Wye and the road to war

…The Wye deal imparts the appearance of vitality to Oslo as one might paint the cheeks of an
expiring patient. In line with the entire series of Palestinian-Israeli agreements of which it forms a
part, it is likelier to produce war than peace and likelier to endanger than to promote
U.S.
interests in the region — in particular the U.S. interest in a secure Israel.

* * *

The main subject of negotiations [at Wye] was what the Palestinian side was offering.
Consistent
with his theme of reciprocity, Netanyahu wanted terms that would position him strongly to
decline further moves in the Oslo process if the PA continued to fail to perform its duties. Arafat
wanted the opposite — an agreement without clear commitments or enforcement mechanisms.

At Wye, Administration officials continually told the press that they were in harmony with the
Palestinians. What they focused on was protecting the Oslo process from present and
future
disputes over compliance. In practice, this meant not curing existing violations or
preventing future ones but suppressing and precluding complaints about them.
Although
this may sound irrational, or just plain cynical, it follows logically from the belief that in the Oslo
process lies the key to peace.

For how better to preserve that process — i.e., sustain the negotiations, produce new
agreements — than by making it difficult if not impossible fo rthe Israeli side to prove the
Palestinian side’s
violations? And how to accomplish that except by crafting an agreement
that may appear
sound but meticulously omits the kinds of terms that competent people routinely include in
commercial contracts: verification of compliance, surety mechanisms to enforce obligations,
and provisions for termination in case of material breach?

Such are the Wye accords — documents replete with undefined terms, unaddressed
contingencies,
unauthorized interpretations, loopholes, and lacunae (grammatical errors, too). [The article goes
on to provide illustrative examples of representative portions of the Wye agreement replete with
such problems, accompanied by a commentary by the author.]

* * *

Since [the Wye Memorandum], only nine pages long, was negotiated under the direct
supervision
of President Clinton, whose linguistic finesse has been well established in recent months, one
cannot assume that its nonobligatory obligations and illusory promises are the result of
inadvertence or of an inability to create nuance. No, the gaps and ambiguities were built
in
with care. They ensure that, down the road, Israel will not be able to establish easily or
clearly that the Palestinians have violated their undertakings.

True, the Wye agreement includes a “time line,” which breaks down each side’s obligations
into
sequential steps, and Israeli officials have pointed to this feature as the agreement’s key
innovation. According to the Memorandum, indeed, the duties of the two parties “are to be
carried out in a parallel phased approach” in accordance with the time line. But “parallel
phased
approach” is nowhere defined, and nowhere is it stated that any given step in the time
line must
precede any other. Nor is it specified that all steps in a given stage must occur before any
obligations in a later stage become due.

(In a side letter to Netanyahu, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted that “actions in
each
stage of the time line are to be completed by both sides before moving to the next stage.” But it
is unclear why this elaboration is absent from the Memorandum. Moreover, Albright’s
explanation itself contains a loophole: in referring to “actions” rather than “the
actions,” it implies
that not necessarily all actions must be completed before the parties move to the next stage.)

Netanyahu has said that he will halt the Israeli redeployments, scheduled to occur in three
stages
over a 90-day period, if the PA does not fulfill its undertakings according to the time line.
But
the Memorandum does not actually say that Israel has the right to do so. In recent years,
when Israel has suspended withdrawals due to the other side’s violations, the PA has
turned the tables by asserting that Israel’s suspensions constitute violations of Oslo.

In any event, even if the “parallel phased approach” plays out according to Netanyahu’s
concept,
Israel will have completed its redeployments within a brief period. From that point forward, the
time line affords Israel no leverage with the PA. However tough-minded the idea may have been
in its initial conception, it emerged from the negotiations as a dubious mechanism for ensuring
reciprocity.

[The article analyzes the serious repercussions likely to ensue from the Wye agreement’s
insertion
of U.S. intelligence personnel into the middle of adjudicating Palestinian and Israeli disputes over
the former’s non-compliance. Among the pertinent realities are the facts that: the CIA’s is most
reluctant to serve as either “judge or prosecutor” when confronted with information suggesting
violations of arms control and peace agreements; it makes a determined effort in such politicized
disputes to “hedge its reports, taking pains to highlight gaps in the data, ambiguities in the
available evidence, uncertainties in its estimates”; and “the new U.S. role of neutral monitor of an
agreement between Israel and the PA is at odds with the existing [alliance] relationship between
the two democracies.”

* * *

Oslo was meant to be an experiment. It was a test, in the aftermath of the
Cold War, of
whether peace might at last be available to Israel. It was a test, in other words, of PLO
intentions.

Whether or not Israel and the United States were prudent to embark on the experiment — to
see
whether land and authority provided by Israel would transform the PLO into a force for
conciliation and against war violence and war — the evidence, plentiful from the start, is
now
overwhelming that the experiment has failed. Building on the concessions Israel has
already
made, the PA has or will soon enjoy and undoubtedly exploit the capability to import weapons
through its new air and sea facilities, to forge political alliances with the likes of Saddam Hussein,
to protect terrorist organizations behind a wall of state sovereignty — in short to continue its
armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine.

Just as it has become increasingly clear that the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq (as
by
Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Kim Jung Il in North Korea) cannot be effectively contained so
long as the present regime there remains in power, it should be plain that there will be no peace
between Israel and the Palestinians until the latter enjoy a different and better leadership than the
corrupt, violent and irresponsible police-state regime of the PA. The ability of the United States
(or of Israel) to promote improvement in that leadership is limited. But the
Administration’s
current policy — increasing U.S. aid to the PA while winking at its violations of Oslo and its
human rights abuses — simply reinforces the regime’s most dangerous traits. Down that
road lies further misery for the Palestinians and, for Israel, war.

1. Emphasis throughout