Amira Hass :With Oslo, Israel’s Intention Was Never Peace or Palestinian Statehood
The reality of the Palestinian Bantustans,
reservations or enclaves — is a fact on the ground. Their creation is
the most outstanding geopolitical occurrence of the past quarter
century. It is of course possible to say that its seeds were sown with
the occupation in 1967
but the process accelerated, consolidated, matured and deepened
paradoxically in parallel with the negotiation process between Israel
and the Palestinians – first with the Madrid/Washington talks starting
at the end of 1991 and then with the Oslo process.
Those who give
credence to lofty verbal declarations about peace and a new Middle East
will continue to believe that only chance, regrettable human errors, bad
luck and technical hitches led to the formation of the Palestinian
reservations buried in a contiguous Israeli space between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River – contrary to any logic of a fair
settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis and negating the
former’s right to self-determination. Others will continue to argue that
it all happened only as a reaction to the attacks carried out by
Palestinian opponents of the Oslo agreements and Palestinian opponents
of Yasser Arafat.
However, I wish to give, have given and am giving
credit to the planning skills of the Israeli security and diplomatic
establishment and the calculated sophistication behind the ability to
speak softly in words the world wants to hear (“peace”) and in actual
fact to do the opposite (continuing the occupation through outsourcing
while dropping the burden of economic and legal responsibility for the
population that is under occupation).
The following were
the warning signals that started flashing right at the moment of the
signing of the Declaration of Principles and very early on taught me to
cast doubt on Israel’s intentions vis a vis the negotiations:
*While it was decided to take gradual steps
toward the realization of the interim agreement, the aim of the
negotiations was not explicitly stipulated. That is, it nowhere was it
stated that the goal was the establishment of a Palestinian state in the
territory occupied in 1967, contrary to what the Palestinians, many
people in the Israeli peace camp at that time and the European countries
had concluded. What logic is there in gradually moving forward towards a
vague goal that only the Palestinians and the supporters of a fair in
Europe understand as realization of the right to self-determination,
while the strong side, Israel, reserves the right to impose its
interpretations?
*The word “occupation” does not appear in the Declaration of Principles. In his letter to Yitzhak Rabin,
however, Yasser Arafat explicitly promises that the Palestine
Liberation Organization will relinquish terror. The avoidance of any
mention of “the occupation” as a given situation and as the source of
the violence was an expression of the diplomatic-propaganda inversion
that Israel succeeded in pulling off: The real power relations — of
occupier and occupied — were translated into relations of the persecuted
(the Israeli) and the persecutor (the Palestinian). The burden of proof
was imposed on the Palestinians (a fight against terror) and not on
Israel (an end to the occupation). Delegating the Civil Administration to conduct
the negotiations regarding the transfer of civil responsibilities to the
Palestinian Authority was another warning signal. In the less than 15
years of its existence, the Civil Administration had developed into a
tool for implementing the colonization policy and military control of
the Palestinians, in the guise of a civilian affairs institution.
Contrary to the declarations about “changing the disk,” the
bureaucrats/officers who conducted the civil negotiations had no
alternative but to preserve the purpose of their organization and to
perpetuate the imperious attitude toward the Palestinians.
*The
Declaration of Principles signed on September 13, 1993 stated: “The two
sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial
unit, whose integrity will be preserved during the interim period.”This
did not happen. Instead, Israel did everything it could to detach the
population of Gaza from the West Bank by means of
the regime of movement restrictions. Though the number of Palestinians
who exited and entered Gaza in the 1990s was relatively large as
compared to the minuscule number of those exiting and entering today,
that number was small relative to the situation before January 15, 1991
when Israel first implemented the regime of sweeping prohibitions on
Palestinians’ freedom of movement and the requirement that they apply
for personal entry permits into Israel (and that, three years before the
suicide attacks inside Israel). Thus, Israel controlled the economic,
institutional, social and familial relations between the population of
Gaza and the West Bank and restricted them however it pleased. In that
way, Israel was able to interfere with the proper functioning and
development of the PA institutions.
