By Munir K. Nasser
Chief Correspondent, Washington, DC
Albawaba.com
A Palestinian American expert said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat could not afford to alienate the new Bush administration by rejecting the Clinton Peace plan.
Dr. Shibley Telhami said in an interview with Albawaba.com that what Arafat does between now and January 20th is very critical for how the new administration is going to look at the Palestinians and the Israelis. “He has to play that very, very carefully,” he said.
He believes the new president-elect George Bush “is not going to risk his presidency in the first few months on such a risky proposition.”
Telhami said if a peace deal was not signed in the last days of the Clinton administration “it probably won’t happen” and has to wait a while.
He noted that the new Clinton proposals on the Jerusalem issue are much closer to the Palestinian position. “At Camp David, in the areas of Haram Al-Sharif, the Israelis never offered, not even joint sovereignty on the Haram, and insisted on Israeli sovereignty,” he said.
Telhami currently holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He was appointed last week by President Clinton as the first Palestinian American scholar to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace.
The following are excerpts from the interview:
Q- Would it be possible for Israel and the Palestinians to sign a peace deal before Clinton leaves office in 16 days?
A- Not only possible, but if it doesn’t happen in those few days, it probably wont happen. Bush is not going to risk his presidency in the first few months on such a risky proposition. I think it would be foolish for him as a President to take a first major step of his presidency to work on an issue that eluded Clinton for eight years. If Clinton doesn’t do it, it has to wait a while.
Q- How is that going to affect the new Bush administration?
A- It is going to define the attitude of President Bush. Think about the opposite: If Arafat signs a deal with Barak, then Barak goes to elections February 6, the Israeli people reject the agreement, and they elect Sharon. The US is already on the side of Arafat, because he is the one who signed the agreement, and Israel is rejecting it. This will define the attitude of the new US administration. So what Arafat does between now and January 20th is very critical for how the new administration is going to look at the Palestinians and the Israelis. He has to play that very, very carefully.
Q- Last week a headline in Ha’aretz daily read: ‘Arafat’s Fatal Choice: No to Refugees and Yes to a Deal, or No to a Deal and Yes to Refugees.’ Do you agree with that assessment?
A- I don’t think it is that stark. I think frankly it is in Barak’s interest to set it up that way, but Barak needs a fig leaf to give up sovereignty over the Haram Al-Sharif and the rest of East Jerusalem. And the fig leaf is that: ‘look, they are giving up the most critical issue for us which is refugees,’ which is true that is the most critical issue to them. But the truth of the matter is that the refugees’ issue will be addressed in a way that it never has. I think there is no question that in some ways there will be some compromises.
Q- Do you think Arafat will be able to sell any deal he signs to the Palestinian people?
A- No matter what kind of agreement they sign on to, there is going to be tremendous opposition on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. It is a painful thing for Palestinians to give up some of the things they will give up in any agreement, and the same applies to a lot of Israelis. But I do think that the majority of Palestinians would support an agreement.
Q-Would people in the Israeli opposition like Sharon be able to derail any agreement?
A- It is possible. I don’t think the Israeli public would be voting between an agreement and a status quo, but they would be voting on agreement and war. Because if you don’t ratify an agreement after all this, it means you are opting for war. And that is the kind of decision they make when they go to the ballot box. That’s why I think the majority will support it. But it is not guaranteed. I think the Palestinians will be winners either way. Let’s think about it from a historical perspective: who a year ago would have expected the Palestinians could have a state on 95 percent of the West Bank plus another 5 percent, so really a 100 percent? All the opponents were saying: ‘No, we are talking about 40 percent of the West Bank fragmented.’ Sure you could say it is not enough, but the Palestinians did it with a weak hand. I think there are emotions now, but we have to think about it in a sober way. If in fact it has resulted in a Palestinian state on a 95 or 96 or 97 percent of the West Bank, it would be a huge accomplishment.
Q- Press reports say that the Clinton plan is giving the Palestinians 95 percent of the West Bank territory. Do you think the Palestinians will accept that?
A- We have seen only reports about that, but I can tell you one thing that I know about the Clinton plan that is extremely important. There is now a very obvious call for territorial discussion to be based strictly on the 1967 borders, and that modifications are essential to the 1967 borders. But the principle is clearly based on 1967 boarders. As for percentages, at Camp David the Israelis offered 90 percent of the West Bank, and the Israeli offer never went beyond that. The Palestinians never accepted that, but accepted somewhere between 92-94 percent. Although the American plan has not specified the amount and quality of exchange, it accepts the principle that the Palestinians should be compensated for territories that the Palestinians will be giving up on the West Bank.
