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Mitchell Commission shows tilted 'balance'
By Michael Jansen, 05/2001
The Palestine National Authority has accepted the report of the
Mitchell Commission on the causes of the Palestinian Intifada, calling
the document "balanced".
However, the document is only "balanced" because on most contentious
issues it states the positions of both sides in "balanced" fashion
without taking sides. The PNA should not be satisfied with such a
"balanced" approach because "balance" cannot resolve the existential
conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinians are
battling for their physical existence against the region's major
military power which is determined to prevent them from exercising
national self-determination on their own soil.
The Mitchell Commission, chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell
who helped to broker the Northern Ireland peace accord, calculated too
carefully the negative impact of a critical report on Israel and its
influential and highly vocal international constituency. Therefore,
the commission's report is a blatant political document designed as
much to avoid as to address controversial issues, with a couple of
exceptions.
First, the commission does its best to take an even-handed stand on
the sensitive question of how the Intifada began. It makes the point
that the visit of the then opposition leader Ariel Sharon,
"accompanied by over 1,000 Israeli police officers" (and soldiers), to
the Haram Al Sharif last September did not cause the Intifada. But it
makes the point that Israel's brutal suppression of subsequent
protests was a major contributor to the insurrection.
Second, the commission does not accept the Israeli contention that the
Intifada was planned by the PNA in order to secure, by "violence", the
West Bank-Gaza state it could not achieve through negotiations. By
rejecting the Israeli "PNA plot" accusation, the commission implies
that the Intifada is, indeed, as the Palestinians contend, a
spontaneous uprising. However, the commission says the Palestinians
did not do enough to curb "violence" once it started while Israel
employed excessive "lethal force" to put down Palestinian protests.
And, third, the commission flatly rejects the Israeli definition of
the ongoing struggle as an "armed conflict short of war".
The main recommendation of the commission is that the parties should
put "an end to all violence". While, on the surface, this seems an
appropriate recommendation, it is not. Palestinian "violence" is not
"violence" per se but resistance against Israeli occupation, which is
a form of geo-politico-military violence against the entire
Palestinian people. Therefore, a call for an end to Palestinian
"violence" - that is, resistance to occupation - should be coupled
with a demand for an end to the Israeli occupation. No one in the
Allied camp would have dared suggest the French or Poles halt their
resistance against the Nazi occupation of their countries during World
War II.
The commission recommends that the PNA make an "all-out effort to
enforce a complete cessation of violence" and that Israel make a "100
per cent effort to ensure that potential friction points, where
Palestinians come into contact with armed Israelis" do not spark
confrontations. The commission also calls for a prompt resumption of
security cooperation between the parties.
The second recommendation is that the two sides should make an effort
to "rebuild confidence". The initial item the commission says should
be addressed is "terrorism", defined as "the deliberate killing and
injuring of randomly selected non-combatants for political ends. It
seeks to promote a political outcome by spreading terror and
demoralisation throughout a population".
Here the commission adopts the Israeli view that the PNA must adopt a
strong line against "terrorism" and take "measures to prevent
terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators. This effort should
include immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists
operating within the PNA's jurisdiction." The commission does not,
however, castigate Israel for its routine and widespread use of
"terrorism" against the Palestinian populace: the bombardment of
Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps, indiscriminate fire
into inhabited areas, constant overflight of Palestinian enclaves by
Israeli warplanes and helicopters and assassinations of Palestinian
community leaders and militants. These actions fit as snugly into the
commission's definition of "terrorism" as Palestinian mortar salvoes
on Israeli settlements, bomb explosions in Israeli towns and murders
of Israeli settlers. The difference between the two "terrorisms" is
that Palestinian "terrorism" is not PNA policy while Israeli
"terrorism" is state initiated and implemented.
The refusal to tackle Israel's use of "terrorism" is the major
shortcoming in the commission's treatment of "violence", amounting to
a serious lack of "balance" in its approach to the conflict.
The commission attempts to make up for this by taking a tough line
against Israeli settlements, calling for a total freeze on all
settlement activity, including "natural growth" of existing
settlements, the rubric under which Israel has doubled the settlement
population since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. Israel has
flatly rejected this recommendation. The commission also recommends
that Israel "lift closures, transfer to the PNA all revenues owed, and
permit Palestinians who have been employed in Israel to return to
their jobs."
On the deployment of an international force demanded by the PNA to
protect the Palestinians, the commission takes a non-committal line,
saying that such a force "would need the support of both parties".
The third recommendation is that the parties "resume negotiations",
but it refuses to define the starting point. Israel calls for
"unconditional talks", but says it will not resume negotiations at the
point where they were broken off in January, the demand of the
Palestinian side. Thus, the commission does nothing to break the
impasse on the resumption of negotiations. Instead, the commission,
weakly, calls for implementation of outstanding provisions of existing
agreements. This, too, is a contentious issue because each side has a
long list of complaints against the other.
It is tragically all-too-clear that the Mitchell Commission failed to
seriously deal with the basic issues which divide Palestinians and
Israelis and to honestly apportion blame for the eruption of
"violence" in the West Bank and Gaza. Like so many commissions and
investigative committees which have tried to tackle the
Palestine-Israel problem over the decades, the Mitchell Commission
fell victim to pro-Israel political pressures. Consequently, the
commission is unlikely to make any contribution towards resurrecting
the moribund peace process.
It is no coincidence that Israel leaked the draft text of the
commission's report - which was meant to remain confidential until the
two sides submitted their reactions - at the very time it was
preparing to release its revisions to the Jordanian-Egyptian peace
proposal. These revisions were published yesterday in the Israeli
daily, Haaretz.
Israel deems the first section of the plan - a list of steps "to end
the current crisis" - "unbalanced" and proposes the elimination of the
second point which demands an end to "the military, (financial), and
economic siege, and the blockade on the free movement of materials and
food supplies, as well as refraining from the use of internationally
prohibited weapons". Thus, while Israel proposes an end to "closure",
it, inconsistently, refuses to drop its strategy of besieging
Palestinian population centres.
Amongst the confidence-building measures included in the
Jordanian-Egyptian plan, Israel rejects a "total and immediate freeze
of all settlement activities" and proposes instead a pledge not to
establish any "new settlements", its standard response. Israel drops
two other key items: mutual implementation of all security commitments
and mutual implementation of all other outstanding commitments agreed
by the parties.
Finally, Israel formally rejects the proposition that negotiations
should, in the words of the Jordanian-Egyptian plan, "pre-serve and
develop the progress that has been achieved during the period from
November 1999 until January 2001", including the Taba round of talks
on Jan. 21-28 .
Israel's counter-proposal guts the Jordanian-Egyptian plan which has
attracted the support of the US and Europe and even the weak-kneed
Mitchell Commission. But it is unlikely that the external backers of
the plan will exert themselves to counter Israel's strategy to
undermine the commission's recommendations and wreck the
Jordanian-Egyptian initiative.
Mr. Michael Jansen contributed this article to the Jordan Times.