*In accordance with Israel’s demand, it was stipulated in the
negotiations that it would continue to control the Palestinian
population registry, which meant that Israel alone had the power to
decide whether to grant Palestinian residency, to whom, when and to how
many. In the Interim Agreement there is a provision that empowers the
Palestinian Authority to carry out a few changes in the population
registry, such as changes of address and personal status but they are
required to inform the Israeli side of the change. At the end of 1996 it
became clear to the Palestinians that Israel was refusing to recognize
changes of address as listed on identity cards from towns in Gaza to
towns in the West Bank (mainly for thousands of people who were born in
Gaza but had been residing in the West Bank for many years), while it
was approving changes of address within the West Bank or within the Gaza
Strip. This seemingly minor bureaucratic measure has tremendous significance: It proves that Israel continued to
relate the Gaza Strip as an entity separate from the West Bank. For
Israel — Gaza is a separate enclave.
*Also
in 1997, Israel prohibited inhabitants of the Gaza Strip from entering
the West Bank from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge border crossing. Since
the regime of individual travel permits was imposed in January of 1991,
Palestinians who did not receive a permit to transit through Israel on
their way to the West Bank discovered that they could do a big detour:
They left through the Rafah crossing point into Egypt and from there
they traveled to Jordan and entered the West Bank via the Allenby
crossing. These were mainly students enrolled at the universities in the
West Bank, members of split families, businesspeople, PA officials and
others whose applications or permits to transit through Israel and been
denied. Ever since 1997, inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are also required
to apply for a permit to enter via Allenby (and these permits are
granted only in rare cases) — yet more proof that Israel relates to the
two parts of Palestinian territory as separate entities, in
contravention of the Declaration of Principles.
*The
provision concerning water in the Interim Agreement is an especially
cynical reflection of Israel’s attitude towards Gaza as a separate
enclave. Apart from a few million cubic meters of water that flowed into
the Gaza Strip from Israel (as compensation for the high-quality sweet
water pumped within its territory for the benefit of the Israeli
settlements), the Gaza Strip was required then and is required now to
make do with the aquifer within its boundaries. The same aquifer that
supplied water to the approximately 80,000 original Palestinians who
lived there before 1948, continued to supply water to the refugee population that was
added (about 200,000 people) in 1949, and to the population that had
grown to about 900,000 by 1994 and stands at about 2 million people
today. Since the end of the 1980s Gaza has been suffering from seepage
of sea water into its ground water because of over-pumping. Instead of
the simple solution of piping in water from Israeli territory into Gaza
(which would have compensated somewhat for the vast amounts of water
Israel pumps from sources in the West Bank for the benefit of Israelis
inside Israel and in the settlements) — Israel has forced the Gaza
Strip to maintain an autarkic water economy. Thus the Gaza Strip reached
the catastrophic situation it is in today, with 97 percent of its water
unfit for drinking.
*The Goldstein massacre: Not only were the violent Hebron settlers not evacuated from the city, they were also given
a reward. The Rabin government punished the Palestinians for the
massacre that a Jewish-Israeli citizen committed there and were put
under a prolonged curfew. Then a series of restrictions on movement were
imposed on the Palestinians in order to implement the principle of
separation between them and the settlers, while giving preference to the
convenience and welfare of the few Jews at the expense of the
Palestinian majority.
*Despite the impression of “reciprocity” and “symmetry” between the
Palestinians and the Israelis that the Declaration of Principles tried
to create, throughout the negotiation process the status of the
Palestinian prisoners was not made equivalent to that of the Israeli
soldiers, despite the fact that their commanders — who at the time were
meeting and negotiating with the other side — had similarly sent them to
fight and kill. The Palestinian prisoners were depicted as criminals
whose names and places of residence were common knowledge and the
Israelis — as heroes. Release of prisoners was not even mentioned in the
Declaration of Principles. The partial releases later on were always
accompanied by humiliations and procrastination and did not include
Palestinians who had killed Israelis prior to the signing of the Oslo
agreements. In the 1990s Israel continued to demolish
Palestinian structures in the West Bank, on the grounds of lack of a
permit, when everyone knew that ever since the 1970s Israel had been
very stingy about granting building permits to Palestinians and
developing master plans for them.
