The Israel-Arab Reader (95 page)

ISSUES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

PALESTINIAN RESPONSIBILITIES

The Palestinian side reaffirms its commitments to the following measures and principles in accordance with the Interim Agreement:

OTHER ISSUES

Either party is free to raise other issues not specified above related to implementation of the Interim Agreement and obligations of both sides arising from the Interim Agreement.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

I wanted personally to congratulate you on the successful conclusion of the “Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron.” It represents an important step forward in the Oslo peace process and reaffirms my conviction that a just and lasting peace will be established between Israelis and Palestinians in the very near future.

In this connection, I can assure you that it remains the policy of the United States to support and promote full implementation of the Interim Agreement in all of its parts. We intend to continue our efforts to help ensure that all outstanding commitments are carried out by both parties in a cooperative spirit and on the basis of reciprocity. As part of this process, I have impressed upon Chairman Arafat the imperative need for the Palestinian Authority to make every effort to ensure public order and internal security within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I have stressed to him that effectively carrying out this major responsibility will be a critical foundation for completing implementation of the Interim Agreement, as well as the peace process as a whole. I wanted you to know that, in this context, I have advised Chairman Arafat of U.S. views on Israel's process of redeploying its forces, designating specified military locations and transferring additional powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority. In this regard, I have conveyed our belief, that the first phase of further redeployments should take place as soon as possible, and that all three phases of the further redeployments should be completed within twelve months from the implementation of the first phase of the further redeployments but not later than mid-1998.

Mr. Prime Minister, you can be assured that the United States' commitment to Israel's security is ironclad and constitutes the fundamental cornerstone of our special relationship. The key element in our approach to peace, including the negotiation and implementation of agreements between Israel and its Arab partners, has always been a recognition of Israel's security requirements. Moreover, a hallmark of U.S. policy remains our commitment to work cooperatively to seek to meet the security needs that Israel identifies. Finally, I would like to reiterate our position that Israel is entitled to secure and defensible borders, which should be directly negotiated and agreed with its neighbors.

Marwan Barghouti, Husam Khader, Hisham Abdul Razik all belong to the same past of struggle, weapons and jail detentions, and all of them, once wartime was over, left the battlefield to sit in the designated place where statebuilding was to occur: the Palestine Legislative Council.

The battle began when they were very young. Husam Khader was 10 years old when his friend, Khader Daoud, held his hand in Balata Camp and took him to a demonstration. At 14, he entered prison for the first time. He was to go through those prison doors another 22 times. Abdul Razik was 16 when he was first jailed. His first incarceration, under administrative detention, was short, but the second, because of the bomb he was carrying in his car, (which exploded and injured him) lasted two decades. Marwan Barghouti's personal memories also count many years in and out of prison, starting from school age, and a lengthy deportation.

The peace talks shifted the struggle from weapons to a democratic parliament, from the battleground to the table and from stone and violence to peaceful rallies. The struggle, indeed, is not over, yet. We are still striving to regain the human rights which have been stolen from Palestinians. We are still working for peace, and want to support it in this difficult time, says Hisham Abdul Razik. Marwan Barghouti feels the same. He points out that, in the past years, during, before and after the intifada, we were fighting to end the occupation. We got an agreement in 1993, but the occupation still persists. We change our way of fighting, but the goal is the same. If there is disappointment because of the continuing dispute with the Israelis, there is also disappointment from the Palestinian reality. We have been given the opportunity to start a new country, but we haven't done it well. Some people misinterpreted the power they were given; they have forgotten the honesty and loyalty of the years of the struggle for independence, so the battle now is also to stop corruption, says Husam Khader. Sometimes it is extremely hard because you confront people you shared important resistance moments with.

In some ways, it was easier to oppose a well-defined, external enemy before than to deal with political adversaries now.

Opposition is a natural part of a democratic society. We should worry if there wasn't any. But it has to express itself in the Parliament. And respecting each other the majority and the minority should join together in a common effort to establish a Palestinian state and a lasting and fair peace, says Hisham Abdul Razik.

It is not so simple to fully adopt a democratic system at the drop of a hat. Palestinians under occupation looked at and dreamt of the Israeli near democracy; those in the Diaspora experienced life in democratic nations. But to implement democracy within such a short period has turned out to be quite a complicated matter.

I would like to see more respect for political pluralism, more respect for the political institutions and for the Parliament's activities, says Marwan Barghouti. And also greater freedom of press. The point is, according to Khader, that the Palestinian Authority does not take into enough consideration the decisions and recommendations of the Legislative Council. Often, they simply put our suggestions away in a drawer. He also suggests the establishment of a Council of Ministries, a clearer definition of their powers and the creation of a steering committee to oversee political activities and procedures.

