A nightmare for the Palestinians

By Adian Husaini

JAKARTA (JP): Following his victory in the recent elections, Ariel Sharon has finally managed to convince the defeated Ehud Barak to form a national coalition government that the former has to declare by March 31. This would mean winning the support of at least 61 members of the Israeli 120-strong parliament, the Knesset.

Sharon's Likud Party now has 19 members at the Knesset, so he would need to win the support of 42 other MPs. Barak's Labor Party has 27 Knesset members, so it seems it would be easy for Sharon to invite the support of 15 others.

The last batch of MPs could come from either the ultra- orthodox Shas Party, with 17 members in parliament, the Israel Aliya Party with seven members and the National Religious Party with five members.

The last three parties were part of the right wing that abandoned and deflated Barak's government just a day before the outgoing prime minister's departure to Maryland in the United States, for the Camp David talks in July 2000.

The parties were then against Barak's plan to concede 95 percent of the occupied territory to Palestine and divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians.

In this meeting, Israeli's offer was flatly rejected by Palestine, which instead demanded that Barak uphold the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. The document stipulates that Israel leave the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem that it annexed in the 1967 war.

The Israeli public, initially impressed by Barak's stance in July, has now made an about-face. A survey released on Feb. 4 showed that 70 percent of Israeli Jews thought Barak's position was weak and "too yielding"; only 20 percent found it adequate.

The survey also said that 51 percent of people who voted for Barak in 1999 now felt he had been too yielding. Public sentiment came across strongly in the Feb. 6 elections when 62.5 percent voted for Sharon.

One of a string of agreements that Sharon and Barak have managed to arrange was that only Knesset-approved policies on Palestine would go into effect.

This would mean a victory for Sharon who had long ago vowed to cancel out all concessions made by Barak to the Palestinians. The concessions would include Barak's offer made at the Jan. 28 negotiation in Taba, Egypt, to return more than 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestine, and joint-sovereignty over East Jerusalem.

The new development in Israel coincides with that in the U.S. On Feb. 8, spokesman of U.S. National Security Council Mary Allen Countryman said that all of former president Bill Clinton's proposals in the Israel-Palestine negotiations were no longer valid.

This meant a negation of the "final" draft reached in the July Camp David talks in which Barak accepted the U.S. proposal of more than 95 percent of the West Bank territory and joint sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Sharon, on the other hand, has never agreed to give up more than 42 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians. He also opposed any joint sovereignty schemes over any part of Jerusalem. This harsh stance was in line with the Likud Party's 1973 manifesto: "The right of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael (Great Israel) is eternal and indisputable."

The decision to invalidate all Israel-Palestine agreements that were not approved by the Knesset would mean that only three agreements would be upheld by a coalition of Sharon and Barak.

These three are the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the Wye River Agreement of 1998 and the Sharm El Sheik Agreement of 1999.

The Oslo agreement stipulates that a state of Palestine was to be declared on May 4, 1999. Israel, however, had consistently fought the application of the agreement and former premier Benjamin Netanyahu led the opposition toward the establishment of the Palestinian State.

The Wye River agreement stipulated that Israel pull out from 13.1 percent of the West Bank territory by Jan. 31, 1999 at the latest. Netanyahu also obstructed this deal on the grounds that Palestine, too, had failed to uphold its end of the bargain.

A ray of hope for peace emerged in September 1999 with the Sharm El Sheik agreement which stipulated that the final round of negotiations would be launched on Sept. 13, 1999 and continue for one year.

That meant, for many people, the establishment of a Palestinian state by September 2000. However, Israel ignored the deadline again, and the Camp David meeting arranged by Clinton ended in a shamble.

The second intifada erupted in the last bout of violence that has so far killed 318 Palestinians. Ironically, it was at this time of suffering for the Palestinians, the Israeli people chose the hard-liner Sharon who actually instigated the violence with his controversial visit to the Al Aqsha mosque last September.

Sharon, known as the "butcher of Shabra-Shatila", has never regretted the trip that the Palestinians found offensive.

A coalition government -- that would clearly weaken all previous agreements on peace -- would undoubtedly create fresh frustration among the Palestinians.

Hamas, Jihad Islam and other Islamic hard-line groups, who have up to now believed that a jihad is the only option to face Israel, look likely to invite greater sympathy among Palestinians.

On the other hand, a Sharon-Barak coalition means stronger bargaining power vis-a-vis the U.S. or the Palestinians. It is for many reminiscent of the coalition of Likud's Yitzak Shamir with Labor's Yitzak Rabin during the first intifada uprising in 1987.

Rabin, the 1994 Nobel Peace laureate, was responsible for the "broken bones" policy against intifada, saying Israel would use "force, power and blows" to suppress the uprising.

Shamir then was quoted as saying, "Our task is now to recreate the barrier of fear between Palestinians and the Israeli military, and once again put the fear of death into the Arabs so as to deter them from attacking us."

The Israeli government seemed to have taken to heart the advice offered by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger -- who received the Nobel Peace prize in 1974 -- to a private group of Jewish American leaders in New York in 1998.

The New York Times reported Kissinger as suggesting that Israel put down the intifada "as quickly as possible, overwhelmingly, brutally and rapidly."

"There are no awards for losing with moderation," Kissinger then said.

A coalition of Sharon and Barak, both of whom are former members of the Israeli military elite, could mean greater brutality against the Palestinians ahead.

The writer is secretary-general of the Indonesian Committee for World Muslim Solidarity (KISDI) and a former journalist who recently completed his master's thesis on Israeli foreign policy.