Q- Are the Palestinians ready to accept the principle of exchanging land with Israel?
A- I think so. My view is the Palestinians have already agreed to the principle that they will make modifications to the 1967 borders, which will include major settlement blocks that will be under Israeli control in exchange for which the Palestinians would get the same size of territory from the 1948 boundaries. But what they haven’t agreed to is the exact amount of territory. They are still talking about between 95-97 percent, and that’s where the debate is.
Q- On the settlements, the American plan is saying 80 percent will stay under Israeli sovereignty?
A- Not settlements, but settlers; that is extremely important. This is in fact the key to it; that 80 percent of the settlers would come under Israeli control; the idea is to allow these settlements that are in the heartland and are so small that they could be evacuated. Even some of the people who are in it could move into the big settlement blocks. So in terms of number of settlements, there will be a lot fewer that would remain, but the number of people who would live in the few settlements would be close to 80 percent of all settlers. At Camp David, the Palestinians accepted this principle and this is not a new development. They were very close on agreeing on this issue, the real question at Camp David was how much? The Israelis were offering a lot less than the Palestinians willing to accept. Right now it is obvious the Israelis have moved very close to the Palestinian demand.
Q- On the Jerusalem issue, the American plan also moved closer to the Palestinian position?
A- On the Jerusalem issue, it is very obvious that the new American proposals are much closer to the Palestinian position. At Camp David, in the areas of Haram Al-Sharif, the Israelis never offered, not even joint sovereignty on the Haram, and insisted on Israeli sovereignty. There was only one official Israeli proposal presented at Camp David and that the Palestinians would have functional control over the Haram and the Palestinians would fly their flag and that Yasser Arafat would be called “Hares Al-Haramein,” but it would be strictly under Israeli sovereignty. Right now, the Israelis more or less have agreed in essence to a Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram. I recall the idea was to call the Palestinian sovereignty “de facto sovereignty” over Haram and there would be no mention of Israeli sovereignty in the Temple mount. There will be mention of deep religious links, or something like that.
Q- The American proposals talk about Arab sovereignty over parts of the Old City and the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem?
A- I spoke to Arafat about this. He offered the Israelis at Camp David control of the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.
Q- How about the Armenian Quarter?
A- He never offered that. I asked him specifically about that, he said: ‘they asked for it.’ Actually he said something funny: ‘I told them my name is Yasser Arafatian,’ meaning that he will never give it up. But the problem that he faces, the American proposals call for something like splitting it, but not complete Israeli control. In part because the Israelis argue they need it to access the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.
Q- How about the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem? Are the Israelis willing to give up sovereignty over them?
A- That was not clear at Camp David, where the Palestinians were never offered sovereignty per se except on the outlying neighborhoods, and it was called control. Now the American plan is making the principle of political control the nature of the neighborhood; if it is Arab neighborhood it is under Palestinian control, and if it is Jewish neighborhood it is under Israeli control. The Israelis seem to accept that judging from Barak’s statements.
Q-On the refugees issue, is the American plan offering new ideas?
A- There are a number of things that have to be addressed: the Palestinians are insisting on two things, and they have not given up on either one of them so far. One is an acknowledgement of the right of return in principle. They have never given up on that. The second is acknowledgement of some Israeli responsibility for the refugee problem. They did agree at Camp David to separating those two issues from the practical issue of implementing the right of return. That is, they agreed that the principle of right of return isn’t the same as the actual solution to the right of return. They acknowledged in principle that no Israeli government would ever agree to take all the refugees; that would be political suicide. And that’s true. It is impossible to contemplate that any Israeli government could do anything like that. So what you have now is essentially how do you mediate between this critical Israeli need and those critical Palestinian needs? What the US, as I understand, is trying to do is put forth ideas on what are the options for an actual settlement? And separate those from the principle.
Q- What are these options?
A- In a piece that I gave to the American team while at Camp David, the core issue was that there should be no imposition on the refugees; the refugees should have options: you go to a refugee and say look, we acknowledge your right of return, here are the practical options that are available for settlement, and then you give them four or five different options. And if they take them, then they buy into the deal, if they don’t then they have their own right to challenge it.
Q- Has Clinton incorporated any of your ideas in his new proposal?
A- I don’t know whether they incorporated them directly, but I could tell you that some of the stuff that has leaked out is very much closer to what I have written before about Jerusalem and the refugees.
