The
Mitchell Report
Oslo's
Last Gasp?
Mouin Rabbani
(Mouin Rabbani is director of the Palestinian-American Research
Center in the West Bank town of Ramallah.)
June 1, 2001
On May 29, Israeli and
Palestinian security officials held their first publicly acknowledged
meeting since April. The encounter, conducted under CIA supervision,
was arranged by William Burns, recently appointed US Assistant Secretary
of State for Near Eastern Affairs, after a series of discussions
with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon. The very public US effort to knock Israeli and Palestinian
heads together has been lauded throughout the region and the world
as signaling the Bush administration's "re-engagement"
with the Middle East crisis. The basis for these moves, the Mitchell
Committee's "Report on Israeli-Palestinian Violence" officially
released on May 21, has earned fulsome praise for its "balance"
and "pragmatism."
The Mitchell Committee and the report's various sponsors make no secret
of their determination to resuscitate the Oslo "peace process"
that was critically wounded at the Haram al-Sharif on September 28-29,
2000. Indeed, the rather brief document has rightfully been termed
a road map for putting Oslo back on track. Yet, by refusing to deviate
from Oslo's conceptual framework and political assumptions, and seeking
to reinforce them instead, the Mitchell report has set the stage for
its own failure. Future historians are likely to consider it Oslo's
last gasp.
FACT-FINDING REPORT WITHOUT FACTS
The Mitchell Committee was established pursuant to the October
2000 summit, hastily convened by Bill Clinton in the Egyptian resort
of Sharm al-Sheikh. The summit ended in abject failure, since the
US and Israel refused to budge on the issues which precipitated
the Palestinian uprising. But the talks did persuade the Palestinian
leadership to abandon its demand for an international commission
of inquiry under UN auspices, and instead accept a "committee
of fact-finding" appointed by Clinton. During "consultations"
on the committee's composition, the US and Israel rejected Palestinian
proposals to include Nelson Mandela, or any other prominent statesman
with suspect allegiances to anti-colonial struggles. Rather, the
committee was led by George Mitchell and Warren Rudman, former US
senators who received substantial campaign contributions from pro-Israel
groups and consistently supported successive Israeli governments
while in office; former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who
presided over the expansion of the Turkish-Israeli strategic partnership
during the 1990s; Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland;
and Javier Solana, the European Union's High Representative for
the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
Despite its mandate, one thing the Mitchell Committee did not do was
find facts. The report specifically refuses to assign responsibility
for the eruption and continuation of "the violence" (saying
"we are not a tribunal"), and provides no independent opinion
of its cause. Official Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints are summarized
without commentary; by default, the reader is left to conclude that
the events of the previous seven months were a tragic act of nature.
One searches the report in vain for relevant information on casualties,
weaponry, the forces using them, the division of the territories in
question, the applicable conventions or even the Israeli-Palestinian
agreements that are in dispute. Absent such information, the report
conveys the impression that the Committee was investigating a confrontation
between equal forces, each equally responsible for the "violence."
Israel's harassment of the Committee, repeated appeals to Washington
to disband it and formal suspension of cooperation are simply not
mentioned.
PREDICTABLE CONTRASTS
Rather, the Mitchell report concentrates on (Palestinian) "violence"
(a word used 36 times) and "terror(ism)" (20 mentions),
and (Israeli) "security" (25). Together these terms make
81 appearances. By contrast, "settlements" are mentioned
18 times, "occupation" four times (three times to describe
a Palestinian point of view), "illegal" twice (once referring
to Palestinian weaponry), and "human rights," "United
Nations," "international law" and "self-determination"
once each. Crucially, "responsibility" is mentioned only
four times, thrice in reference to the Palestinian Authority (PA)
and once in connection with Israel's "responsibility to help
rebuild confidence." "Accountability" appears just
once -- to criticize the PA's chain of command. Given this framework,
the report's recommendations are all too predictable: an "immediate"
and "unconditional cessation of violence," an "immediate
resumption of security cooperation," a "meaningful 'cooling-off
period'" to be followed by "confidence-building measures"
and, thereafter, a "resumption of negotiations."
As a confidence-building measure, the Mitchell report demands that
"the PA...make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations
and to punish perpetrators...[and undertake] immediate steps to apprehend
and incarcerate terrorists operating within the PA's jurisdiction."
Such a vague formulation can only be interpreted as a call for mass
repression of popular and/or organized resistance to continued Israeli
occupation. The report effectively holds the PA accountable for any
act committed by a Palestinian individual or political organization,
including attacks within Israeli territory by Hamas or other opposition
elements. Mitchell's assessment pointedly declines to call for an
investigation of Israeli conduct in the Occupied Territories, despite
severe condemnations by international human rights groups of that
conduct. Hence the report rejects the notion that Israel can or should
be held responsible for gross violations of the human rights of civilian
Palestinian non-combatants (including the killing of at least 120
Palestinian children), or held to standards even remotely similar
to those applied to the PA. The deployment of an "international
protection force" is made conditional on Israeli approval.
