BEIRUT — After a hundred years of the conflict between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine, the Palestinians and the Israelis still do not have a peace agreement — but they seem to have an agreement. The parameters of this unspoken but relatively clear understanding seem to meet the immediate needs of both sides. They were first articulated by Ariel Sharon about a year and a half ago, put in motion by his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza last year, are being consummated by the Hamas victory in Palestine, and probably will be capped by a new Israeli government headed by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party.
The terms include a faster and neater separation between Israelis and Palestinians, a mutual ceasefire, steadily reversing the Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinian lands, and allowing the Palestinians to get on with the business of building their micro-state in Gaza and about half the West Bank.
This silent accord between Israelis and Palestinians will always be relatively fragile, because it is imbalanced and unilaterally imposed. Crucially, it does not resolve the core demands of both sides: recognition, security and end-of-conflict for the Israelis; and, liberation, statehood and full refugee rights for the Palestinians. But for both sides, and for a period of time, this flawed and imbalanced understanding seems preferable to their recent low-intensity war.
Israel — at least in this election month — is not the least interested in even exploring possible openings for engaging Hamas in peace negotiations. Instead, the current Israeli leadership is harnessing the mood of the Israeli people to push ahead with its unilateral disengagement from more, perhaps most, of the occupied Palestinian lands. Israel is effectively drawing what it sees as the country’s permanent borders, defined by the separation barrier it has been building for over a year.
Sharon and the Kadima Party he created, now headed by Olmert, have always seen a long-term interim agreement with the Palestinians as more realistic and preferable than another attempt to negotiate a permanent, comprehensive peace. Hamas for its part has adhered to a cease-fire with Israel during the past year. Under intense regional and international pressure to soften its position on coexisting with Israel, it is signaling that it will do so; but, only on condition that Israel make reciprocal gestures on key issues, such as refugee rights and dismantling all settlements. Israel will not agree to those terms now.
Hamas thus speaks only of extending its year-old truce into a long-term truce, thus living alongside Israel in its pre-occupation 1967 borders, if Israel makes the required reciprocal gestures on settlements, borders, and refugees.
Sharon’s long-term interim agreement and Hamas’ long-term truce sound intriguingly similar. In the best ways of the Orient, they are being implemented without being formally articulated or agreed. This is far from peace; but it is perhaps open-ended peaceful coexistence by nods and winks, achieved by terms unspoken and nasty deeds not done.
In the past few weeks, Kadima Party members have said that if elected to power they would continue withdrawing unilaterally from parts of the West Bank, while completely leaving Gaza affairs in the hands of the Palestinians. The first step, revealed this week by former Shin Beth security service director Avi Dichter, would be to dismantle more isolated settlements in the West Bank, while consolidating the large settlement blocs near the 1967 border.
This approach is said to reflect Israeli defense establishment thinking that extended settlements do not enhance Israeli security. Rather, disengagement from the Palestinians is now seen as more conducive to Israeli national interests than colonization and militarily occupation. Israelis are anxious to vacate as much of the occupied territories as possible so that they can remain a predominantly Jewish Zionist state. They also seem resigned to living next to a Palestinian proto-state ruled by Hamas or a Hamas-led coalition government.
This historic reversal of Israeli policies since 1967 is matched by developments on the Palestinian side. A Hamas-led government is poised to manage those areas vacated by Israel, move quickly on building a more secure, stable, law-governed society, and enforce an extended truce that probably has already started. Hamas will quietly watch Israel withdraw from more occupied lands, and focus on building a well governed polity in Gaza and much of the West Bank.
The unarticulated but vital operative core of this silent agreement is that both sides stop shooting and killing each other for some years, Israel steadily vacates more land, and the Palestinians enjoy more substantial sovereign rights and proceed more diligently than before with their nation-building priorities. Such mutually desirable parallel but separate national development could lead to future circumstances that would be propitious for a permanent, negotiated resolution of their conflict.
This is all treading on very thin ice. Yet both sides seem to prefer it to the certain fate of bleeding and sinking together if they maintain the recent violent course of prolonged occupation and colonization, and equally persistent militant resistance. Wink. Nod. Pass the ploughshare.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 07 March 2006
Word Count: 831
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