Arafat Absent From Sharon’s Plan

The fallout from Operation Protective Wall, and even this week’s suicide bombing in Rishon le-Zion, may move the diplomatic aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in unexpected directions.

Recent weeks had indicated that the United States and Arab world were preparing to resurrect President Clinton’s bold peace proposals from December 2000.

That plan envisaged a Palestinian state on virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a division of Jerusalem by neighborhood and a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem.

Many Israelis were wary of the concessions demanded of Israel — and the 19-month-long intifada the Palestinians launched, after rejecting the Clinton plan as insufficient, only deepened that skepticism.

Now, following Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to Washington this week — and the deadly suicide bombing Tuesday, just as Sharon and President Bush were preparing to meet — momentum is building behind an alternate plan that would sideline Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and implement a slower, phased approach to peacemaking.

Over the next few days, Israeli officials and intelligence analysts will be looking for evidence of two budding developments on the Palestinian side, one military and the other political. What they find could determine whether Israelis and Palestinians are in for another long round of fighting or whether, despite all the ongoing violence, a peace process is still possible.

On the military front, the question is whether the Palestinians really are ready to restructure their military forces with American help, as some of their leaders have indicated. This would entail merging the disparate security services into one armed force — and disarming all the party and political militias like Hamas and Tanzim.

On the political front, the question is whether a new, more democratic Palestinian leadership would accept the demise of Arafat. Sharon, who feels that no peace accord with Arafat is possible, reportedly discussed with Bush the idea of making Arafat a figurehead president, while a new Palestinian prime minister would wield real power.

In this context, Sharon is rumored to be contemplating allowing a Palestinian state in Gaza on a trial basis, with Preventive Security Service strongman Mohammad Dahlan as leader, and Arafat as president in name only.

Rather than a leap to an all-encompassing, final deal, therefore, Sharon is proposing a more measured approach in three phases over an indefinite period.

First, he says, there must be a process of democratization in the Palestinian Authority, with all armed forces placed under central authority and financial transparency instituted to prevent development funds donated by Europe from being used again to finance terrorist attacks against Israel.

Second, for a trial period, there would be a Palestinian state on part of the territory only, perhaps in the Gaza Strip.

Third, negotiations on final borders, Jerusalem and refugees would take place only after the trial period proves successful.

Indeed, as they survey the ruins of their cities, towns and villages, Palestinians from all walks of life are asking where suicide bombings have brought them. There is widespread talk of the need for a leadership and policy shake-up.

But the key question is whether the Palestinian drive for change will lead to accommodation with Israel on the Sharon model or something like it — or whether Sharon’s failure to put anything as bold as the Clinton parameters back on the table will end in new waves of Palestinian violence.

In addition, it’s far from clear whether Sharon would be willing to accept the Clinton parameters even if the interim stage proves successful.

Both Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, when each left office early in 2001, announced that the offer Arafat had spurned was no longer “on the table.”

But with each cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence more deadly than the last, relatively moderate Arab leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have been suggesting a return to the Clinton formula, and the Americans and Europeans have been listening.

“We don’t want to have to start from square one,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said, underlining the Arab demand that the peace talks resume from where they broke off at Taba, Egypt, in January 2001. At that time the Israelis and Palestinians were negotiating on the basis of the Clinton parameters and, by most accounts, making considerable headway.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell last week announced that an international conference on the Israeli Palestinian conflict will be held this summer. For it to be of any value, Arab states say, it must be convened on the basis of a new Saudi initiative — which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from all territory won in the 1967 Six-Day War in exchange for peace with the Arab world — and the Clinton parameters.

Clinton’s plan dealt with the three core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian impasse — territory, Jerusalem and refugees.

On territory, Clinton proposed a Palestinian state in Gaza and 94 percent to 96 percent of the West Bank, with compensation for the remaining land from Israel proper.

On Jerusalem, he proposed a division of sovereignty from neighborhood to neighborhood based on ethnicity, and suggested various options for shared sovereignty on the Temple Mount.

On refugees, Clinton proposed that most go to the envisioned state of Palestine, some to Israel and others to a list of countries willing to absorb a set number.

The implication was that if the sides could tie up the loose ends on these key issues, they could reach a historic peace deal formally ending the conflict between them.

But Sharon is not ready to go down that road. Nearly 20 months of violence have shown that the Palestinians cannot be trusted to keep the peace, and that Israel should not be asked to make irreversible concessions that weaken its defenses, he argues.

Sharon also is against dividing Jerusalem or allowing any Palestinian refugees back into Israel proper.

Moreover, he has a major strategic problem with the territorial provisions of the Clinton parameters: He believes Israel must retain the Jordan Valley as a buffer to prevent Iraq, Syria and even Jordan from joining forces to attack Israel from the east.

Sharon envisages Israel having two defensive columns, one for defense against the Palestinians along the pre-1967 border with the West Bank, and one in the Jordan Valley for defense from the east.

Both zones would bite into West Bank territory, leaving any future Palestinian state with 85 percent or less of the West Bank.

Tuesday’s bombing in Rishon le-Zion, which killed at least 15 Israelis, seemed likely to derail or at least defer for several weeks the nascent peace moves.

Significantly, though, the bomber was a member of the rejectionist Hamas, not Arafat’s Fatah or Tanzim. Both Arafat and the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack in unusually direct and strong language.

Arafat also pledged to take action against the perpetrators — though he also said that his security services were too weak to fight terrorism.

As far as a long-term solution, many observers believe the Clinton plan still is the only viable solution. Among them is Gilead Sher, one of the chief Israeli negotiators under Barak.

Not long after the Palestinian intifada began in September 2000, Sher predicted that, sooner or later, the parties would come back to Clinton’s outline.

“After rivers of blood, God forbid, we will come back to the same table for the same deal,” he declared. “No responsible Israeli government not even a right-wing government will be able to do anything else.”