Is the peace process a process for peace? A retrospective analysis of Oslo.

• Author: Hagopian, Elaine C.
• Position: Peace agreement between Arab countries and Israel being forged in Oslo, Norway

587768 INO INTRODUCTION

Oslo is not presently a process for peace; Oslo is a process for agreements which are creating volatile conditions on the ground. Nonetheless, Oslo may lead to peace based on principles different from those found in the September 1993 Declaration of Principles and the agreements and protocols derived therefrom. That is, the conditions produced by Oslo will force a new process over time to emerge that will lead to a resolution of the problem in ways unanticipated by Oslo.

The analysis which follows is premised on the belief that a viable peace is desired, and that therefore a different peace process must emerge to effect this. It is further premised on the acceptance of the fact that both Israelis and Palestinians feel, claim and understand with absolute conviction that they have national rights to sovereign statehood in Israel/Palestine. Indeed, both rights have been recognized internationally, although, as developed herein, the Oslo process is eroding the Palestinian legal claim to sovereign statehood.

The historical context of the actual nature of the conflict is revisited, and it will include an examination of the various proposals offered since 1967, allegedly to resolve the conflict. This is done not to go over old ground, but rather to refocus attention on the existential and essential contours of the problem. At present, there is a tendency to view Oslo-induced agreements in a vacuum while elucidating their particulars as though they were victories for real peace. Only the thread of history can expose the contemporary tragedy produced by the Oslo process. That thread is defined by two words: removal [or disposal] and reassertion. That is, the Zionist movement has sought to remove Palestinians physically and legally from national claims to Palestine, and the Palestinians have sought to reassert their internationally recognized claims. Over time, and as a result of Oslo, it appears that the Zionists are close to their goal. Conversely, the Palestinians appear to have sustained a fatal blow to their right to national reassertion. In the end, and after more turmoil and struggle, a whole new dynamic may develop that will challenge the "appearances."

BRIEF HISTORY

Zionist Expansion into All of Palestine

Once the Zionist movement fixed on Palestine as the location to establish a Jewish state as a solution to European anti-Semitism, it had to deal with three problems:

1. how to establish itself on the land legitimately and expand into all of Palestine,

2. how to remove or significantly reduce the majority Palestinian Arab population indigenous to Palestine; and

3. how to ensure absorption of dispersed Palestinians elsewhere in the Arab World so as to eliminate Palestinian claims to Palestine.

   What follows chronicles and analyzes how Israel has tried to deal with these three problems, and how the latter two - demography and diaspora - have plagued Israeli efforts to complete full and unchallenged political sovereignty over Palestine. It also chronicles and analyzes Palestinian responses and efforts at national reassertion.

   Establishing Itself on the Land. The 1917 Balfour Declaration gave an opening to initiate solution of the first problem, and culminated later in the 1948 Zionist Declaration of Independence. With the Balfour Declaration in hand, the Zionist movement presented a map in 1919 to the Paris Peace Conference defining Israel, a slimmed down version of various maps of "Eretz Israel." Beyond getting a foothold in the area, the problem was how to fill out that map which covered all of Palestine, southern Lebanon up to Sidon, the southern Biqa' valley, including the Litani River waters, the Hawran Plain of Syria which encompassed the Golan Heights and the headwaters of the Jordan River, and part of Jordan east of the river bordering the outskirts of Amman, Maan and Aqaba. In what follows, I will focus only on Palestine which Israel succeeded in completely occupying after the 1967 war. (Israel does now occupy southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights. It is not clear if Israel will remain physically in Lebanon. Regarding the Golan Heights, Israel presently has thirty-two settlements there with 15,000 Israelis. On 14 December 1981, it formally extended Israeli Law to the Heights which meant de facto annexation. It is not certain that Israel will withdraw from Golan or a part of it. And Israel presently has a very favorable peace agreement with Jordan which allows considerable license in its relations with that country.)

