To Reach Middle East Peace, Leave Oslo and Return to Madrid

By Marwan Bishara

Published: THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2001

PARIS: These days one needs reminding that the purpose behind the Middle East peace process has not been to help Ehud Barak get re-elected or earn Bill Clinton a Nobel Peace Prize. It is to stop the century-old conflict between Palestinians and Jews.

Prime Minister Barak has failed. President Clinton had more than an ample chance in the last years to put an end to occupation. His administration has sponsored seven accords that were never fully implemented, and his last ditch effort to finalize a framework agreement will fail because it has been subjugated to Israel's electoral logic.

Only a deal favorable to Israel could get Mr. Barak re-elected. In the present Israeli circumstances, an accord that fulfilled UN Resolution 242 and met minimum Palestinian requirements to end the conflict would help Mr. Barak's opponent, the infamous Ariel Sharon, to win.

Today the bets are on Mr. Sharon because Mr. Barak has alienated many of those who supported him in the last elections, notably the Arab minority and many in the peace camp, who together comprise almost one-third of the Israeli electorate.

Mr. Barak's mixed signals leave Israelis bewildered. One day he makes overtures to the religious parties, the next he shifts to the secular camp. He tries to negotiate a peaceful solution but aims at a unilateral physical separation.

It is not clear whether Mr. Barak is competing against Mr. Sharon or Yasser Arafat, or whether he is the candidate capable of bringing peace or the iron man who orders inhumane closures and assassination of Palestinian leaders.

For Israel and for the sake of peace, a moderate government lead by Labor is far better than a coalition government of rightist and fundamentalist parties headed by Mr. Sharon. Unfortunately, Israelis are offered two generals and no real choice.

Perhaps, as some in the peace camp contend, the focus should be on transforming Labor into a true peace party after the elections, one that exchanges its generals for able statesmen. Sooner rather than later, Mr. Sharon will fail to bring peace or security, and Israelis would then have a real alternative.

In the meantime, Palestinians who chose not to surrender their basic historical rights will endure more hardships. But their intifada has curbed settlement activity and minimized security cooperation. The Palestinian Authority can no longer do Israel's bidding while the occupation continues.

In cases of colonialism, permanent peace comes after, not before, occupation ends and historical injustice is addressed — here, in particular, the uprooting of more than three-quarters of the Palestinian population during the 1948 war.

This does not necessarily mean that the 3.7 million registered Palestinian refugees would return to Israel once their right was recognized. But the right of return is an inalienable and must be recognized in order to facilitate the end of the conflict. Such recognition would not lead to the annihilation of Israel, as some claim. Rather, it would liberate Israel from its dark past and pave the way for its peaceful existence in the region.

A resolution of the Jerusalem and the refugee problems can be found in a regional context and will require international guarantees. This can be accomplished through the convening of a conference along the lines of the 1991 Madrid conference, with the participation of Europe, Russia and the United Nations in addition to the United States. This would facilitate discussion of paramount regional issues such as water, security, borders and economic cooperation.

Such a package deal could enable the Palestinians and other Arabs to take the necessary steps to normalize relations with Israel.

All of this could be helped by the fact that the foreign policy team that led the first Bush administration's initiative at Madrid, after the Gulf War, is returning to power. The peace conference was meant to show, after the liberation of Kuwait, that America was willing to work for a comprehensive settlement between Israel and its neighbors.

A decade later, and after seven years of the Oslo process, reviving the Madrid spirit is the best available option. This should be based on UN resolutions, not on the Clinton ideas, although all parties should be free to bring forward their suggestions.

If politics is the art of the possible, then intelligent politics in the Middle East should be to convince the parties that a peace is not a zero-sum game but a win-win choice.

Mr. Bishara is a researcher at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) and author of the forthcoming book "Israel, Palestine: What Peace?" He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

[Not to be reproduced without the permission of the author.]