Barak Puts Oslo on Hold After Arab Summit
Barak Puts Oslo on Hold After Arab Summit
Following another bloody weekend of Palestinian rioting and a threatening resolution out of the Arab League summit in Cairo on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has suspended indefinitely the Oslo peace process. The move opens the door a little wider for an emergency national unity government with the opposition Likud party, but drew a sharp retort from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who forsees only gains by prolonging the conflict.
The rare, two-day Arab League gathering came amid a fresh round of casualties in the Palestinian uprising, now nearly four weeks old, as up to 16 Palestinians died during clashes with Israeli troops between Friday and Sunday. The climbing death toll from the unrelenting demonstrations and gun battles has topped 120, most Palestinians, but including 14 Israeli Arabs and 8 Jews.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak originally agreed to host the summit, in part to reduce the level of tensions and protests on the streets of Cairo and other Arab capitals. But then, he found himself fighting off calls by Iraq, Libya and Yemen for a united war front against Israel.
The final communiqué was long on strident rhetoric, but somewhat short on realistic calls for punitive action. The summit – attended by 16 Arab heads of state and officials from 6 others – ended with a declaration renouncing Israel’s “barbarism” and “welcoming” the new Palestinian “intifada.” The statement said that Arab leaders “consider the blood [of Palestinian martyrs] a valuable asset for the sake of liberating the land, establishing the state and realizing peace.” The Arab states also insisted they “hold Israel responsible” for the recent tensions and violence in the region, no matter where they lead.
Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab countries with full diplomatic relations with Israel, resisted calls for severing all ties with Israel, but the League did adopt a freeze on further normalization with the Jewish state. Multilateral talks on regional problems were also suspended.
Among its more stinging conclusions, the statement urged the UN Security Council “to form an international criminal court especially to try the Israeli war criminals who committed the massacres against the Palestinians.” The League also demanded that UN forces be inserted to protect Palestinian areas, and that a UN-led international investigation committee conduct an official review of the “causes of and the responsibility for… the [Israeli] massacres committed… against the Palestinian and the Lebanese peoples.”
The communiqué included an appeal for international supervision over the nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and warned against any nation moving their embassies to Jerusalem. Finally, the summit accepted a proposal offered by Saudi Arabia to provide the Palestinian Authority with $1 billion, to be used to support the intifada and to increase the Muslim presence in Jerusalem.
Despite the strong anti-Israel tone of the summit declaration, many Palestinians took to the street in protest of what they viewed as a tepid pan-Arab response to their “war for independence.” Some even burned images of Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Meanwhile, the official Israeli reaction was a bit confusing. An Israeli spokesman at first thanked Mubarak for his “considerable effort to maintain a balanced approach, which calls for peace and restraint, as opposed to the extremists’ positions.”
But after meeting with his cabinet on Sunday, Barak issued a statement saying Israel “utterly rejects the language of threats used at the Arab summit in Cairo and condemns the call, implicit in the resolutions, for a continuation of violence.”
Following through with a pre-summit hint, Barak also announced a “time out” in the peace process in order to “reassess the diplomatic process in light of the events of recent weeks. The need for this is self-evident, natural and dictated by common sense,” explained Barak. He set no time limit on the suspension of Oslo, but stressed Israel can not engage in negotiations while under the gun. Barak is considering a plan for a “unilateral separation” from the Palestinians, an idea the US and others view with skepticism.
Dovish cabinet ministers Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres objected to the time out, and Beilin is holding this evening a meeting of Labor party MKs who oppose it and a unity cabinet with Likud. Meanwhile, some in the nationalist camp saw it as a gesture inviting Likud chairman Ariel Sharon to join an emergency coalition, although they also want to see early elections. Barak and Sharon held talks today, and although no agreement was reached, discussions will resume within the next day or so.
But it was Arafat who had the most forceful reaction to the “time out,” telling Barak to “go to hell.”
“I expected this from him,” grumbled the PLO chief upon returning to Gaza. “My response is that our people [are] continuing the road to Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state. To accept it or not to accept it, let him got to hell,” Arafat muttered to reporters in English. The hostile comments come after Arafat has refused to honor the Sharm e-Sheikh cease-fire accords, brokered last week, by ordering a cessation of the Palestinian violence. Other Palestinian officials termed Barak’s decision a “declaration of war.”
Israeli security and political analysts concur that the uprising will continue so long as Arafat thinks he can reap further political dividends from it. Ultimately, his goal appears to be to birth a Palestinian state through bloodshed, rather than Israeli goodwill.