   On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. As is now well known, Ben Gurion accepted the partition plan tactically, as part of his strategy to gain all of Palestine. What he really accepted was the establishment of a Jewish state, but he did not actually accept the idea of an Arab state, borders, Jerusalem as a corpus separatum and other arrangements. Indeed, Ben Gurion stated as early as the original 1937 partition plan that ". . .as a result of the creation of a [Jewish] state [on a piece of Palestine], we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine."(1) This policy continued to dominate his thinking when the 1947 partition plan was passed.(2)

   Removal/Reduction of Palestinians. The 29 November 1947 partition plan, Resolution 181, was never implemented. Israeli and Arab military actions broke out immediately after the passing of 181. On 14 May 1948, the Jewish People's Council led by Ben Gurion met at the Tel Aviv Museum and issued its Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. The Declaration was carefully worded so as to draw on Resolution 181 as a legitimating document for the creation of a Jewish state, but gave no mention of partition or the other components of the Resolution. Specifically, the Declaration read:

   On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.(3)

   Between 29 November 1947 and 14 May 1948, more than 200,000 Palestinians were dispossessed of their properties and dispersed.(4) In the war of 1948 that followed the Zionist declaration of statehood, another 550,000 to 600,000 Palestinians were dispossessed of properties and dispersed. By the end of the war, Israel was in full control of 78% of Palestine from which approximately 750,000 to 800,000 refugees were dispersed. The total Palestinian population at that time was estimated to be about 1.4 million.(5) In the conquered 78% of Palestine which came to be recognized internationally as Israel, 125,000 to 150,000 Palestinians managed to remain. . .Those remaining ultimately became citizens of Israel, albeit second-class citizens, and today number some 900,000 to 1 million, approximately 18% to 19% of the Israeli population.

   Resettlement. The Zionists consistently believed" . . . that the Palestinian problem would disappear through a transfer of population to neighbouring Arab countries; and . . . that the pro-Western regime of Jordan [then under King Abdullah who cooperated with the Zionists] would solve the Palestinian problem."(6) The United Nations Relief and Works Administration for Palestine (UNRWA) was used by Great Britain and the U.S. to attempt to facilitate Palestinian resettlement by funding major projects that would employ Palestinian refugees in place, and lead to their resettlement in those locations.(7) From 1952 to 1962, the United States and Great Britain were the largest donors to UNRWA (72% and 19% respectively), and therefore made its major decisions. They reduced aid when their efforts to resettle Palestinians did not work.

   From 1948 to 1967, the Zionists did establish a Jewish state, did remove most of the Palestinians, but did not succeed in seeing them permanently resettled. Nonetheless, they were outside of Israel, albeit as refugees demanding their right to return.

   The June 1967 war netted Israel the remaining 22% of Palestine Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai. But the rest of Palestine, the remaining 22%, had a population in 1967 that numbered over one million Palestinians [today numbering some 2.5 million]. They did not flee for the most part, although there are thousands who became recognized as "displaced persons" and are primarily located in Jordan. The large number of Palestinians in the conquered territories recreated the demographic problem for Israel. From 1967 on, the problem for Israel was how to retain the occupied territories, which they called "Administered Territories" of Samaria, Judea, and Gaza, without absorbing the Palestinian population into the Jewish State with an already significant Palestinian minority from 1948. Demographics joined resettlement as threatening issues for Israel. The Palestinian challenge to exclusive Israeli sovereignty in Palestine intensified after the 1967 war both by the newly occupied and the diaspora Palestinians. At the end of the 1967 war, Palestinians were found under three jurisdictions:

1. as citizens of Israel working within the system for equality based on having Israel be a state of its citizens rather than a state of the Jewish nation only;

2. as refugees primarily in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and in camps in Gaza and the West Bank (1948 refugees) demanding their right of return under Resolution 194; and

3. under occupation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem where Israeli withdrawal is sought.

   The post-1967 peace plans have focused primarily on what to do with the third jurisdictional category, with the implicit assumption that refugees...