BEYOND CAMP DAVID AND US BETRAYAL OF THE PALESTINIANS

By John Austin
(Labour MP for Erith and Thamesmead
Co-chair of the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Co-operation)

There can never be a lasting peace in the Middle East until two issues have been resolved – the right of return for refugees and sovereignty of Jerusalem. On both these issues there is one obstacle – Israel, bolstered as it is by the United States of America. Of course the power of the Jewish Lobby in the United States is widely recognised and it might have been hoped that a retiring President, with no adverse electoral consequences might wish to make his name as a great statesperson and peacemaker. Sadly the fact that Hillary Clinton is running for office – in New York of all places – put an end to such hopes.

Sadly the western media and to an extent European governments have gone along with America's distorted view and have presented Barak as peacemaker and Arafat as difficult and intransigent. The time has come for European governments to distance themselves from the US on Palestine and other middle eastern issues. Arafat should not be castigated for his performance at Camp David, he should be praised and supported for his stance in insisting on basic rights backed by international law and successive UN resolutions.

European governments should attempt to establish some equity in the negotiations. A nuclear regional power such as Israel, fully supported by a non-neutral US, can hardly be compared with the fledgling Palestinian Authority. Israel has attempted peace by coercion in the guise of diplomacy. If Arafat had caved in to the pressure, a people with little to lose would not have forgiven him and any peace would have been both temporary and an illusion. Having conceded so much to the Israelis since the Oslo peace accords of 1993, Arafat could not possibly have accepted the crumbs of Jerusalem that Clinton/Barak were prepared to offer.

Israel claims absolute sovereignty over Jerusalem but its claim has no legitimacy as UN Resolution 181, which effectively set up the state of Israel, makes clear. The media suggested that Palestine was being offered sovereignty over Arab East Jerusalem and the still mainly Arab Old City, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the game away by her reference to giving Palestine a "sense of sovereignty" over the city's Muslim religious sites. It should be remembered that the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem, including the Old City, were not taken by Israel until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Since that time, the UN resolutions have clearly set out the position in international law. Resolutions 242 and 338 call for Israel's full withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and from East Jerusalem, including the Old City.. he 1993 Oslo Accords were supposed to be based on these resolutions but in the interim, Israel has been creating history on the ground.

The scale of the illegal Israeli settlements being built in the West Bank and around Jerusalem have to be seen to be believed. East Jerusalem which once was entirely Palestinian (Muslim-Christian Arab) until it was captured from Jordan in 1967. was formally absorbed into Israeli Jerusalem in 1980. Now its tiny Arab core surrounded by large Jewish settlements and more recently, Israel, in an act of blatant gerrymandering, has changed the municipal boundaries to absorb settlements way outside the city.

Surrounded by vast illegal Jewish settlements connected by settler-only roads, the Palestinians are trapped in their ghettos with a system of graded identity cards reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa's pass laws.

Palestine signed up to the Oslo Accords in good faith and the issue of Jerusalem was intentionally postponed to the final status negotiations that were supposed to start, but did not, in May 1997. But since 1993 the Israelis have extended their control of Jerusalem and surrounding areas and from 1995 confiscated Jerusalem identity cards from thousands of Palestinians. Labour MPs, Richard Burden and Phyllis Starkey recently visited Issawiya, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of East Jerusalem and saw for themselves the largest Israeli Settlement on the West Bank, Ma'ale Adumin already a city of 25,000 Jewish settlers in a municipal area enlarged in 1997 to twice the size of Tel Aviv, seizing Palestinian farmlands, destroying their farm buildings and cutting off the water supply.

The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but within hours of the collapse of the Camp David talks, Clinton went on Israeli television to tell Israelis that he had always favoured the move of the American embassy to West Jerusalem, so recognising Israel's claim that Jerusalem is its capital against all international opinion.

Camp David collapsed when Arafat refused to accept Clinton's offer, which entailed complete acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem. East Jerusalem would be divided into autonomous boroughs with the eleven illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem recognised as Israeli. Some parts of East Jerusalem would be attached to a Palestinian state but the Palestinian areas close to the Old City would become part of the boroughs under Israeli sovereignty and Israel would annex settlements close to the municipal border. The Old City would remain under Israeli sovereignty.

This was the offer which Arafat refused. But it should be stressed that this was an American offer. Barak had not agreed to it, only that he would consider the proposals and there was no indication of any acceptance on the part of Israel of the right of refugees to return.

With the failure of Camp David, the European Union should step into the vacuum created by the US Presidential election and insist on a two state solution, with a viable and sovereign Palestinian State in the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem a shared capital for two peoples. There is no way that Arafat could have surrendered a right, based firmly on repeated UN resolutions in return for the prospect of a virtual sovereignty exercised from a village outside Jerusalem.

John Austin
September 2000

An edited version of the above article appeared in Campaign Group News September 2000 - www.poptel.org.uk/scgn.