The Oslo agreement underlined the fact that, for these three, Palestinians had achieved a certain historical maturity which called for a change in our minds and in the means we were using. Or, as Abdul Razik puts it, “Palestinians have been living with slogans for 100 years. But with peace the time came to put them aside, because we realized that peace would be the only solution to getting some of our rights back and to be able to start living like any other nation.” Since then, the same hands that held guns and threw stones have been holding briefcases and signing papers. It was easy to have unconditional respect from people when I was a freedom fighter, says Barghouti. But now it is much more difficult. At that time, we were only focused on the war against the occupiers. I didn't pay too much attention to the needs of the people, to the disastrous situation of electricity, sewage system, roads. But as a politician, I need to be aware of the people's priorities, of their needs. And sometime it's hard to meet all their expectations, to earn their full trust and understanding.

From the 74 meetings he held last year, Barghouti says Palestinians' biggest concerns are—in that order—the confiscation of lands which is still going on to expand and ensure the presence of settlements; the lack of jobs; and the inadequacy of the infrastructure. The close contact with people makes them aware that this is the vital moment to create a social and economic environment that responds to the demands of the population. This has became a must for this generation of fighters transformed into politicians by historical reasons. The best tools they can put to work in the service of Palestine are the tolerance, the patience, the respect of the people, and the stubborn will to reach a goal that they acquired during the occupation years, as Barghouti says. But they must also possess the ability to listen carefully, because there is a changing ground swell that needs to be heard, says Khader, who believes that the PLO's political system, which fit in the intifada period, is no longer suitable to these new circumstances.

And all of them are striving to guarantee a true democracy that grants everyone rights, and freedom of expression, and which is able to protect any person in the society, beginning with the family, as Abdul Razik puts it. Obstinate activists and efficient leaders during their youth, all three men are now husbands and fathers. Their striving for a better Palestine assumes then a deeper meaning, because to accomplish the agenda they set to free the country before, and to fairly build it later, will become part of the precious heritage they will leave to their sons and daughters.

The picture they have of a future Palestine is one that is no longer in flames, no longer watered with blood, but a country resting in peace, the real peace that the land which hosts three religions deserves, as Abdul Razik vividly and poetically describes it. More concretely, they want a Palestine where the values of respect, for individuals, for ethnic, religious or political minorities, for established social, legal and economic institutions as well as those being built, and respect for a multi-party parliament. That respect is the only way for the values of freedom and peace to take root, the only ground on which a truly independent country can blossom.

We cannot give up on these accords because we paid a price for this agreement when we agreed to partition Palestine into two states. The Palestinians made historic concessions in order to achieve specific national goals. . . . The agreement could work with an Israeli partner, and has not worked because of the lack of an Israeli partner. We lost the one partner who participated in setting up the accords with the PLO, and later with the PA. . . . We did have problems with the Labor government in terms of implementation; these problems stemmed from attempts to change portions of the agreement but were nonetheless still within the framework of the agreement. The real obstacle arose with the arrival of a government which from the very beginning did not believe in a peace agreement with the Palestinians. It does not believe that there is a Palestinian people and Palestinian land, or that this people has legitimate political rights. However, because it can't say this openly, it goes around the agreement by making verbal commitments to all the while trying to kill it. This is the real political problem. It is not the text of the agreement itself that is the problem, but the lack of an Israeli partner willing to stick to the peace process and reach the political goal “a historic reconciliation” guaranteed by the accords on the principle of mutual recognition of political rights.

It constituted a huge turning point on the road to establishment of a Palestinian state, an adjustment to the path of the Palestinian political movement, and a reassessment of the sociopolitical status and entity of the Palestinian people after their long journey of desolation and dispersion, the Palestinian revolution, the PLO and Palestinian armed struggle. The struggle now has a legitimate political role far beyond the importance of the PLO, which is still considered the spiritual nation. However, the Palestinian land remains under occupation, and hopes are still centered on the land and people. The accords helped to make this adjustment, and the dynamics of the Oslo process served as the basic foundation for this new perspective on the Palestinian entity and nation.

There is no agreement which is good for one side alone. An agreement is a compromise between two sides . . . The one point which people sometimes hold against the agreement is that the binding mechanism for implementation is unclear. We tried to maintain a balance between the time agenda for implementation and the force of implementation. Perhaps the gap between the obligation to implement and actual implementation within the time frame was not guaranteed in one way or the other. However, this issue was not as easy five years ago, as historians or readers seem to think. The Israelis also realized that they needed to change parts of the agreement but were in a better position to do so. Both sides felt that there were things which should have been amended. But the Palestinians do not have the power to make changes, while the Israelis do. This is the political problem but again, there is no agreement which is good for one side alone. Either both sides benefit or both sides do not, no agreement is bad for both sides unless it is one of surrender . . .