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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher - June 12, 2006

Q. What exactly is the Palestinian's "prisoners' document"...? Q. Is the "Eyland" plan a realistic idea?

Q. What exactly is the "prisoners' document" that has catalyzed the new political campaign of Abu Mazen and generated the Palestinian controversy regarding a referendum?

A. The prisoners' document, also known as the national reconciliation document and by other titles, was first published in the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds on May 11. It comprises a preamble and 18 clauses. It was drafted and signed by imprisoned senior leaders from a broad spectrum of Palestinian movements, principally Fateh (Marwan Barghouti) and Hamas (Sheikh Abd al-Khalek al-Natshe). It is primarily a call for unity and cooperation among Palestinians to counter the current dangers posed by fragmentation and "the Israeli program", i.e., disengagement, occupation, etc.

Accordingly, most of the document appeals for unifying acts like integrating Hamas and the Islamic Jihad into the PLO, "convening a new Palestinian national congress before the end of 2006 while guaranteeing the participation of all forces", "formulating a Palestinian program for political action", "strengthening the Palestinian National Authority", "working together to solve all disagreements", "forming a government of national unity", "forming a popular council to represent the refugees", combining all forces opposing Israel while reassessing the methods of struggle, reforming the Palestinian security institutions and encouraging international solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

These ideas are all generally acceptable to both Fateh and Hamas, and in many ways constitute the Palestinian equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. So, too, are the reaffirmation that the PLO is responsible for negotiating with Israel and the condemnation of the "siege and oppression imposed by Israel and the United States on the Palestinian people". In other words, for the most part this is an internal document dealing with internal issues and repeating platitudes that enjoy broad consensus support. In this sense, the document is not of particular note outside of its Palestinian context.

Where the prisoners' document becomes controversial among Palestinians and with Israel and the international community is in its first and third clauses. The first presents "the right to establish an independent Palestinian state with holy Jerusalem as its capital, on all the territories conquered in 1967, to secure the right of return for the refugees, to liberate all prisoners and detainees". The third discusses "the right of the Palestinian people to resist steadfastly in diverse ways while focusing resistance in the occupied territories from 1967", alongside political and diplomatic action, mass resistance, etc.

Israeli commentators quite understandably focus on the demand for the right of return, which is generally understood as code for planting the seeds of an eventual one state solution through the Palestinization of Israel. Indeed, nowhere does the document either recognize Israel, call specifically for a two state solution or offer Israel peace or specific guarantees for its existence. In this regard, the document is more hard line than the Arab League's March 2002 endorsement of the "Saudi plan", which the prisoners' document also does not specifically mention. Evidently, these tough positions were invoked in an effort to make the document more acceptable to Hamas. In a similar vein, the document insists that Hamas be integrated into the PLO in accordance with the results of the recent Palestinian elections and in keeping with the March 2005 Cairo agreement--a pact in which Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority president and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas) is generally considered to have made far-reaching concessions in order to achieve Hamas' agreement to a ceasefire and to participate in elections.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad spokesmen have taken exception to the implication in the third clause that violent resistance should be restricted to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. They want to be free to attack civilians inside the green line. Israelis, for their part, have pointed out that the document merely calls for "focusing resistance" beyond the green line there and does not specifically forbid terrorism inside Israel as well.

These stipulations and nuances in the document render all the more interesting its blanket endorsement by Abu Mazen. This is the same Palestinian president who has outspokenly criticized all violent resistance on both sides of the 1967 lines, accepts the Saudi plan and calls explicitly for a two state solution. This begs the issue: if, as Abu Mazen desires, the plan is approved in a referendum on July 26, or is ratified by Hamas before that (thereby obviating the need for a referendum), it will undoubtedly strengthen Abbas' leadership standing. But it will also, ostensibly, bind him to a set of even tougher negotiating conditions with Israel than he would normally be expected to present at the table.

