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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Jensen Answers: What is the
Palestinians' mission?
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
Question:
Do you really believe the Palestinians and those Arab countries
supporting them wish to coexist with Israel, or do you accept
the notion that their mission is to destroy Israel? Consider two
things in your answer: (1) The almost total disregard of the Oslo
accords on the part of the PLO and (2) the PLO's rejection of
the historical peace offer made by Israel just at the end of the
Clinton administration.
Answer:
There is no question that five Arab-Israeli wars were fought with
the intention of destroying Israel. In the Arab view, it was a
state built on stolen land that displaced one people, the Palestinians,
to make a homeland for another, the Jews.
And this view continues to be fostered on the Arab "street" by virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab media and school textbooks without interference, and even with the encouragement of Arab governments. These regimes, weak, autocratic and not very popular, find it convenient to deflect hostility against themselves onto Israel and its chief supporter, the United States.
However, five military defeats and Israel's superpower support have convinced those selfsame governments and their educated elites that Israel is here to stay. Thanks to American hardware and its own conscription policies, Israel today ranks as the world's fourth or fifth military power. As such it will not be driven into the sea, and those ruling the Arab countries that count -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria -- have come to accept it.
That's why Jordan and Egypt signed peace treaties with Israel; that's why Syria has engaged in on-again, off-again peace talks with Israel conditional on return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. As for the Saudi royal family, it's far more worried about Iran, Iraq and internal opposition from its own Islamic militants than Israel.
The Palestinians too have been radicalized by what they see as a historic injustice aggravated by Israel's seizure of yet more of their land. Two waves of refugees, the first in 1948 and the second in 1967, were denied absorption in all Arab countries except Jordan. They and their descendants still live in refugee camps administered by the United Nations and most of them would undoubtedly like to see the state of Israel destroyed.
Palestinians outside the camps but still living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza likewise have not been included in Israel's democracy; they have reaped little economic or political benefits from 34 years of Israeli administration and are bitterly resentful of seeing Jewish settlements spring up on land they thought would be their state. That is why so many have resorted to terrorism.
Nevertheless, some Palestinian leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat and the PLO, did resign themselves to Israel's existence as the only alternative to endless war. That's why they signed the Oslo accords. There was not "total disregard" for that agreement as you state. In its early days, when he still hoped it would lead to a fair and just settlement, Arafat was quite merciless in arresting those opposed to peace including hundreds of Muslim militants belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Several died of torture in his jails.
Another fact forgotten in the current conflict is that the Palestine National Council, the political arm of the PLO, voted to scrap all the clauses in its charter calling for Israel's destruction. That vote was taken in April 1996 and was hailed by then-prime minister and now Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as "ideologically the most important change in the last 100 years."
However, continued Palestinian terrorism by those opposed to peace undermined Israeli confidence; continued Jewish settlement building undermined Palestinian confidence and by the time Prime Minister Ehud Barak made his offer neither side trusted the other. Barak did offer the Palestinians more than any other Israeli leader but several Israeli officials have since conceded that it was not nearly as "generous" as depicted at the time.
Although he offered the Palestinians 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, some of this land was labeled under "temporary Israeli control" with no time limit set on withdrawal. He insisted on permanent control of all Palestinian border crossings and reserved the right to keep 85 percent of the settler population in the West Bank, creating impossible borders that would severely disrupt Palestinian life in the communities around them.
In other words, Palestinians would get a state but one split by settlement blocks, bypass roads, Israeli checkpoints and an Israeli military presence in some of the areas theoretically under Palestinian sovereignty. Arafat saw it not as generous but a humiliating surrender and walked out.
His biggest mistake was insisting on a "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees. Sari Nusseibeh admitted this mistake when he was recently chosen to be Arafat's chief envoy in Jerusalem. Palestinian refugees, he said, would have to be resettled "in such a way so as not to threaten the existence of the state of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state." Israel's biggest mistake was continued settlement building during a peace process that was not supposed to change the facts on the ground before final status talks.
Once the intifada broke out, the Oslo peace process was relegated to the dustbin of history. And prospects of peace remain minimal as long as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues to offer the Palestinians far less than they rejected from Barak.
November 9, 2001
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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