*In July of 1994,
during the Oslo days and under a Labor-Meretz government, eviction
orders were issued to Bedouin of the Jahalin tribe for the sake of the
expansion of the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. In May of 1995 the High
Court of Justice rejected petitions against the eviction. Similar
eviction orders were issued to other small communities of herders and
farmers — people who traditionally and in order to earn a living spend a
considerable portion of their time on lands that are outside their
villages of origin, for example along what was to become Highway 443
(from erusalem to Modi’in) and in the Etzion Bloc.
*The Interim
Agreement established a blatantly unequal division of the water sources
in the West Bank and determined a quota on the amount of water
Palestinians are permitted to consume (no such quota was imposed on the
settlers). The water drilling in the Jordan Valley supplied and
continues to supply the approximately 6,000 settlers there with an
amount of water equivalent to about one-quarter of the amount allotted
to approximately 1.5 million to 2 million Palestinians. At meetings of
the joint water committee, it very quickly became clear to the
Palestinians that it was better for them to request approval of water
pipes with a diameter smaller than the diameter they had initially
planned — otherwise the Israeli side would not approve the proposed
project.
*Even though in the agreement there is a provision to the effect that the two sides will not carry out any changes that could affect the
results of the permanent status agreement, at the end of 1995 the
Interior Ministry headed by Haim Ramon began to revoke the residency
status of thousands of Jerusalem Palestinians, on the grounds that their
center of life was no longer in the city. This gave the signal for what
has been called the silent transfer, expulsion of people from the city,
the divestment of their legal status and identity papers and the
development of a regime of surveillance and spying on tens of thousands
of Palestinians by the Interior Ministry and the National Insurance
Institute. The restrictions on building in Jerusalem also remained in
force and the regime of travel permits cut off the natural connection
Palestinians had with this economic, religious, social and cultural
center.
*Another signal was the division of the West Bank
into areas of control A, B, and C that would be adapted to the
principle of the gradual redeployment of the Israel Defense Forces
(which was mistakenly called a withdrawal) — first from the towns, then
from the villages and finally from the less inhabited areas that are the
future reserves of land and space for the Palestinian entity. Even if
we ignore the fact that Israel determined the pace of the redeployment
and when and where it would stop, the agreement does not establish the
size of the area that Israel would ultimately leave. Each side
interpreted this in accordance with its own wishes and the vagueness
once again worked to the benefit of the stronger side, Israel.
Twenty-five years later, Area C under full Israeli control covers more than 60 percent of the area of the West Bank. There was security
logic to the gradual redeployment of the army but the retention by
Israel of the civil and administrative responsibilities in Area C gave
it time to grab more land. Israel has kept and is keeping most of the
West Bank for itself as an area where it is limiting Palestinian
construction and development to a bare minimum, and as a reserve of land
for the endless spread of the settlements.
*The bypass roads were built so that the settlers
would not have to travel to their homes via the Palestinian towns. They
butchered the area of the West Bank with no consideration for the
relationships between the Palestinian urban centers and their
hinterlands of surrounding towns and villages, and cut off historic
routes. The bypass roads were a tool for perpetuating an agreement that
was supposed to have been temporary. The organization of the
geographical space and construction were tailored to the needs of the
settlers in the present, which are also the needs of the settlement
project in the future: Thus for example, the “tunnels road,” paved the
way to the Etzion Bloc practically becoming a prestigious southern
suburb of Jerusalem. The guarantees given to the settlers in the Interim
Agreement obviate the need for a permanent status agreement that would
have necessitated their evacuation, and thus more Israelis have been
lured into coming to live in the settlements and to demand that they
remain in place.
*Israel did not see fit to pursue “confidence
building measures” related to issues of land and territory. The Israeli
side could have compensated the Palestinians for confiscating land for
bypass roads, for example, by means of returning hundreds of thousands
of dunams of land that were declared “state lands” in the 1980s, in a
sly process that contravened international law. That didn’t happen,
because from the outset Israel did not give up its mantra of “as much
territory as possible, with as few Arabs as possible.”
Thus, the control of Area C, the retention of
bans on building and access for the Palestinians, the construction of
the settlements and the network of bypass roads – all of these have
together led to the creation of numerous disconnected Palestinian
enclaves that are swallowed up in the Israeli expanse, in a process that
has replicated in the West Bank the same reality that characterizes the
Gaza enclave. In the course of the Oslo process, much thought was
invested – not toward advancing peace, but toward the establishment of
Palestinian enclaves.
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