A Pig In A Poke? New U.S. Promises Are No Substitute For Arafat Fulfilling Commitments He Has Already Made

(Washington, D.C.): According to
respected New York Times
columnist A.M. Rosenthal, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to agree to
complete the Israeli withdrawal from
Hebron and to set new dates for his
country’s surrender of much of the rest
of the disputed West Bank on the basis of
extraordinary new commitments. Citing
Israeli sources, Mr. Rosenthal says that
— in exchange for Israel taking these
momentous steps — the Palestinian Arabs
will (at least as of late yesterday) now
be:

• “dismantling the
  terrorist superstructure in
  Palestinian-controlled territory.”
• “really, truly, at
  last scrapping the
  death-to-Israel covenant of the
  Palestinian movement.”
• “reducing
  Palestinian armed forces to the
  one police organization of 18,000
  allowed by Oslo — not the
  half-dozen military groups that
  Mr. Arafat created with 45,000
  men.”
• “extraditing
  terrorists in Palestinian custody.
  Twelve of the 27 terrorists on
  Israel’s wanted list are wearing
  Mr. Arafat’s uniforms now and
  most of the others are walking
  free.”
• “closing offices
  outside Palestinian-controlled
  territory. Most
  important: no longer using Orient
  House in Jerusalem as a foreign
  office.” And
• “stopping the
  constant verbal incitements
  against Israel by Palestinian
  officials, [from] Mr. Arafat on
  down.”

If It Sounds Too Good to Be
True, It Probably Is

Mr. Rosenthal, one of the world’s
foremost authorities on the
prevarications of autocrats, notes with
appropriate skepticism: “…I doubt
Mr. Arafat will live up to [these]
reciprocity conditions for long.”
Indeed, the very fact that these
points are now at issue is the result of
Yasser Arafat’s repeated welching on
previous agreements.

The prospects that these new
undertakings will be fulfilled and
become, in Abe Rosenthal’s words,
“an underlying condition
for…turning peace talks into peace
reality” are made still less
promising, however, by dint of the fact
that Arafat himself is apparently
not signing up to the latest pledges.
Instead, in a sleight-of-hand often used
by diplomats to obscure abiding
disagreements between parties, U.S.
special envoy Dennis Ross has put them
into an American-drafted “note for
the record.”

It will, of course, be said that this
arrangement formally reflects the
Palestinian Arab position and that it
puts the prestige of the United States
behind these commitments. In all
likelihood, Israelis will be encouraged
to believe that any future reneging on
the American-recorded promises will bring
down the wrath of the United States on
the PLO. Perhaps they will even be told
that this aide memoire will give
unassailable legitimacy to any steps
Israel chooses to take (or not take) in
retaliation.

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, none of these
is likely to pan out. The
Palestinians have not been bound by
agreements they signed, let alone
ones they did not. President
Clinton’s prestige and that of the United
States has been on the line, literally,
in the several Oslo agreements but they
have been violated by Arafat’s PLO with
impunity. Far from displaying appreciable
displeasure over past Palestinian
breaches of its commitments, the Clinton
Administration has alternatively
apologized for and attempted to conceal
those breaches. And the U.S. has
exhibited no enthusiasm for Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s declared requirement
of reciprocity and will surely find such
a stance to be even more of a threat to
the peace process down the road.

In short, decisions about
whether to agree effectively to complete
the Israeli withdrawal from Hebron and to
set a date for the surrender of further
territory to the Palestinian Arabs should
be made on their merits, not
on the false expectation that the
conditions for a genuine and durable
peace are finally going to materialize
out of Dennis Ross’ memorandum for the
record. Otherwise, Israel will be taught
yet another bitter lesson: The PLO’s
commitments to peace will not be worth
the paper they are not written on.

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