enter the country, as it states that “Every Jew has the right to immigrate to the country” and that all Jews, whether newly immigrated or born in Israel will “enjoy the same status” and be equal citizens in the eyes of the law.# This document makes no mention of the return of recently displaced Palestinian refugees, therefore suggesting that they would not be welcomed back into the country. Instead, it can be interpreted that the Israelis sought to make their country more populous and therefore more secure within the region. By the time of the Six-Day War, Israel not only needed more land for purposes of self-defense, but arguably to accommodate the expanding population as well, which must have played a role in the decision to go to war. During the period between the founding of Israel and the 1967 war, the Palestinians had lost their homeland, and had been scattered amongst the surrounding Arab countries. By far the largest concentration was located in Jordan, especially on the West Bank, and in effect, Jordan had become Palestinian in composition, if not in name. However, the Palestinians in diaspora had not played a significant political role in the region, save for small scale raids on the borders of Israel. Under the watchful eye of the Arab League, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was created, ostensibly to represent the Palestinians, but initially no more than a puppet group in order for the Arab states to control the Palestinian refugees, especially in Jordan. The Draft Constitution of the PLO clearly set forth the goals of the Organization, and the mechanisms that would be implemented to achieve these goals. It declares the responsibility of all Palestinians of “exercising their duty in the liberation of their homeland.”# In the pursuit of this goal, various committees were to be established dealing with different aspects of the liberation struggle, such as political, juridical and the awakening committee; whose concern was “the upbringing of the new generation” so they would “serve their country and work for the liberation of their homeland.”# Though the influence of the PLO was more important after the events of 1967, it was a bold suggestion to the Israelis that the Palestinians would not rest until they had returned to Palestine. More significant on the Palestinian side prior to the war were the various guerilla groups that had formed, such as Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, whose operations, according to Benny Morris; “were a major catalyst in the deterioration of Israeli-Arab relations that led to the Six-Day War.”# After the crushing defeat the Arab nations suffered in the war, these guerilla groups were able to take control of the PLO and begin their struggle for international recognition as the accepted representatives of the Palestinian people. The Arab position towards Israel before the war intensified in its hostility, as the presence of Gamal abd al- Nasser in Egypt promoting pan-Arabism left no room for the state of Israel, according to Nasser, the “fruit of imperialism” in Palestine; seen as “a home illegally stolen from its owners.”# Nasser proclaimed the inevitability of Arab unity, and in the formation between Egypt and Syria of the United Arab Republic in 1963, sought to declare the relation between Arab unity and the “national duty to liberate” Palestine. The UAR Manifesto of 1963 gave implicit indications of the continued struggle against Israel by reference to the “disaster of Palestine” which “awakened the spirit of revolt against imperialism, injustice, poverty and underdevelopment.”# These indications against Israel became more explicit as Egypt and Israel continued to play the game of brinkmanship that would lead to war in 1967. A few weeks prior to the outbreak of war at the start of June 1967, Nasser gave a speech to trade unionists, which give a clear example of the rhetoric employed by the Egyptian leader that made it impossible to back down from fighting with Israel. Nasser declared that the Arab world was finally strong enough to enter battle with Israel and that “The problem today is not just Israel, but also those behind it…the battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel.”# Later in the speech he makes it clear that “those behind” Israel are the United States, Britain and all Western countries, while only the Soviet Union “went to the extent of stating that, together with the Arabs and the Arab nation, it would resist any interference or aggression.”# The expression of this resistance took the form of Soviet arms and weaponry given to Egypt and other Arab countries, and the Middle East became another area of the world where the influence of the Cold War was strongly felt. Despite Nasser’s boasts of Arab power, he was well aware of Israel’s military superiority, and his claims were made to make Egypt appear strong to the rest of the Arab world, and capable of defending the interests of the Palestinian people in exile, as noted by Charles D Smith: “Nasser’s real goal was to achieve a clear political victory in the cause of Arabism that would deflate Syrian pretensions and send news of his own militancy “to the chanceries and streets of the Arab world.””# The interventions of the United Nations in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, while claiming to be for the benefit of peace and the rights of the various parties, had little effect in bringing the conflict to an acceptable solution. Part of the reason for this is that both sides in the conflict often acted in blatant disregard for the Resolutions passed by the General Assembly and the Security Council. For instance, after the Six-Day War, the Israelis controlled all of Jerusalem, despite the UN Resolution of 1949 which restated the “intention that Jerusalem should be place under a permanent international regime.”# The disregard shown by the Israelis in taking Jerusalem in 1967 was similar to Nasser ignoring a Security Council resolution passed in 1951 that required Egypt to “desist from the present practice of interfering with the passage through the Suez Canal of goods destined for Israel.”# Egypt had taken this course of action and blocked the Suez Canal in 1956, and again in May 1967, acts that had angered Israel and had contributed to the Six-Day War. Following the war, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 242, which in principle sought to bring the conflict to a solution that would be beneficial to all, but in reality created further obstacles in the pursuit of peace. The clause that refers to the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” created a great deal of controversy, as the Israelis continued to claim that the territories had been taken in self-defense, and therefore would not have to be returned. The Israeli military remained in the newly taken areas, in open contradiction to another clause that demanded the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”# Israeli leaders refused to withdraw from any of the territories, “except in return for full peace agreements negotiated directly with Arab states”, which is what eventually allowed the return of the Sinai to Egypt in return for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979. The issue of the Palestinian refugees was another controversy inflamed by Resolution 242, which had called for “a just settlement of the refugee problem” though offering no real plan of action for either their return to their former homes, or their assimilation into the Arab countries in which they resided. This declaration, as suggested by Smith, “threatened to identify the Palestinian question solely as a non-political issue, denying the PLO sovereignty it claimed over its former homeland.”