The Mitchell report does not demand that the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) withdraw their heavy equipment from the conflict, or call for
an Israeli redeployment to positions held prior to September 28. Rather,
it says the "IDF should consider" such moves, but only after
the uprising has been terminated, security cooperation has resumed
and the cooling-off period is completed. International human rights
groups classify Israel's lethal responses to unarmed Palestinian demonstrators,
destruction of Palestinian homes, roads, trees and other property,
and the economic siege against the PA and Palestinian population centers
as illegal acts which must stop immediately. The Mitchell report reduces
Israel's cessation of these tactics to confidence-building measures,
a carrot for the PA provided it first brandishes its stick against
the raging anti-colonial revolt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On
the whole, the report allows only for a relationship between Palestinian
"violence" and the Israeli "response," ignoring
the possibility of a connection between Israeli conduct in the Occupied
Territories and the intensity of the Palestinian uprising.
OPTIONAL SETTLEMENT FREEZE
In a seeming break with its otherwise uncritical adoption of Israel's
positions, the Mitchell report states that Israel "should freeze
all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth' of existing
settlements," and notes that "the kind of security cooperation
desired by [Israel] cannot for long coexist with settlement activity."
No reference is made to numerous UN Security Council resolutions
characterizing all settlements in the Occupied Territories as illegal
and calling for their dismantlement. The report fails to specify
whether the "freeze" should be temporary or permanent,
and whether or not it includes settlements in East Jerusalem and
West Bank territory formally annexed by Israel.
On the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, perhaps the
most crucial point of all, the Mitchell report simply abdicates responsibility,
concluding that "it is not within our mandate to prescribe the
venue, the basis or the agenda of negotiations." Stated differently,
the Committee was not authorized -- and by all appearances was disinclined
-- to explicitly recommend that negotiations should aim to achieve
a permanent settlement, let alone to find that Palestinians are engaged
in a revolt against military occupation. Rather remarkably for a document
meant to revive the Oslo process, the report fails to provide a timeline
for implementation of its own recommendations.
Notwithstanding the Mitchell report's flaws, the PA almost immediately
accepted it in full, provided that Israel also took the Committee's
recommendations without any changes. Israel formally accepted the
report, but stipulated that the settlement freeze would only be discussed
after a "full and complete cessation of all violence and terrorism,"
the resumption of security cooperation and a cooling-off period of
two to six months. In a public letter, Mitchell himself supported
Israel's position. More importantly, in a May 21 press conference,
US Secretary of State Colin Powell openly distanced the US from the
report's recommendation of a settlement freeze, announcing instead
that it was a negotiable element and asking Burns to help Israel and
the PA "bridge the wide gap" between them on this issue.
Several days later, Sharon, at US urging, sought to take the high
ground by declaring a "unilateral ceasefire." In practice
the "ceasefire" has amounted to little more than refraining
from attacks against the PA in response to Hamas bombings, and reducing
the scope of high-profile "initiated operations." But Israel
has continued to use tanks, heavy machine guns and lighter weapons
in daily invasions of PA territory. Arafat has refused to follow Sharon's
lead, insisting that Israel must first agree to the Mitchell recommendations
without reservation, and agree to a timetable for their implementation
and a monitoring mechanism.
ESCAPING
THE SPOILER LABEL
In accepting
the Mitchell report, Arafat was primarily motivated by his need
to impress Washington and the Europeans with a constructive approach,
and to respond to Arab leaders (and key elements of the PA) increasingly
anxious for the revival of the peace process. At the same time,
the PA has acted on the assumption that Sharon is unwilling and
unable to accept a settlement freeze. The PA hopes to use the Mitchell
report to isolate Israel on this issue, and avoid implementation
of the report's recommendations, which would invite serious internal
dissent. It is a risky gamble. Peace Now's finding that the Sharon
government has established 15 new settlements, and Housing Minister
Natan Sharansky's approval of 700 new West Bank settler homes, have
elicited some international criticism. But the National and Islamic
Forces (NIF) coalition which coordinates the uprising has specifically
rejected the Mitchell report and any other proposal which does not
explicitly provide for the end of the occupation. Various Palestinian
factions have escalated their attacks within the Occupied Territories
and Israel to drive the point home.
Similar calculations can be discerned within Israel. Sharon, Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres and many others openly speak of the need to
win the public relations war surrounding the Mitchell report so that
it can either be implemented on Israel's terms or not at all. While
Peres plaintively implores the world not to deny Jewish settlers the
right to bear children, Sharon has used recent Palestinian attacks
to underline the Mitchell Committee's core demand for an immediate
and unconditional end to the uprising.
Both parties are maneuvering to escape being labeled the spoiler of
a process neither believes can succeed. For the PA, this means identifying
Israel's settlement policies as the cause of Mitchell's failure, and
persuading the international community to impose upon Israel the more
detailed Egyptian-Jordanian proposal instead. Harboring no illusions
about the short-term likelihood of serious permanent settlement negotiations,
the Palestinian leadership believes the combination of PA diplomacy
and attacks by NIF factions will cause the Sharon government to implode
under pressure from its flanks. Israel's current goal is to obtain
both international approval for its view that the PA is ultimately
if not directly responsible for continuing "the violence,"
and international support for overwhelming force to suppress the uprising.
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