This, in turn, appears to confirm the conventional wisdom: that Abu Mazen has fastened upon the document as a leadership ploy in his quarrel with Hamas, despite the transparent objective of the drafters of the document that it serve as a means of leveraging more unity. This point was reinforced by the announcement of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad on June 11 that their signatories had retracted their signatures to protest Abu Mazen's decision to submit the document to a referendum. The document, noted Hamas, was designed to be the catalyst for a debate rather than to seal the debate--a point reinforced by the statement in the preamble expressing the hope that the prisoners' document "contributes to reaching a Palestinian national conciliation document".

In both its conception and its application, then, the prisoners' document has little to do with future Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking.

Q. The outgoing Israeli national security adviser, Major General (res.) Giora Eyland, recently endorsed a plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of territorial swaps between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan, thereby awarding the Palestinian state territory in Sinai and on the East Bank. Is this a realistic idea?

A. The idea did not originate with Eyland. What is astounding is that such a senior figure in Israel's security establishment adopted this plan, which is not only totally unrealistic but could damage Israel's relations with Jordan and Egypt.

The plan was first broached several years ago by Prof. Yehoshua Ben Arieh, a Hebrew University geographer, and by settler circles. It calls for Egypt to cede 600 sq. km. of northeast Sinai territory, adjacent to the Gaza Strip, to a Palestinian state, thereby enabling the crowded Gazan population to expand into nearly empty territory and lengthening the Palestinian Mediterranean coastline. In return, Israel would cede to Egypt 200 sq. km. of the southern Negev, just north of Eilat, and allow Egypt to tunnel under adjacent Israeli territory in order to create a direct transportation link with Jordan, thereby joining the Arab east and the Arab west.

Jordan would also be asked to cede 100 sq. km. of territory on the East Bank of the Jordan River, thereby allowing the West Bank to expand eastward--a necessity, since the plan awards Israel fully 600 sq. km. of the West Bank (about twice the size of the Gaza Strip). Israel would, under this arrangement, record a net gain of some 400 sq. km. of territory. The Palestinians would end up with a little more than the equivalent of the West Bank and Gaza, and Egypt and Jordan would both lose territory.

The Ben Arieh plan as presented by Eyland is based on the determination that the West Bank and Gaza as constituted could not provide for a viable Palestinian state; in other words, there is not enough room in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine for two viable states. The plan's supporters offer little evidence to back up this assertion other than the fact that we all live in a very crowded piece of land with limited resources. Nor do they prove convincingly that a Palestinian trade of part of the West Bank for part of Sinai would somehow make a critical difference in viability.

The plan's backers claim that senior Palestinian officials have "expressed interest" in it. That, to my understanding, is a polite way of saying no. Worse, Eyland and other supporters of his "new paradigm" can produce no evidence that Egypt and/or Jordan would willingly give up territory in order for the plan to work. Jordanian and Egyptian scholars and officials I have queried on the idea usually respond with open ridicule to the notion that they would cede part of their patrimony in order to relieve Israel of its own obligation to help Palestinians create a viable state. Jordanians view this scheme as yet another Israeli attempt to solve the Palestinian issue at the expense of the Hashemites. Nor are Jordanians particularly interested in a land link with Egypt--an idea that has frightened them ever since the 1950s, when Egypt's Nasser conspired against King Hussein. And incidentally, why should Israel endorse a plan that reduces Eilat's territorial contiguity with the rest of Israel and poses the danger of it being cut off in the event of war?

When confronted with the Jordanian and Egyptian reaction, supporters of the plan respond that they would rely on the application of American pressure and inducements on Amman and Cairo to persuade them to contribute to such a solution--a sure formula for muddying Israel's relations with all three.

Until now the Eyland/Ben Arieh plan could be treated as a curiosity. A couple of years ago, it was reported that Eyland had received permission from PM Sharon to broach the plan to colleagues in Washington, where he was rebuffed. But it was not clear from these reports that Eyland had so thoroughly adopted the idea that he would present it to the public as his parting message. So bizarre is the plan that it paints the outgoing national security adviser as a naive amateur--a disturbing thought that discredits some of the more interesting criticism he offered of the disengagement plan and Israel's national security decision-making process. If the process by which Eyland adopted his "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is any indication, he is the last person who could justifiably criticize the national security decision-making process.