# The lack of political acceptance would persist for many years after the war, where the United States and Israel would not negotiate with the PLO for any kind of settlement over the issue of Palestinian statehood. Again it seemed that the UN had failed to achieve what it had set out to accomplish. The Six-Day War in 1967 and the subsequent attempts by the UN to reach a satisfactory resolution did not serve to bring peace to the Middle East. This is apparent in the outbreak of war seven years later, when the Arab countries attacked Israel, which finally brought about the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Through their public statements the leaders of both sides demonstrated their reluctance to deviate from their own side’s position. Israel repeatedly declared their right to exist and their commitment to peace, while launching military operations to claim more territory, albeit in their opinion, for self defense. The Palestinians affirmed they would continue the struggle for their homeland, and would be assisted by the rest of the Arab world in the basic objective of the destruction of Israel. With these two disparate positions, the UN was left with the nearly impossible task of attempting to mediate between the sides, and was unable to reach a resolution that was acceptable to either side. It is true that the measures the UN took were inadequate, but given the hostility prevalent on all sides, it seemed impossible that adequate measures were possible to take while belligerency remained in the Arab and Israeli positions. The Oslo Peace Process (HST 384, Autumn 2002) By 1993 the second Palestinian uprising or “Intifada,” was winding down. However, discontent among the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was still directed against the Israeli occupation forces, and there was still little progress being made through the American-sponsored Madrid Peace Conference. With the Knesset’s repeal of the law banning Israeli contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in June 1993, the Oslo Peace Conference was able to get started, which would result in the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles (Oslo I), followed by the Interim Agreement (Oslo II), in September 1995. While these documents presented a significant step towards peace in some respects, in others, they placed further obstacles in the pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In examining the documents, it is possible to see what the two sides agreed to in Oslo I and II, but often more significantly, what was left out. Significant omissions were concerning Jerusalem, settlements and refugees, which were in reality the most important issues that needed to be resolved in order to bring about peace. In examining the effects, it must be noted that as a result of signing the second Oslo document, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a pro-settler Israeli, Yigal Amir, and how this provided yet another obstacle in the peace process. The Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles (DOP) of 1993 did not bring about sweeping changes to the conflict, but it did provide several significant impacts, not the least of which was a mutual recognition by Rabin and Arafat in the Agreed Minutes of the DOP. It must be noted that Oslo I was more of a framework for how the peace process would develop, notably that it would require an interim agreement, which followed in Oslo II, and finally the “permanent status negotiations.” This meant that the DOP did not include as many specific details as the Interim Agreement, which would later supersede Oslo I. Article I describes the aim of the document was “to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council…for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”# The eventual goal stated is that the “interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and…the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.”# As the permanent status negotiations have still not taken place, this suggests a significant failing of the peace process, as the interim arrangements were supposed to last no longer than five years.# There are provisions in the first Oslo agreement that can be considered as having made progress in the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Article III calls for “direct, free and general political elections” that will be held for the Palestinian Council, “not later than nine months after the entry into force of this Declaration of Principles.” # The very fact that the Palestinians would be granted some kind of democratically elected representation in the form of the Council is a step towards the realization of Palestinian statehood. This is despite the fact that they were not granted a sovereign state over which to govern. The Council was to be given jurisdiction over the West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, “except for the issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations.”# The ambiguity of these exceptions was favorable to the Israelis, who were able to continue the construction and expansion of settlements in the occupied territories. Expanding settlements would provide more non-negotiable factors in the permanent status talks. In regard to the powers that the Palestinian Authority would have over the areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip it did control, the DOP stated that the Palestinians would be responsible for “education and culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism. The Palestinian side will commence in building the Palestinian police force.”# Civil authority was to be transferred from the Israeli military government and its Civil Administration to the Palestinian Council, but in matters of security, Israel would continue “to carry the responsibility for defending against external threats, as well as the responsibility for overall security of Israelis for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public order.”# In effect, while there would be Palestinian civil control over the Palestinian population, the IDF would be in overall control of Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, plus the overall security of the territories. The DOP did provide the framework for the gradual redeployment of the Israeli security forces. While still fairly vague in detailing whether it was a “redeployment” or “withdrawal”, what was stated was that “Israel should be guided by the principle that its military forces should be redeployed outside populated areas” and that Israel will withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area.”