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What Did Arafat Know And When Did He Know It?
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
22/12/2000
In a recent news analysis, Edward Said offers an explanation for Yasser Arafat's ill-fated decision to surrender the future of the Palestinians to an American brokered "peace-process." The problem, Said suggests, is that Arafat and his advisors had no idea of the strength, breadth and depth of American Zionist influence over the American government, nor of the fact that American bias against the Palestinians is stronger and cruder than that of the Israelis.
This perspective raises the question as to why Arafat's advisors didn't seek guidance from a sympathetic and knowledgeable American expert before signing the Oslo accords. Failure to consult such an expert would have been a shameful shortfall.
The actual facts, it turns out, are far worse. A knowledgeable and sympathetic American was consulted and his prescient advice ignored, leading to the present horrific violence.
The truth emerges from a publication in the current issue of AAUG's journal, Arab Studies Quarterly (Boyle, 2000). The preface to Francis A. Boyle’s insightful analysis of the Oslo accords reveals that his study was requested by Haidar Abdul Shaffi, the Palestinian's chief negotiator, and was delivered to them on December 1, 1992. A professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Prof. Boyle used his impressive legal expertise to identify, then, many of the pitfalls of the Oslo agreements that have become manifest in the years since his analysis. Shockingly, and painfully for the Palestinian people, the PLO did not heed his advice.
One must recall that the Israelis resorted to Oslo when the first Intifada succeeded in obtaining for the Palestinians something they had never had before – good press coverage. It was not just that the public was sympathetic to demonstrators, armed only with stones, facing Israeli tanks and machine guns. At least as important was the fact that Israeli strong-arm tactics against the media itself earned them the resentment of those who previously had been the instruments of Israeli propaganda.
While Netanyahu and the rest of the right wing seriously believed that they could end this debacle with a sufficiently strong show of force, Rabin understood that parts of the occupied territories had become ungovernable by the Israelis directly, and he conceived a more sophisticated form of occupation – to contract out the dirty work to the Palestinians themselves. Oslo offered the PLO, renamed the PA, the opportunity to be Israel’s paid police force in the ungovernable areas of Gaza and the West Bank, leaving Israel free to concentrate on the “Judaization” of Jerusalem. All of the difficult issues (settlements, refugees, borders, Jerusalem, and water) were deferred to the final status phase, supposed to be completed within five years.
It is tempting to assume that the only reason Arafat agreed to this is that he assumed, or was led to believe, that the U.N. Resolutions pertaining to the situation were still in effect and would constrain the negotiations of the final status. We would like to believe that the Palestinian leadership was surprised to hear the U.S. State Department, as well as the Israelis themselves, pronouncing that the U.N. resolutions that guaranteed the return of refugees, declared the settlements illegal, specified borders for Israel, and required their withdrawal from all occupied territory including Jerusalem were now “obsolete.”
However, the fact is that they could not have been surprised since Boyle had warned them about all of this.
“You must distrust Israeli and American Oral Assurances,” Boyle said pointedly. “[It] has been my experience as a practicing lawyer in international law for the past fifteen years,” he explained, “that any oral assurances not put in writing are worthless and will never be honored.” He was right.
Boyle warned the Palestinians not to believe the five-year timeline for a final status solution. “Indeed, if the Israelis have their way with their supporters in the Democratic and Republican parties and in the United States Congress, you will never see that Final Settlement. The Israelis, with American help, will simply stall, drag out, and indefinitely delay a final settlement while they continue to kill your people, steal your land and drive the rest of you out of your homes.” The five years are over and, again, Boyle was right.
Boyle argued that it was necessary for the Palestinians to assert their rights under U.N.
Resolutions 242 and 338 and under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 in the interim agreement itself or they would be lost. Not only has Madeline Albright declared 242 and 338 obsolete, but also when the world community attempted to reconvene the signers of the Geneva Convention last year to assert that its provisions apply to Israel, the United States torpedoed the plan.
Boyle argued that the proposed Palestinian state must be built up from the land and by the people, rather than imposed from above. Otherwise, there would be no independent Palestinian legislature and the PA “would be nothing more than the civilian administrative arm of the Israeli occupation army in Palestinian Lands designed for the purpose of doing the Israeli army’s dirty work for it by repressing the Palestinian people.” Commentary here would be superfluous.
Finally, Boyle spelled out step-by-step how these and other pitfalls could be avoided. In part, this involved making sure the Israelis withdrew in such a manner that they could not quickly reassert themselves. However, it also involved establishing in the Interim Agreement that “the basis of authority to maintain law and order will be based upon the pre-1967 legal system that was in existence before the Israeli military occupation” and not “Israel’s alleged authority to maintain law and order as a belligerent occupant.”
Excuses that the Palestinian leadership’s policy on the Oslo Accords is the result of naïveté are untenable given that Arafat's top people had Prof. Boyle's on-target analysis in hand in December 1992. The most positive characterization that can be attributed to the Palestinian leadership's choices in the face of this knowledge would be "reckless." Some, however, would not be so generous.
References
Boyle, Francis A. 2000. "The Interim Agreement and International Law," Arab Studies Quarterly 22 #3 (Summer), 1.
Said, Edward 2000. "American Zionism: The Real Problem," The Muslim Observer II (Oct. 13-19), 2.
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