The timing and substance of the international meeting called by US President George Bush in his 16 July 2007 speech on the Middle East may end up focusing on aid at the expense of a political solution. This moves further away from the 1991 Madrid international conference and the bilateral Oslo 1993-2000 negotiations and reinforces the trend that was so visible at the 2005 London meeting. This approach has not worked before and is unlikely to work today. 

 

The international meeting called for by US President Bush George Bush in his 16 July 2007 speech is expected to convene in November to “provide decisive support to Palestinian leaders working for peace;” review progress “toward building Palestinian institutions;” and “support further reform.” The emphasis on internal Palestinian matters rather than the 40-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories dashes hopes for an end to that occupation. The still pending issue of who will participate has repercussions for Palestinian Authority (PA) relations with and support from the Arab world, and for a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moreover, the meeting, if it takes place as planned, will be sandwiched between two donor conferences on Palestine, one slated for late September the other mooted for December.

Overall, the preparations for the November conference reinforce the sense that a permanent settlement of the conflict has been abandoned in favor of management of and aid to whatever slivers of territory Israel has left under PA control. Can this work? As policy makers prepare for the upcoming meeting, they would do well to review the international conferences and negotiations since Madrid and to ask why they failed to resolve the conflict.

 

Madrid: Negotiations about Land for Peace

 

In October 1991, partly to maintain Arab support for the US-led attack on Iraqi troops in Kuwait in January 1991, then US President George H. W. Bush convened the first international conference on Palestine. The conference, named after its host city, Madrid, marked a definitive turning point in diplomacy in the region. It brought Israel, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians together to achieve a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement …  based on United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.”1  The process promoted negotiations as a means of attaining political rights.

However, in what was to become a hallmark of later Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, the Palestinians were forced to accept negotiations in two stages, the first to reach agreement on five-year “interim self-government arrangements,” and the second to reach a final settlement based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 that would begin by the third year of the interim period. Permanent status political issues (refugees, borders, settlements, Jerusalem, water, and security) were put on hold. There was no mention of the Palestinian right to self-determination or of a sovereign state. In spite of Israeli promises to the US Administration, Israeli settlement building in the West Bank continued. 

 

The Oslo Years: Negotiations as an End in Themselves

 

The Declaration of Principles (DOP) of 13 September 1993 launched the Oslo peace process. This narrowed participation to the Israelis, Palestinians, and the US, leaving out other actors to the detriment of the Palestinians, who were by far the weakest player at the table. Over the next six years, some 12 agreements were negotiated and signed which, taken together, run into hundreds of pages.2  The DOP also provided for an interim period, leaving negotiations on permanent status to “lead to the implementation Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.” There was no reference to the Palestinian right to self-determination or to any of the other UN resolutions and international conventions applicable to the conflict.

As happened during the Madrid years, Israeli settlement building continued while the negotiations were dragged out. For example, permanent status negotiations which should have started in 1996 only started during 1999, keeping the core issues on hold for six years. Israel used this period to double the number of settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to over 400,000. The Palestinians’ inability to prevent the loss of their land to Israeli settlements was a sign of the immense imbalance of power between the Israeli government and the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The principle underpinning Resolution 242 – the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” – remained unfulfilled as did other aspects of the signed agreements. Indeed, the later agreements of the Oslo period – the 1998 Wye Memorandum and the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh memorandum – largely focused on ways to get prior agreements implemented. 

 

The London Meeting: Leaving Politics Out

 

The international meeting convened in London on 1 March 2005 by the Quartet (US, European Union, Russia, and the UN) did not deal with the Palestinian political rights that lie at the heart of this conflict. It was attended by 25 nations but focused only on the Palestinians.3  It sidestepped the task of dismantling Israel‘s occupation and dealt instead with Palestinian “governance, security and economic development.” The participants aimed to “mobilize international assistance for the PA’s efforts, particularly with reference to short-term priorities.” There was only a mild reference to the complete lack of Palestinian sovereignty over land, borders, freedom of movement, or ability to protect people and property. The participants simply called for Israeli “cooperation” and “facilitation” and urged it to dismantle “the system of closures and other restrictions on the movement of people and goods.”  The meeting was silent on the question of how this was to be achieved if Israel did not wish to cooperate. There was no commitment by the participants to fulfill their obligations as signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention and hold Israel accountable for its actions in the occupied territories, including its illegal steps to change the character of and move its citizens to the territories, among others.

Bush’s proposed November meeting echoes the approach of the London meeting, sidestepping the core political issues to focus on Palestinian institutions and “reform.” This ignores the considerable evidence of the impossibility of sustaining political and economic institutions under conditions of occupation and without sovereignty.4  The US and Europe may hope that throwing money at the problem will keep the situation from boiling over, given the now desperate humanitarian needs in the territories. Yet this has been tried before with little success. Back in the 1980s, then US Secretary of State George Shultz promoted a policy of improving the Palestinians’ “quality of life” that was soon overshadowed by the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in 1987.5  Recent history tells us that treating the Palestinians as though they were the victims of a natural disaster who need cash handouts rather than a people with rights won’t work. Unless international conferences and negotiations forcefully address and resolve the core political rights, the region will be doomed to a permanent state of conflict.

Nadia Hijab is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and co-director of its Washington office. Diana Buttu is a political analyst.

 

[1] US-Soviet letter of invitation of 18 October 1991, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol 21, No 2 (Winter 1992). For an insightful analysis of the negotiations see Camille Mansour, JPS Vol 22, No 3 (Spring 1993). For references to documents and articles on the Madrid process see the JPS Documents Index at http://www.palestine-studies.org/final/en/journals/jour_item.php?id=1
[2] See 25 January 2001 summary of the Oslo process by Nadia Hijab at the Brecht Forum http://www.brechtforum.org/highlights/limitations%20to%20the%20oslo%20accords.htm See the JPS document and subject indices for references to documents and articles on the Oslo process http://www.palestine-studies.org/final/en/journals/jour_item.php?id=1
[3] For statements at the London meeting see JPS Vol 34 No.4 (Summer 2005).
[4] This is very well set out in Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: the Case of Palestine, by Michael Keating, Anne Le More and Robert Lowe, London, Chatham House Publishers, 2006.
[5] See Kathleen Christison’s piece in JPS Vol 18 No.2 (Winter 1989).

 

 

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