update Final Status Negotiations turning into Shadow Fighting

Official final status negotiations on the core issues of the Palestinian/Arab - Israeli conflict opened according to schedule in September 1999 and were temporarily discontinued four months later, without having proceeded beyond the presentation of the initial starting positions by the Israeli and Palestinian delegations (see al Majdal/ 4). Negotiations went into crisis in January 2000 over Israel's aggressive settlement policy in the 1967 occupied territories. More than 3,000 new settlement units have been started since Barak was elected, bringing the total number of units under construction in Israeli settlements to 7,120, nearly 2,000 more than under Netanyahu (Peace Now figures cited by AP, 21/2/00).

 Negotiations were officially discontinued inFebruary, as a result of the unilateral Israeli decision to exclude Palestinian lands in the vicinity of Jerusalem (Abu Dis, Anata, al- Sawwahra) from the areas scheduled for the second Israeli redeployment from 6.1 percent of the West Bank based on the Sharem Al-Sheikh Memorandum (September 1999).

 The persistent effort of the Barak government, confident of Israel's political and military power, to kneel and humiliate the Palestinian leadership in the process of the implementation of the outstanding interim agreements, rather than the diametrically opposed final status positions on the core issues - refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, and future borders - were thus the source of the new negotiations crisis.

The maintenance of the fragile Israeli government coalition, including religious and immigrant based political parties with diametrically opposed social programs is Ehud Barak's main concern. Rather than negotiating with his Palestinian counterpart, he has converted the negotiation process into an internal Israeli affair. Expansionist policies and an arrogant, colonialist attitude towards the Palestinian people serve as a tool for the appeasement of Barak's strong, right wing coalition partners.

This approach resulted in an abortive effort in Cairo at the beginning of February to revive the quadripartite negotiations concerning the 1967 displaced Palestinians, ongoing controversy over the opening of the northern "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank, and the rejection of Palestinian priorities for the transfer of West Bank land in the latest Israeli redeployment.

With the collapse of the Syrian-Israeli negotiations in February over the Israeli government's refusal to give a prior commitment to full
withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights and the brutal Israeli military attacks on Lebanon, only renewed pressure by the US government could bring the regional parties back to the negotiation table. Israeli-Syrian negotiations were initially scheduled to resume, according to US plans, following the summit meeting between US President Clinton and Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in Switzerland on March 26.

No new rounds of negotiation were announced, however, following the one-day summit. On the Israeli-Palestinian track, special US envoy Dennis Ross announced in Ramallah on 8 March that Palestinian-Israeli final status negotiations would be resumed after the Moslem feast in the second half of March.

As in the past, the heavy US involvement gives rise to great concern. Determined to keep the Oslo process alive, the US administration wants to see an Israeli-Palestinian framework agreement on final status issues achieved by May 2000 (original deadline: February 2000). The setting prepared for the new round of final status negotiations under US auspices allows for maximum pressure.

Starting on March 21, Israeli and Palestinian negotiation teams headed by Oded Eran and Yasser Abed Rabbo met in seclusion for one week at Bolling Air Force base on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington. "We have to do this in a way that is basically out of the limelight," stated Dennis Ross, "that allows them to do some serious  brainstorming …" (Jerusalem Post, 21/3/00) . The initial round at Bolling ended on March 28 with talks scheduled to resume on April 6. The question of whether or not the Palestinian delegation will be coerced this time into accepting a framework for the settlement of the historical Israeli-Palestinian conflict which falls short of meeting Palestinian rights as defined by UN Resolutions and international law is, however, of secondary importance. Palestinian alienation from the US-Israeli staged "peace process" has become universal and comprehensive.

New from BADIL
Information & Discussion Briefs BADIL Information & Discussion Briefs aim to support the Palestinian-Arab and international debate about strategies for promotion of Palestinian refugees’ right of return, restitution, and compensation in the framework of a just and durable solution of the Palestinian/ Arab - Israeli conflict. The Briefs are included in the new Packet for the Campaign for the efense of Palestinian Refugee Rights (see page 2). Briefs can also be ordered separately or downloaded from BADIL’s website.
New Briefs will be published on an occassional basis.

Refugees in exile, in the 1967 occupied territories, as well as internally displaced Palestinians in Israel have stated clearly that  hey will challenge any agreement which will not provide for the implementation of their right of return  and restitution. Their stand is supported by all sectors of Palestinian society that are no longer willing to share in a process which undermines the existence of the Palestinian people:

"We are concerned that what is being contrived is not peace, but the seeds of future wars…We state, in all clarity, that we see only

Corrections

The full reference for Refugee Voices from Lebanon in Issue No. 4 (page 33) of al Majdal should have read via Mayssoun Soukarieh, Beit Atfal as-Sumoud. The percentage of Special Hardship Cases in Gaza listed in Issue No. 4 (page 25) should have read 8.3%, which is a 0.8% increase over 1998.


two solutions for a just settlement of the Palestine question. The first solution is based on the establishment of a Palestinian state, with complete sovereignty over the lands occupied by Israel in 1967 and Jerusalem as its capital, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the  recognition by Israel of the historic injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people… The second solution is the establishment of one democratic bi-national state for the two peoples on the historic land of Palestine…

We address this message, first and foremost, to those Israelis who believe in the values of justice and equity, and to all those who aspire for peace the world over. We want to tell them that the settlement the Israeli leadership is seeking to impose on the Palestinian negotiator could not be a settlement with the Palestinian people. It will be a fragile settlement bearing within it the seeds of its own destruction. We will neither support nor accept it…" (Message to the Israeli and Jewish Public issued by 125 Palestinian public personalities,
March 2000)