Thema: Roadmap
A PALESTINIAN VIEW
Roadblocks
[HEBREW]
by Ghassan Khatib
* Ghassan Khatib is minister of labor in the Palestinian Authority cabinet.
He has served for many years as a political analyst and media contact.
This new-old American roadmap begins with a roadblock of
the kind that Palestinians are now very familiar with. Not even two lines
into the document, there is the attempt to subordinate a meaningful
political process to alterations in the structure of the Palestinian
leadership. Stage one of phase one of the roadmap does its best to dictate
internal Palestinian politics, dabbling in constitutional change, the
appointment of a prime minister and other aspects of political "reform." The
document also calls for Legislative Council elections without a presidential
vote--an imposed limit on our democratic rights and a violation of the
current Palestinian constitution or what we call the Basic Law.
Given the historic Palestinian sensitivity towards any
interference in their internal political makeup (and by inference, their
political positions) it is not likely that we will get very far past this
first roadblock onto the important aspects of the plan. That Palestinian
sensitivity is born of the understanding that Israel is not happy with the
negotiating positions of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and is
therefore trying to use "constitutional reforms" to marginalize him. (Never
mind that the negotiating positions of President Arafat enjoy wide support
from the Palestinian people.)
There are some other omissions in the plan, for example, its complete lack
of reference to the Palestine Liberation Organization, despite that the PLO
was signatory to all official agreements between Palestinians and Israelis,
and despite that the PLO is the only legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people. Palestinians would be right to suspect that the omission
of the PLO, with the Palestinian Authority addressed in its place, is meant
to exploit the difference between the two: that the Palestinian Authority
administers only half of the Palestinian people, those present inside the
Palestinian territories, and is restricted to the role assigned it by the
Oslo accords. (Then again, not even that important benchmark between
Palestinians and Israelis is referenced in the US roadmap.)
Examining the three phases of the document, they include some significant
principles, such as the need to end the occupation, stop settlement
expansion, and establish a Palestinian state. On the other hand, there are a
great number of other inclusions that will hinder the implementation of
those principles.
In the first phase, any political progress and any progress towards ending
the Israeli occupation is conditioned on ending Palestinian "violence" and
conducting Palestinian "reforms" including "constitutional change." This
repeats the long-standing American mistake present in both Tenet and Zinni's
attempts, and tries to mix the cause with the effect by adopting the Israeli
understanding that the Israeli occupation and its atrocities are a response
to Palestinian violence, while Palestinians understand their resistance to
be an effect of the Israeli occupation and reoccupation, the killing of
Palestinian civilians, collective punishment and other violations of
Palestinian human rights.
At least the document could have been more balanced by asking for mutual
concessions in the first phase, such as Palestinian security cooperation
hand-in-hand with an end to Israeli violence, settlement expansion and
ongoing reoccupation.
It is not so easily forgotten that the last Quartet statement required
Israel to stop settlement expansion during the first phase, while in "the
roadmap," this important part has been moved to later on. It is as if the
United States is telling Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hurry up and
finish his unprecedented settlement expansion and the "apartheid wall"
between Israel and the West Bank, before it is too late.
The second phase is dominated by the idea of declaring a Palestinian state
that has temporary borders. First of all, the areas under Palestinian
Authority control according to past agreements do not a feasible state make.
Second and more importantly, since the permanent borders will then be
subject to negotiations and since we tried and failed to reach agreement
over borders with a less hard-line government than this one, it isn't
difficult to extrapolate that those temporary borders may very well wind up
being final.
As to phase three, the roadmap rightly refers to the need to establish a
Palestinian state after ending Israel's 35-year occupation. This is
unfortunately qualified by the closing paragraph, which refers to an Israeli
withdrawal to secure and "agreed-upon" borders. Therefore, written into this
document is Israel's veto power over United Nations Security Council
Resolution 242, which declares the inadmissibility of the acquisition of
land by force and calls to end that illegal occupation in return for peace.
All in all, this roadmap depicts a path filled with nearly as
many roadblocks, obstacles and checkpoints as the occupied Palestinian
territories themselves.
Published 28/10/02 (c)
bitterlemons.org
hagalil.com 13-04-2003 |