# The inclusion of Jericho was a hopeful sign for the Palestinians, as this foothold in the West Bank suggested the Israelis would continue to withdraw from this territory as well as Gaza.# This was limited in the document by the statement that the Israeli military and civilians could “continue to use roads freely” in these areas, which could lead to confrontations, and the return of the IDF to protect Israelis using the roads.# This was another example of limitation to the authority granted to the Palestinians, and is evidence of the “radically different conceptions” of the terms of the DOP held by each side, that would require further agreements.# The greatest limitations of the DOP relate to the most important issues between the two sides. It stated that the permanent status negotiations “will commence as soon as possible, but not later than the beginning of the third year of the interim agreement” and that the subject of the subsequent negotiations would be “Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest.”# It is difficult to see how there could be a lasting peace without the resolution of these issues. Therefore, the DOP is really only the beginning of the peace process, especially as it included the mutual recognition letters exchanged by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. In Arafat’s letter he stated that the PLO “recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”, while renouncing the “use of terrorism and other acts of violence.”# This would be confirmed by amending the relevant parts of the Palestinian Covenant. In return, Rabin stated that the Israeli government “has decided to recognize the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.”# While many saw this as a crucial step towards peace, there were rejectionists on both sides. Palestinians claimed that Arafat had not secured a mutual recognition of a Palestinian right to self-determination. Some Israelis saw any recognition of the PLO as the denial of the Zionist claims to the ancient land of Israel, and were unwilling to give up Jewish claims to any land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, it was not an equal exchange of recognition, with one side being a state and the other an organization.#. With many aspects of the agreement not fully developed, the two sides moved forward to the signing of the Interim Agreement in September 1995. In many respects Oslo II resembled the DOP that it superseded, although it contained more definite provisions for how the interim period would progress. It reaffirmed the ultimate aim of permanent status negotiations and the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, while still leaving the most important issues for later discussion. The Interim Agreement described the powers and responsibilities that the Palestinian Council would have, as well as its composition. Elections were confirmed as being “a significant interim preparatory step towards the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”# The Palestinian Council would consist of 82 members, and would be granted both legislative and executive powers, while there would be a separate Palestinian Court of Justice. While empowered to create and enforce laws that would be able to “formulate and conduct Palestinian policies” within the areas under the Council’s control, there were limitations with regard to the spheres in which the Council could operate. Most notably, the Palestinian Council was not to have “powers and responsibilities in the sphere of foreign relations” including “embassies, consulates or other types of foreign missions and posts or permitting their establishment in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.”# It is hard to imagine how a state could operate fully without being able to establish an official presence in the international community. The most significant aspect of the Interim Agreement was also the most troublesome for furthering the peace process: the division of land in the territories into Areas A, B and C. Areas A and B were those populated areas of Palestinians over which the Palestinian Council would have jurisdiction including all civil powers and responsibilities. The Israeli military government would retain the “authority over areas that are not under the territorial jurisdiction of the Council,” Area C.# This in effect would create a Palestinian controlled area divided and disrupted by Israeli controlled areas, including roads, which can hardly be considered a state. As the historian Charles D Smith noted, the Rabin government had achieved “the granting of Palestinian authority over nearly 90 percent of the West Bank’s Arab population while ceding only 30 percent of the land area.”# The final division of land was to be confirmed at the permanent status negotiations, and in the final clauses section, it was stated that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”# However this was interpreted by Israel that it was possible to allow the natural growth of already established settlements that would in effect strengthen their bargaining position further by the time the final status talks took place. Other aspects of the Interim Agreement referred to the returning of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, and the continued redeployment of the IDF from “populated areas of the West Bank.”# With respect to security, the Palestinian police were to have responsibility for “handling public order incidents in which only Palestinians are involved, while Israel was to have “the overriding responsibility for security for the purpose of protecting Israelis and confronting the threat of terrorism. Again the exclusions in the Interim Agreement covered important issues that would be left for the permanent status talks: “Jerusalem, settlements…Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis.”# The Oslo agreements of 1993 and 1995 made some progress towards peace, but their impact was limited by the complications present in the territories, the most significant of which was, and still is, the Israeli settlements. The DOP provided a framework for the transfer of limited authority to the Palestinian Council, whose powers would be described in detail in the Interim Agreement. Israeli troops would withdraw from populated areas, though the IDF would remain in control of the territories’ security. Elections would ensure the views of the Palestinians would be represented within the Council. However, without a resolution of the settlement issue, as well as the other issues still to be negotiated, the final peace negotiations could not be confirmed, as was shown at the abortive Camp David II Conference in 2000. In the meantime, the settlements continue to expand, bringing yet more land under Israeli military control, which will provide further non-negotiable factors to the attempt to resolve the conflict, which does not appear to have a solution in the foreseeable future.

Non-fiction

Hom-UHT Publishing