The Future of Palestine

Abstract

The friends of Israel throughout the world were startled when the news of the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) became public during the last days of August 1993. Some were fearful, others euphoric. Voices of equal experience and authority proclaimed both the doom of Israel and the fulfillment of the Zionist dream. Some saw the dawning of peace; others, nearly inevitable war. Whatever they said, however, all who spoke, and millions more who remained silent, were in fact equally troubled, concerned, confused, and uncertain: the event itself is one of great complexity, which can be understood only as a function of many variables. All recognized in it both risks and opportunities for one could be positive about the balance between risks and opportunities. This article attempts a preliminary assessment of the Israeli-PLO agreement in its context of law, history, strategy, and politics. Nothing less can be useful as the basis for policy opinions and recommendations. In itself, the agreement between Israel and the PLO is important chiefly because it represents the formal end of the policy pursued by the Arab states and the Arab peoples (except Egypt after 1977) since the days of the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine. That policy is summed up in the Khartoum formula of 1967: No negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. The legal argument behind the Khartoum policy has not changed for more than three quarters of a century. It is that the action of Great Britain in issuing the Balfour Declaration and that of the victorious allies in establishing the British Mandate for Palestine were and are illegal, null and void, beyond the powers of the Allies, the League of Nations, and the league's successor, the United Nations. Therefore, the Arabs have contended, the existence of Israel and its presence in Palestine constitute a continuing aggression against the implicit sovereignty of the Palestinian Arabs, deemed to be a people and a nation. This contention is the only legal and moral justification the Arabs have ever offered for their war against the Jewish political presence in the Middle East for more than seventy-five years. From the legal point of view, it is entirely specious. But, like many myths, it has power. For the PLO and the Arabs states to abandon this position, therefore, is (or can become) a climax in the drama of modern Middle Eastern history. The Khartoum formula has been crumbling gradually, although it is still the official line. In themselves, the bilateral and multilateral talks between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors since the Madrid Conference of 1991 violate the Khartoum slogan. Nonetheless, it is a matter of real significance that the PLO, the most passionate defender of the Khartoum doctrine, has finally and publicly renounced the struggle. For many, many years Israel, the United States, many other countries, and the Security Council of the United Nations have tried to have the Khartoum declaration annulled. Now, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union; because of the position taken by Jordan and the PLO during the Gulf war; because of the strength of the Israeli Defense Forces and the steadfastness of the Israeli people; because of the currents and cross-currents of Arab politics, the Arab chain around Israel has broken at its weakest link: before the PLO lost all its bargaining power and any chance for a role in the future of Palestine, it violated its pledges of solidarity with Syria and Jordan by opening separate peace negotiations with The Madrid initiative is the most ambitious effort to enforce Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 ever undertaken. (See appendix A for texts.) It represents the foreign policy of President George Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker, at its best--the Bush-Baker team of the Gulf war, bold, energetic, and imaginative, not the Bush-Baker team of the Yugoslav tragedy. …