MERIP Primer on the UPRISING IN PALESTINE

Introduction

Just last summer, US President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to discuss final arrangements for peace in Palestine and Israel. In January 2001, peace seems very far away. Since September 28, over 380 people -- all but 45 of them Palestinian -- have died, and thousands more Palestinians have been wounded, as a popular uprising rages against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. What is the history of the conflict over Palestine? Why did Ariel Sharon's visit to a mosque in Jerusalem provoke Palestinian public opinion, and why does his candidacy for prime minister frighten Palestinians and many Israelis? Is Israel right to blame Arafat for the numerous Palestinian deaths and injuries? What have international investigations said about those deaths and injuries? Do Clinton's latest attempts to restart negotiations have a chance to succeed?

The Conflict over Palestine

At the start of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire ruled much of the Arab world, including the territory that is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. With the Allied victory in World War I, the area came under the control of the British who made contradictory promises to Arab and Zionist leaders about how -- and by whom -- the Mandate of Palestine was to be governed. At the time, 90 percent of the population was Arab; the Jewish community included long-time residents and new immigrants fleeing persecution in Russia and, later, other parts of Europe. A three-year uprising in the late 1930s against British rule and increased Jewish immigration resulted in a British proposal to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. UN General Assembly Resolution 181 reaffirmed partition in 1947.

The war that followed led to the establishment of the State of Israel. Part of the area that was designated for the Palestinian state was conquered by Israel, leading to the displacement of some 750,000 Palestinians. Gaza came under the control of Egypt, while Transjordan occupied and later illegally annexed the West Bank. Less than 20 years later, in the June 1967 War, Israel gained control of the rest of the former Mandate of Palestine (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1980), the Egyptian Sinai (since returned to Egypt), and the Syrian Golan Heights. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967), never implemented, affirmed "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and called upon Israel to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict." The 1970s and 1980s saw Arab-Israeli wars in 1973 and 1982, the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in December 1987, and Yasser Arafat's condemnation of terrorism and recognition of the state of Israel in December 1988.

The Madrid peace conference followed the Gulf war in October 1991. A year later, secret Israeli-Palestinian talks began in Oslo, Norway, culminating in the September 1993 Declaration of Principles (DoP) on interim Palestinian self-government, signed by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The DoP set out a process for transforming the nature of the Israeli occupation but left numerous issues unresolved, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the disposition of Israeli settlements (whose expansion continues until today) and final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Under the DoP, Israel relinquished day-to-day authority over parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, headed by Arafat who returned to Gaza in 1994. However, ultimate power remained with Israel, which exercised its control by frequently sealing off the Palestinian-governed areas from the rest of the Occupied Territories and from Israel. Subsequent agreements in 1995 (Oslo II), 1998 (Wye River) and 1999 (Wye River II) failed to resolve these issues. With Palestinian-Israeli negotiations stalled, US President Bill Clinton called a summit at Camp David in July 2000. After two weeks of intensive negotiation, the talks ended without a deal.

Who Is Ariel Sharon?

A retired army general, Ariel Sharon, 72, has been a major figure in Israeli politics for decades. He commanded the infamous Unit 101 that massacred 53 Palestinian civilians at Kibya in 1953. In 1971, he led a systematic campaign to quell opposition in Gaza through massive repression, expulsions, and arrests. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1974 and, as defense minister in 1982, he led the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. An Israeli tribunal found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre (by Lebanese militias under Israeli control) of thousands of Palestinian civilians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. In the aftermath, he was removed as defense minister but retained a role in the Cabinet as "minister without portfolio."

In the early 1990s, Sharon served as housing minister and promoted a massive construction drive to increase Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named Sharon foreign minister. As current head of the Likud party, Sharon has vociferously criticized Prime Minister Ehud Barak for negotiating with the Palestinians. He maintains a residence in Jerusalem's Old City (draped in an Israeli flag) and his provocative visit to al-Haram al-Sharif on Sept. 28, and the harsh Israeli response to the protests that followed, helped ignite the current uprising.

Sharon became the Likud candidate for prime minister in Israel's planned February 6, 2001 elections when Binyamin Netanyahu withdrew. He currently holds a large lead over Barak in the polls. At a conference in Israel in late December 2000, Sharon discussed the "peace proposals" he might consider as prime minister. According to his comments, the IDF would withdraw from 50 percent of the Occupied Territories, but not to Israel's pre-1967 borders, as mandated by resolution 242. Israel would continue to occupy the Jordan Valley, as a "buffer zone" between the Palestinian entity and Jordan, with which country Israel signed a comprehensive peace treaty in 1994. Settlements, bypass roads and complete Israeli control of crossings between PA-controlled areas and Israel would remain in place. Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees would not be on Sharon's negotiating table.

Who Controls the Palestinian Street?