Since the Palestinian rioting began in late September, Arafat has received backing from three separate UN forums. First, on October 7 the UN Security Council condemned Israel’s “excessive use of force” against the Palestinians in a resolution that the US declared unbalanced, but refused to veto. Last Thursday, the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva passed a resolution, by a 19 to 16 vote, blasting what it said were “grave and massive human violations of human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel.” And on Friday, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, by a 92 to 6 margin, again condemning Israel for “excessive use of force” against Palestinian civilians and for violence by Israeli settlers.
Some 76 UN members either abstained or were absent from the UN General Assembly during the vote on the latest resolution, while four predominantly Christian nations in the Pacific joined Israel and the US in voting against. UN Secretary General pleaded with the Assembly not to adopt words that would “inflame” the situation, but to little avail. The resolution also declared “Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, are illegal.”
Now, Arafat has managed to win strong, united backing from Arab heads of state at a League summit which they refused to convene after the Camp David talks in July.
Sadly, such pronouncements only seem to encourage Arafat and his brigades of armed fighters and adolescent martyrs. Following is a review of the major incidents of violence over the past few days.
NO ABATEMENT IN THE UPRISING: Clashes were reported today near Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, and in Hebron, where Arabs were firing and throwing stones and firebombs, continuing an increasing trend of gunfire aimed at the IDF and Israeli civilians. An IDF checkpost near Hebron’s Jewish community was targeted. In Ramallah today, thousands of Palestinians took part in a Hamas rally.
Four Palestinians were reported killed yesterday, as well as scores wounded. At least two IDF officers were lightly injured in the clashes. Shots were also fired at IDF outposts near the Samarian towns of Tulkarm and Shechem (Nablus), and on an IDF jeep patrol in the town of Halhul, above Hebron. Part of the main highway through the Jordan Valley was closed for a time due to Arab stonethrowing and the burning of tires in the middle of the road.
Near the scorched Netzarim junction in central Gaza, Israeli border police sappers neutralized a pipe bomb discovered during a patrol. The device was apparently thrown at an IDF bunker during the night. Yesterday afternoon in Gaza, two Hamas fugitives, one armed with a knife, were arrested. Gun battles continued throughout Sunday night and into the pre-dawn hours today between IDF soldiers deployed at the Jewish community of Psagot, just east of Ramallah, and Arabs firing on settlers there.
One of the most contentious flashpoints over the past few days has been an area on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which both the BBC and CNN are now labeling a “settlement.” During the night an IDF helicopter gunship fired two missiles and a tank fired one shell and heavy machine gun fire at the Palestinian village of Beit Jalla, just west of Bethlehem, in response to continued Palestinian fire on the adjacent southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.
Prime Minister Barak and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert had visited the Jerusalem suburb on Sunday afternoon to reassure troubled Gilo residents, who have been targeted on numerous occasions by Palestinian snipers in recent weeks. But just hours later, Palestinian gunmen operating from Beit Jalla raked five of Gilo’s streets with gunfire several times during the night, hitting 16 buildings in the biggest attack to date. The IDF responded for the first time with missile fire from helicopter gunships, in addition to machine guns mounted on tanks, after warning Beit Jalla residents to leave their homes. The helicopter gunships zeroed in on a small marble factory where much of the shooting originated.
“It was clearly a miracle [that no one was hurt],” said one mother in Gilo. “There is no other word. The bullets were flying just over our head.” This morning the neighborhood was quiet.
The IDF clamped a security “crown” around Beit Jalla beginning today, in order to keep “Tanzim” militiamen from the PLO’s Fatah faction from entering the area to fire on Gilo, IDF Chief-of-Staff Gen. Shaul Mofaz said. He said that at present, security cooperation with the PA was “non-existent,” adding that he viewed it as important that the cooperation be revived.
Two dozen Israelis were miraculously saved from Palestinian lynchings on Friday, in two separate events: In one case, two Israeli cars on their way from the City of David, just south of the Western Wall, to the Beit Orot yeshiva between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives, were set upon and the passengers were nearly brutally killed by a Palestinian mob. Also on Friday, five IDF soldiers and an Israeli civilian were wounded when Palestinian security forces attempted to take over – and a mob surrounded – a van carrying 15 soldiers. In both cases the Israelis escaped with no more than treatable injuries.
Shots were fired today at IDF forces at Mount Eval, the area where a bus carrying settlers on a hiking trip was attacked last Thursday. No soldiers were wounded and the troops returned fire. Arab gunmen also fired at the Jewish settlement of Upper Betar. No damages or injuries were reported. On Thursday, a group of over 40 Israelis – men, women and children – were on a trip to Mt. Ebal to overlook the torched remains of Joseph’s Tomb and to visit Joshua’s Altar. They were attacked without warning and four people were wounded, one of whom has since died.
The Gaza airport was closed this afternoon according to Palestinian sources. Israelis say that PA police on the site were armed, in violation of agreements.
Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.