Ignoring Asymmetry on the Ground

By Mitchell Kaidy

Given former Sen. George Mitchell’s nervy doggedness in the Northern Ireland negotiations and his appointment by former President Bill Clinton, his Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee was expected to make a real contribution to Israeli-Palestinian peace—despite the fact that it was set up as a way to forestall a U.N.-sponsored investigation into the causes of the al-Aqsa intifada.

If Mitchell’s latest performance was to duplicate the Northern Ireland accomplishments, however, his committee is off to a feeble start, leaving a faint imprint. Instead, Israel’s non-cooperation, combined with its military escalation in May and the committee’s fixation on being “even-handed,” deprived the report of much viability or visibility, with only scant mention in the media.

It appeared at first to have received good grades. According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres accepted it “in principle.” The Palestinian Authority strongly endorsed it, and Secretary of State Colin Powell described it as ‘a very good report.’

In the same breath, however, Powell admitted that the outlook for results was “not very positive.” Although he didn’t mention Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by name, Powell knew that Sharon had again refused to stop building settlements, intending instead to seek $375 million to expand them. Powell also knew that Sharon, ever faithful to his career of bloodshed and destruction, had declined to meet with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, despite Arafat’s willingness to negotiate.

Although the Mitchell Committee report contained strong criticism of the Israeli army, Israel disputed a key finding that its use of force was “excessive.” Also denying that Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa mosque precipitated the conflict, Israel again pinned the blame on Arafat for “abandoning negotiations”—at the very time Arafat was urging negotiations.

The Mitchell Report recognizes the deep frustration of the Palestinians in seeking meaningful portions of their land back, free of settlements, rather than non-contiguous islets encircled by armed Israelis and bypass roads. According to Article 40 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its civilian population onto territory seized by military force. Two United Nations resolutions, both supported by the United States, call on Israel to withdraw from the settlements.

Another fly in this ointment is the fact-finding committee’s zeal to discern symmetry when the conflict is palpably one-sided: Israel is a state backed economically and militarily by the world’s most powerful nation, while the Palestinians have no state and are largely on their own financially and otherwise; Israel fields an army, while the Palestinians have angry, self-motivated children and irregulars; Israel has superb modern weapons, against which the Palestinians employ the most primitive weapons.

In addition to former Senate Majority Leader Mitchell, the committee comprised Turkish President Suleyman Demirel; Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Thorbjoern Jagland; former U.S. Sen. Warren B. Rudman; and Javier Solana of the European Union.

Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace & Justice Program at the University of San Francisco, detected several reasons for the Mitchell report’s failure. One was that the committee was not truly international: its members should have been selected by the United Nations Secretary General. Another was the inclusion of two former U.S. senators who had been supporters of Israel’s occupation.

The committee’s failure to discern asymmetry between the antagonists may have been rooted in a fear of offending Israel, which, according to reports, refused to cooperate even when Prime Minister Ehud Barak was in office. After Ariel Sharon took over, the committee was lucky if it got close enough to meet Sharon’s back of the hand.

Notwithstanding Secretary of State Powell’s positive reaction, domestic politics make it highly unlikely that the Bush administration will push Israel to comply on any major issue, wasting another opportunity to end the bloodshed and at least minimize the escalating revolt.

That’s tragic. Pointing to an Israeli poll showing that 62 percent of Israelis favored a settlement freeze, Palestinian Authority Minister of Culture and Information Yasser Abed Rabbo wrote in The New York Times that the Mitchell Report constituted “a road map back…to the peace table.”

From all indications, it is a road Israel will choose not to take.

In his more than 53-year career, Mitchell Kaidy has worked for three daily newspapers, public radio and television, as well as in freelance journalism.

The Palestinian Response

Statement by Yasser Abed Rabbo, Minister of Culture and Information, on the Release of the Palestinian Response to the Mitchell Committee Report, May 16, 2001

Yesterday, the Palestine Liberation Organization submitted its response to the Mitchell Committee Report. After lengthy debate and consultation with representatives of Palestinian civil society, the PLO believes that the Committee’s findings and recommendations offer both Palestinians and Israelis a sensible and coherent foundation for resolving the current crisis and preparing a path back to meaningful negotiations.