Since 1994, portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been administered by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA is not a fully sovereign state like Israel or the United States, but it does provide municipal services and attempts to maintain order in the areas under its control. The PA's top ranks, including Arafat, mostly belong to Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But Fatah is independent of the PA, and Arafat does not control the entire organization. The current uprising in the Occupied Territories has pushed militant local leaders of Fatah to the forefront, and Fatah units known in the press as the tanzim have coordinated much of the street fighting. Since at least November 2000, the IDF has been carrying out what Israeli Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh admitted is a conscious policy of assassinating high-profile Fatah activists, in tacit recognition of their independence from the PA. Most recently, Fatah is leading the opposition to the Clinton "bridging proposals," urging Arafat not to accept them.

Above all, the ongoing intifada expresses cumulative popular anger at both the violence of the Israeli occupation and the compromises Arafat seems willing to make on basic Palestinian national rights -- such as the establishment of a viable sovereign state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and 1967 and Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem. Fatah has, to a limited extent, been able to channel this anger in street protests. When Ariel Sharon visited the Haram al-Sharif on September 28, the ensuing Palestinian protests were spearheaded by Islamists and students -- the sectors of the population that are most militant in their criticisms of the Oslo process, and among whom Arafat enjoys little influence. Since the initial protests, Arafat's moves to contain the violence have been unpopular on the Palestinian street. Huge crowds in the West Bank and Gaza demonstrated against Arafat's presence at the October 17 Sharm al-Sheikh summit, and the failure of Arab leaders to agree on concrete action against the Israeli occupation at the October 21-22 Cairo summit.

The PA security forces whom Arafat does control directly have only rarely intervened in armed clashes. Arafat does not control the armed Fatah cadres, who have increasingly "militarized" the uprising with armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlements, nor does he control the stone-throwing students and youths who constitute a disproportionate number of the dead and wounded. He could crack down on the uprising, but to do so would strengthen the voices that describe the PA as a proxy police force for the Israeli occupation, and endanger his status as leader of the Palestinian cause.

Occupation Policies During the Uprising

Israel has met the uprising with much greater force than it employed during the first intifada from 1987-1993. Numerous respected human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, conducted studies that showed IDF soldiers employing excessive force in their suppression of Palestinian demonstrators. In their reports, they cited (among other violations): the use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians, attacks on medical personnel and installations, the use of snipers with high-powered rifles and attacks on children. Palestinians repeatedly accused the IDF of implementing a "shoot to kill" policy against the demonstrators, an accusation Israel emphatically denied. But figures compiled by the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute of Ramallah showed that (as of December 19) 75 percent of intifada-related wounds treated at West Bank health facilities were upper-body wounds, 35.1 percent wounds to the head and neck. In Gaza, 60 percent of wounds treated were in the head, chest or abdomen, 22.4 percent in the head and neck. International reports confirm the preponderance of upper-body wounds.

Ehud Barak periodically closed Israel's borders to the 125,000 Palestinian workers -- especially Gazans -- who rely on jobs inside Israel for their modest income. Israeli forces imposed blockades around Palestinian towns in the West Bank, sometimes causing severe shortages of necessities like flour, sugar and gasoline. The closures -- internal and external -- impeded movement of Palestinian merchants and goods, costing the Palestinian economy an estimated $336 million as of November 2000. In the West Bank town of Hebron, which was split into Israeli- and PA-controlled areas in 1997, the IDF enforces a strict curfew for the 40,000 Palestinians who live in the Israeli-controlled area, relaxing it for a few hours each day so that residents can purchase groceries. Construction of new bypass roads to settlements from Israel proper, and even new settlements, continues during the uprising. Armed settler attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian property have escalated.

The force of Israel's response gradually "militarized" the intifada in the winter of 2000-2001. Fatah militants, and to a lesser degree, members of the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, targeted soldiers and settlers with shootings and bombings. Palestinian civilian casualties still greatly outnumber Israeli casualties since September 2000, and Israel often answered armed attacks carried out by a few Palestinians with closures, shelling of residential areas and other measures of collective punishment.

The "Honest Broker" and the UN

Since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, there has been a nearly unanimous international consensus on how to resolve the crisis: an international conference based on international law and United Nations resolutions. But Israel disagreed, and the US backed Israel's rejection.

After the Cold War, the US has often relied on the UN to negotiate agreements and provide peacekeepers to end regional wars and crises: in Cambodia, Angola and Guatemala and more recently in East Timor, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

But the US, while mentioning one or two UN resolutions in passing, kept Israel-Palestine diplomacy under its own control. Washington -- Israel's major financial, diplomatic and military backer -- claimed the role of the "honest broker." The actual requirements of international law (like Israel's obligations as an occupying power to protect civilians and to prohibit settling Israeli citizens in occupied territory) and existing UN resolutions (such as 194, ensuring the right of Palestinian refugees to return and receive compensation) were sidelined in favor of US-brokered talks between Israel, the strongest military power in the Middle East and the 17th wealthiest country in the world, and the stateless Palestinians living under occupation or in exile.

