http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2000-07/wheels260700.shtml
Wheels Come Off a Golden Carriage
that Was Always Just a Pumpkin
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, 26 July 2000
So who is surprised? Who on earth - barring CNN and an increasingly
desperate President Clinton - really thought they could turn the
pumpkin of the Oslo agreement into a golden carriage of peace? What
folly prompted Yasser Arafat to accept that agreement seven years ago,
a treaty without guarantees, which promised no statehood, no end to
Jewish settlements, no return of Palestinian refugees and - most
important of all - no capital in Jerusalem? The carriage may have
looked good on the White House lawn in 1993, with its "historic"
handshake between Messers Arafat and Rabin, and Mr Clinton quoting
the Koran. But it had no wheels.
Seven years ago, it was all about trust - Technicolor trust -
the "peace of the brave", the euphoria of two old enemies, the
sons of Abraham making friends. But everything they should have been
talking about - Jerusalem, settlers, refugees, statehood - was
postponed for three years. And such was the nature of this lop-sided,
hopelessly unfair agreement, that the deadlines slipped away and only
now, after another three years' delay have the antagonists confronted
reality: Oslo doesn't work.
Just look at what it originally said. The Oslo Declaration of Principles,
Article 1 ("Aim of Negotiations") said specifically that "it is understood
that... final status negotiations will lead to the implementation of Security
Council Resolutions 242 and 338."
These 1967 and 1973 resolutions called for the withdrawal of Israeli
forces from Arab territories seized in the 1967 war and the security of all
states (including Israel) in the area. But Oslo allowed the Israelis to
renegotiate Resolution 242, to decide which bits of occupied territory it
would give back - the garbage tip of Gaza, for example - and which
parts it would keep: Jerusalem and most of the settlements.
And by yesterday Mr Clinton, in his statement of defeat, was reduced to
changing the very terms of Oslo, announcing only that the negotiations
were "based" on 242 and 338 - which was not what Oslo stipulated at
all. Mr Arafat must have realised that the end had come when Madeleine
Albright made her preposterous offer - immortalised in a report in
yesterday's New York Times - of "a sense of sovereignty" over the
Muslim religious sites of Jerusalem. So much for statehood. So much for
an Israeli withdrawal from occupied East Jerusalem. So much for a halt to
settlement building. Even the silly villages which Mr Arafat might have
controlled outside his would-be capital would have "virtually [sic]
full sovereignty", according to the Americans.
Yitzhak Rabin died for his peace treaty with the Palestinians but Mr
Arafat is not the stuff of which martyrs are made. He knows what
happened to Michael Collins after another hopelessly one-sided "peace".
Yet what can Mr Arafat tell his people now? Seven years ago, I drove the
by-pass roads that Israel was building to prevent Palestinians reaching
Jerusalem. "Arafat's Road to Ruin" was the headline to my story. Israel's
friends exploded in rage. What cynicism. What bias. Did we not realise
that Oslo represented the best chance for peace in a hundred years?
Sadly, the story of that winding road was all too accurate. It ran out,
yesterday, at Camp David. Ehud Barak wouldn't give up Jerusalem. He
wouldn't abandon the settlements. Mr Arafat would not make the
"concession" - for which read capitulation - of ceding Israeli control
over all of Jerusalem. So the sons of Abraham acknowledged what so many
Israelis and Palestinians knew all along: Oslo didn't work. Mr Clinton
predictably saw fit to praise the stronger of the two parties - he spoke
of Mr Barak's "courage", vision", etc - but merely referred to Mr Arafat's
"commitment". So much for America's role as the "honest broker" of the
Middle East peace.
Offered virtual sovereignty to secure virtual peace, the Palestinian
leadership - corrupt and effete and undemocratic - preferred failure to
humiliation. Now they are supposed to talk it all through again by
mid-September. And Mr Clinton says they must avoid "unilateral action"
- he meant a declaration of statehood by Mr Arafat, something the
Israelis have threatened to oppose with annexation. Have no doubt, it
may be all Mr Arafat has left to offer Palestinians. Virtual statehood,
that is.
