"Nothing [was] achieved on the refugee issue," said the leader of the Palestinian negotiating team, Ahmed Qureia, assessing the week of intensive negotiations. "If they will not recognize the right of return there would be no progress," he said, referring to Israeli government negotiators.

The formation of the state of Israel involved the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from land now encompassed by the Israeli state and occupied by Israeli citizens. Today, the official refugee population living in the Middle East, comprising those original refugees and their descendants, numbers more than 3 million, according to the Palestinian National Authority. Tel Aviv staunchly opposes their demand to return to their homes and land.

Among the other issues in dispute are the status of Jerusalem and the Israeli demand, opposed by the Palestinians, to post troops in the occupied territories in the event of an "emergency" and to deploy military forces for several years in the Jordan Valley.

Much of the talks focused on the amount of territory to be administered by the PNA, and disputes over how much of the territory occupied by Israeli settlements will be officially incorporated into Israel.

Faced with polls in which Barak badly trails Likud party leader Ariel Sharon, the outgoing prime minister sought to conclude some kind of agreement with the Palestinians that he can claim credit for on election day or, failing that, to hold out the promise of an agreement. He also faces pressure to step aside and give the Labor candidacy to former prime minister Shimon Peres, seen by many as more able to conclude a settlement with the Palestinians. Peres consistently matches Sharon in recent polls.

Barak promised in his 1999 campaign to secure an agreement with the Palestinians. His failure to do so has weakened his electoral support. Moreover, the escalation of Israeli military brutality since late September has alienated Palestinian citizens inside Israel, among others. Labor's support from the sector of public opinion known as the "left" in Israel has tended to splinter, with some prominent liberals urging a vote for Barak, and others casting their lot with the belligerent Sharon.

Yasir Arafat has added his voice to those supporting Barak, appealing in particular to Israelis who are Palestinian. He claimed on January 23 that a victory for Sharon would be a "real disaster" and predicted that the Likud leader would deal with the Palestinians "in a crude military way."

Faced with the brutal reality of Barak's crackdown of the last four months, however, Palestinian Israelis seem unlikely to turn out for the Labor candidate in the same numbers as in 1999.  
 
A polarizing figure
Sharon has run a low-key campaign. In the event of victory he will face a divided and fractious Knesset, or parliament, in which his party forms a minority. In spite of this likely weakness, he remains a polarizing figure in Israeli politics, closely identified with Zionist military policy--from the brutal expulsion of the Palestinian people that laid the ground for Israel's formation, to the 1982 war against the Palestine Liberation Organization forces in Lebanon. That invasion culminated in a massacre of around 800 Palestinians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, carried out by rightist Lebanese forces under the protection of Israeli troops. Sharon was forced to resign as minister of defense as the facts about Tel Aviv's role in organizing this massacre became public.

Speaking less guardedly than at official election events, Sharon told the New Yorker magazine in an interview published in its January 29 issue that Palestinian leader Arafat "is a murderer and a liar...a bitter enemy." Referring euphemistically to the Israeli government's repeated attempts to organize Arafat's assassination, Sharon said that "all the governments of Israel for many years, Labor, Likud, all of them, made an effort...to remove him from our society."

Sharon also spoke bluntly of the prospects for so-called peace negotiations. "The best Israel could hope for," he said, "is an agreement of non-belligerency." The New York Times described Sharon's aim as a "long-term interim arrangement...deferring decisions on the explosive issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees. Times reporter Deborah Sontag wrote January 20 that "Mr. Bush's team may support Mr. Sharon's goal," noting that Republicans have criticized Clinton for "prematurely pressuring the parties to secure a final peace deal."

Some of the Palestinian dissatisfaction with the course of events came to the surface in a sharply worded document signed by the Palestinian negotiating team and released January 22. Major excerpts were published in the Times the next day. "It seems prudent, at the close of the Clinton administration," stated the memo, "to assess U.S. involvement."

"Over the last seven years in particular," it continued, "the U.S. has become increasingly identified with Israeli ideological assumptions.... The result has been that while Israel's security, including the security of its occupation forces, have been the focus of each agreement, the quality of life of Palestinians has continued to decline. The dichotomy between the comfort of Israelis, including those occupying Palestinian land in settlements with green lawns and swimming pools, and the poverty and misery of Palestinians, has only further inflamed an already volatile situation."

The Clinton proposal that formed the basis for the most recent set of tripartite talks in fact registered a pro–Tel Aviv shift in the official U.S. stance on at least three counts: it de facto recognized both the settlements in the occupied territories, formerly termed illegal, and--for the first time--Israel's annexation of Jerusalem in 1967; and it accepted Israel's blanket refusal of the right of refugees to return.

Two days after the memo's release, a statement from Arafat's office said that it "does not represent the official position of the Palestinian National Authority." Arafat affirmed "his gratitude and esteem" for former President Clinton and his administration.

The poverty cited in the statement has sharply increased under the ongoing Israeli military occupation of Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

As of January 11, the Israeli military had uprooted 25,000 olive and fruit trees and put bulldozers through 1,100 acres of land. Food prices have skyrocketed at the same time as tens of thousands have lost access to work in the occupied territories, in the settlements, and inside Israel itself.

The death toll has mounted since September 28 to 375 people as of January 27. Of the 331 Palestinians killed, 13 were Israeli citizens; 43 other Israelis and one German doctor have also died in the unrest.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home