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U.S., E.U. should guarantee agreements with P.A

By Zak Mazur
of The Chronicle Staff

November 9th, 2001

Israel is caught in a vicious catch-22 over whether to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

If Israel does not renew negotiations, the problems with the Palestinians will obviously fester. Further, there is immense pressure on Israel from the U.S. to get the “poisonous Palestinian-Israeli conflict off TV,” as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times put it, lest our Arab and Islamic nations friends bolt from the so-called anti-terror coalition.

We are told that failure to negotiate an end to the violence will be seen by many here as Israeli disregard for U.S. interests. This might be an unfair assessment, but life is not fair, and Israel has to operate within the reality that exists.

Unfortunately, serious negotiations with the P.A. are impossible, because P.A. president Yasser Arafat is completely untrustworthy. In breaking some of the most fundamental provisions of the Oslo Accords and by failing to abide by numerous cease-fire arrangements since unleashing violence in October 2000, the P.A. has lost the trust of many, if not most, Israelis. Therein lies the catch.

Yet I believe there is an option Israel can take to extricate itself from this predicament. More on that later following this brief recent history:

Many Israelis were skeptical to recognize and negotiate with Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization back in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were put on the table.

To allay such fears, supporters of the land-for-peace formula — both Israelis and members of the international community — argued that once Israel handed over territory and agreed to a Palestinian state, the world would view Israel as magnanimous and peace-seeking. It was argued that world opinion would subsequently fall on Israel’s side come what may following final status talks.

After Arafat’s refusal to compromise at Camp David, the P.A. was indeed put on the defensive. Even slavishly pro-Arab France saw fit to criticize the Palestinians for failing to rise to the peace challenge.

It looked briefly as though the arguments on behalf of trading land for peace were turning out to be correct. Many world leaders blamed Arafat for scuttling a final status agreement.

This optimistic and perhaps naïve view was soon destroyed once Arafat initiated violence against Israel. Almost overnight, sympathy for Israel vanished. Since then, Israel has become a virtual whipping boy for various “enlightened,” democratic European Union states that view the Palestinians as victims.

Likud member of Knesset Yuval Steinitz, who recently visited Scandinavia and Belgium, said in the Jerusalem Post (Nov. 5), “Israel was punished for taking risks for peace. Europe pushed us into Oslo and it failed, so they have a responsibility to back our responses to terror instead of calling for restraint.”

At the same time, the E.U. has the chutzpah — much to the satisfaction of the P.A. — to request to play a more active role in Arab-Israeli negotiations. Israelis smartly reject increased E.U. participation.

But perhaps it is time for a reevaluation? Imagine if Israel were to agree to renew negotiations with the P.A. at the behest of the U.S. State Department and even invited the E.U. to play a larger role — with one important condition: Outside parties helping to spur negotiations (the U.S. and the E.U.) would have to endorse and co-sign all of the P.A.’s signed agreements.

This endorsement should also include a stipulation stating that if the P.A. breaks a signed agreement, the U.S. and E.U. will be obliged to put the blame where it belongs — on the P.A.

The stipulation should also add that the co-signers will agree to vote against any subsequent anti-Israel resolutions in any world bodies of which they are members.

If either the U.S. or the E.U. were unwilling to vouch for the P.A., it would signal that they do not believe the P.A. is a trustworthy negotiating partner. They will then be hard-pressed to justify why Israel should trust a party that they do not.

This idea may sound fanciful, but what other realistic alternatives exist?