Is Middle East peace process already dead?

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Is the 'peace process' between Israel and the Palestinians dead?

No, said Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy after a meeting with Palestinian planning minister Nabil Shaath in Jerusalem on July 28. Talks on outstanding issues from the 1993 Oslo peace accords, suspended since Israel began building a huge new Jewish suburb in east (formerly Arab) Jerusalem in March, would resume next week.

Approximately 40 hours later, two massive bombs exploded in Mahane Yehuda, the crowded main fruit and vegetable market in Jerusalem, killing at least 18 people and injuring over 150. The vast majority of the victims were Jews, and the suicide bombers were presumed to be Palestinians, allegedly from the Islamic Jihad group that rejects the whole peace process.

The bombs may cause Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to postpone the resumption of talks with the Palestinians while he berates Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, for an event that neither man's security forces could prevent. But it probably won't last: all the major players in the Middle East peace process, and above all Netanyahu and Arafat, are doomed to insist that it is still alive regardless of the truth.

The cost to Netanyahu of admitting that the peace process is dead would be an immediate loss of the reflex American support he has hitherto enjoyed, and eventual electoral defeat because he would lose the support of Israeli voters who believed his promises that an aggressive settlement policy is compatible with peace.

The cost to Yasser Arafat might well be his life. If his historic gamble on making peace with Israel fails, there will be a long queue of bitter Palestinians seeking revenge for his `betrayal'. So even if the negotiations are a charade, and no matter what Netanyahu or the terrorists do, both men are bound to re-start the talks time and again.

The recent four-month suspension of talks, for example, was triggered by Netanyahu's decision to build a new Jewish suburb with 6,500 apartments in east Jerusalem, on the hill called Har Homa by Israelis and Jebel Abu Ghneim by Palestinians. Arafat protested and boycotted the talks, and there were large Palestinian demonstrations in Jerusalem and elsewhere. But Netanyahu stonewalled, and the U.S. refused to condemn his actions.

Arafat was desperate, for without talks the last of his credibility among Palestinians was draining away. So when a wealthy Jewish-American was granted a permit to build another Jewish settlement in a densely populated Palestinian district of Jerusalem, and Netanyahu's government then suspended that permit for four months, Arafat seized on the action as evidence of Netanyahu's good will and agreed to restart the talks.

But Nabil Shaath emphasized that the joint Israeli-Palestinian committees could only discuss implementation of measures already agreed, not new agreements, so long as the Har Homa development still goes ahead. And even if the Jerusalem bombs don't abort this compromise, many on both sides doubt that the talks will last long or get very far, for they doubt Netanyahu's fundamental commitment to the peace process at all.

The main question in their minds, indeed, is whether Netanyahu is a weak man who bears the impression of the last person who sat on him, or a strong man determined to sabotage the land-for-peace deal struck at Oslo in 1993. The controversy over Har Homa illustrates the confusion very well.

Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu approved the Har Homa project in February as compensation to the hard-liners in his cabinet for the partial Israeli evacuation of Hebron in January. In this view Netanyahu is a mere weather-vane, responding to the conflicting pressures within and outside his cabinet.

That's the view of Hebrew University political scientist Yaron Ezrahi: "He gets up, licks his finger, and tests which way the wind is blowing. The contradiction is inherent in his mandate. He was elected to continue the peace process and to build settlements, but you cannot implement Oslo and Har Homa simultaneously."

Netanyahu vigorously rejects this interpretation. "I'm not a directionless man who operates on a whim. My intention and goal are completely clear. I know where I want to get to." But if he has actually chosen between settlements and peace, then it's fairly clear which he has chosen.

Har Homa is the biggest new Jewish settlement around Jerusalem since 1980. Launching that project stopped talks on implementing measures mandated by Oslo, like opening a Palestinian-controlled airport in the Gaza Strip and providing secure access for Palestinians between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, for over four months. And many suspect that is just what Netanyahu wanted.

It hardly matters. Whether Netanyahu is a man with a plan, or merely the prisoner of the contradictory currents within his own coalition of right-wing and religious parties, the outcome is the same. He has to build more settlements, and there is no hope that he can get his cabinet to accept the further withdrawals from occupied territory on the West Bank, already long delayed, that are supposed to happen later this year.

The peace process is dead, and unless the United States exerts enormous external pressure on Netanyahu it will not be revived. That is very unlikely: whereas the Bush administration withheld aid and arms from Israel when it perceived the Israeli government to be acting against America's interest in a stable Middle East, the Clinton administration confines itself to the occasional cringing whine on the topic. So the question is, what next?

Can the present precarious stability be maintained, with a few hundred Palestinians injured by Israeli bullets each month and an occasional bomb killing and injuring comparable numbers of Israelis, but no major upheaval, until the next Israeli election in the year 2000? Even after that, would we get an Israeli government willing to negotiate on the original terms of the Oslo deal? Will all the Arab governments around Israel, which have either made peace already or shown interest in doing so, survive until 2000?

It seems highly improbable. The current wave of Palestinian protest, unleashed by the Jebel Abu Ghneim settlement, has not been violent enough to shake either Israeli security or Arafat's authority, but the situation is not going to get better.

Palestinian living standards are in steep decline: per capita GNP in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has fallen 36 percent in the past five years. In the same period, the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories has risen from 100,000 to 160,000. And in most Palestinians' eyes, the peace that is theoretically still on offer, in which Israel keeps all of Jerusalem and half of the rest of the occupied territories, is not worth having.

So is there going to be a war? Probably not this year, and probably only in Lebanon, the preferred arena when Israel and its neighbors want to avoid a direct fight. (Syria, Jordan and Egypt would quickly lose an open war with tanks and aircraft, and Israel would rather not disrupt the existing quiet on those borders.)

And could the long-term peace process survive another Israeli invasion of Lebanon, provided that Israel's losses there finally persuaded Israeli voters to replace Netanyahu with a more peace- friendly government in 2000? Impossible to say, but it would be a very brave or very foolish investor who made any long-term investments in the region in the next two or three years.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist and historian whose columns appear in 35 countries.