Consequently, we fully support the immediate implementation of all of the Committee’s recommendations as a comprehensive package with the understanding that neither side should be permitted to selectively apply only those recommendations favorable to it. We also believe that a fair implementation of the recommendations must include third-party monitoring and enforcement.…

I would like to take this opportunity to outline the relevant portions of our response.

With respect to the Committee’s findings, we are pleased that the Committee found that “there is no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the Palestinian Authority to initiate a campaign of violence.” In addition, the Committee found that Israel uses excessive force and fails to differentiate between terrorism and legitimate protest. The Committee also came out against collective punishment.

However, the Report’s unique and fundamental contribution to reducing violence and restoring an atmosphere conducive to negotiations is the recognition of the link between Israeli settlement activity and Israeli security. The Report recognizes a simple truth that Israel has desperately tried to avoid: Israel cannot have peace and occupation at the same time. The Report expressly states that “a cessation of…violence will be particularly hard to sustain unless the Government of Israel freezes ALL settlement activity.” The Report also rejected the concept of “natural growth”—a concept rejected in 1995 by the Rabin government, in which Peres served, when Rabin promised no expansion of existing settlements, no government subsidies to existing settlements and no new settlements. This was unilaterally rejected by [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu when he embarked on a campaign of settlement expansion.

In our Response, we also highlight matters which we believe require further attention. Chief among those is the question of an international protection force. We note that the Committee was not opposed to such a force but felt that such a force requires the support of both parties. Unfortunately, the Committee’s approach fails to recognize that if Sharon was prepared to support protection for the Palestinians, such a force would not be needed.

Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, the Report provides a sensible and coherent foundation for resolving the current crisis and preparing a path back to meaningful negotiations. We support the immediate implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, but it must be understood that these recommendations must be implemented in their entirety, as a package. The need for a comprehensive application of the Committee’s report is extremely important given Israel’s clear strategy of publicly accepting the Report while rejecting the only recommendations giving the report credibility in Palestinian eyes—a freeze on settlements and a revision of Israeli military policies.

Now is the time for those truly seeking an end to the current crisis to move forward, to focus on full and immediate implementation of the Committee’s recommendations. Such implementation must allow for third-party involvement: third-party monitoring and third-party enforcement. Without such third-party involvement, Israel will continue to reserve for itself the right to play the roles of both judge AND jury—a recipe that has brought neither security for Israel nor freedom for Palestine.

Upon presentation of diplomatic initiatives, such as the Jordanian-Egyptian proposal as well as the Mitchell Report, Israel’s response has been not only to reject diplomatic efforts but also to escalate violence in an attempt to divert attention from diplomacy and creating an environment that is not ripe for implementation of the Committee’s recommendations. Since the disclosure of the Report’s call for a complete settlement freeze, Israel has responded by an escalation of violence as most recently evidenced by the premeditated assassination of five policemen as they ate dinner just two days ago. The Israeli press reported that the policemen posed no threat to Israeli security and were not suspected of any wrongdoing. In fact, the policemen had a history of peaceful cooperation with Israeli security forces, but were nevertheless assassinated in what was described yesterday by Ma’ariv as a “revenge attack”. In addition, yesterday, as Palestinians commemorated Al-Nakba, the beginning of Palestinian suffering and exile, Israeli snipers opened fire on unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, even though such demonstrators were nowhere near Israeli positions.

We invite the international community to join us in requesting a meeting at the highest level for all parties in order to develop a mechanism for the timely implementation of the Committee’s recommendations. Too many innocent lives have already been lost or unalterably damaged and there are already too many people mourning in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as in Israel. With that impetus in mind, we consider this Report not an end, but a beginning to a resolution of not only the current crisis, but also the underlying occupation. We are prepared to exert every effort in conjunction with the international community to make certain that the entire package presented in this Report becomes a reality.