In the 1991 Madrid talks, the US-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding stated explicitly that the UN would have no role. In the 1993 Oslo process, the UN was ignored. In 1999 when over 100 signatories of the Geneva Conventions met to assess Israeli compliance with the Conventions, the meeting lasted only ten minutes in order to "avert friction" with Israel. The failed 2000 Camp David summit ignored the UN altogether.

In October 2000, as Palestinians continued to die, the Israeli government insisted that any UN fact-finding commission would be nothing but a "kangaroo court," and that it would accept only separate Israeli and Palestinian investigations under overall US authority. When 14 out of 15 members of the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel's excessive force against civilians, it was the US alone that abstained. US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke threatened to veto any further resolution, stating that the virtually unanimous current resolution had taken the UN "out of the running" to play a role in negotiations.

The September-October 2000 occupation crisis ushered in an unprecedented, albeit significantly limited, role for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

A special session of the UN's High Commission for Human Rights passed a strong resolution condemning the "grave and massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel," and establishing a "human rights inquiry commission." An enormous US lobbying campaign resulted in Washington's Western allies opposing the vote, and many non-aligned countries abstaining. When the General Assembly convened, US diplomats again went into high gear to dampen the language of the resolution. Only six countries -- the US, Israel and four Polynesian island states -- voted no, though nearly a third of the General Assembly abstained.

On October 25, the US House of Representatives voted 365-30 to call on Arafat to stop the violence. Congressional leaders said the House felt compelled to pass the resolution to counter the UN resolutions that are "biased against Israel." The same day, the House passed a new foreign aid bill. Israel will receive $2.82 billion in the next fiscal year -- 18.9 percent of the total and the largest aid amount of any country.

In November 2000, the UN Security Council tabled a British-backed proposal to send 2000 unarmed UN observers to the Occupied Territories to reduce the scale of confrontations. The US had blocked the proposal because Israel insisted that it would not admit the observers. At the Sharm al-Sheikh summit in October, US President Bill Clinton secured the agreement of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to a US-led inquiry into the causes of the violence. The UN has appointed its own fact-finding team, which is due to report in February 2001.

After almost four months of clashes, over 330 Palestinians and 44 Israelis dead, and a military occupation and siege tighter than ever, the best hope for peace is a return to UN resolutions, international law and direct UN involvement in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. The Clinton "bridging proposals" of December 2000 fall far short of this goal.

The Diplomatic Front

Despite Arafat's attempts to involve Russia, the European Union and the UN more directly, the US reasserted its dominant role in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in December 2000 with President Bill Clinton's "bridging proposals" for restarting the process begun at Oslo in 1993. The proposals were similar to the ideas that had failed at Camp David in July 2000: Israel would withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of Gaza, but would retain many settlements and "security borders" along the Jordan; Israel would recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza; Israeli-controlled bypass roads linking settlements to Israel proper would divide the West Bank into three cantons; and the PA would move its capital to East Jerusalem, but Israel would retain at least partial sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif. In exchange, the Clinton plan asked the PA to give up the right of return for Palestinian refugees, except for a limited return of refugees to the Palestinian state, and to sign an "end of conflict" clause renouncing all further Palestinian claims on the State of Israel.

Concurrently, CIA director George Tenet held a series of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs to determine how best to stop the confrontations and shooting in the Occupied Territories. Tenet and the Israelis sought assurances that the PA would arrest known Fatah and Hamas militants -- with or without formal charges.

In the first week of January 2001, Arafat and Barak both signaled willingness to convene a three-way summit to discuss the Clinton plan. But both leaders were publicly skeptical that a summit would produce a substantive agreement. On January 8, 2001, 25,000 right-wing Israelis demonstrated in Jerusalem against the plan. Sharon called Barak a "sellout" for considering the proposals, and other Likud figures used the word "traitor." On the Palestinian side, pressure mounted on Arafat to break off discussions of the Clinton plan, since its positions on all the final status issues were distant from the mandates of international law. On January 9, two of his top advisers said the PA was unwilling to sign an "interim" agreement that did not resolve final status issues.

The new uprising has reminded Israel, the US and the PA of the existence of Palestinian public opinion. Since September 2000, Palestinians have sent a clear message that a permanent settlement must be based on the stipulations of UN Resolutions 194 and 242: Israel's full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, the dismantlement of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory and the rights of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees. Partly because he fears for his own position, Arafat cannot accept a "peace plan" that so undercuts the motivations of the second intifada. It appears very unlikely that Clinton will be able to broker any sort of agreement before he leaves office on January 20, 2001, and equally unlikely that the uprising will end soon.