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Geneva Accord |
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Geneva Accord |
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Photo: AP |
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Yasser Abed Rabbo |
In 2003, a group of dovish Israeli intellectuals and out-of-office politicians found common ground with Palestinian Arab political figures. Leaders were Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister and Yasir Abed Rabbo, a former information minister to Yasser Arafat. The result was the "Geneva Accord", a comprehensive agreement that provided a basis for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As the New York Times put it, this was an agreement "that would create a Palestinian state and resolve other contentious issues that have thwarted peace negotiators over the years."
The 50 page document was negotiated in secret for two and one-half years. Many world leaders and non-government groups praised the effort and encouraged the participants. In attendance at the signing ceremony in Geneva on December 1, 2003 were 400 people including former US President Jimmy Carter and two other Nobel Peace Prize winners, three American congressmen, Hollywood actors, and several former French ministers including Simone Veil, who survived a Nazi death camp. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan blessed the agreement and words of encouragement came from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Geneva project was backed by the Swiss government, with most of the funding and support from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. ICG's head is Gareth Evans, an Australian politician of the Labor party.
But the effort was deeply flawed in its origins and basic concepts. Fundamentally, Yossi Beilin was a politician from a democratic country who had been repudiated in recent elections. He had no legal standing to enter into negotiations with foreign elements, especially when those elements were waging war on his nation. In many countries this would be called treason. In Israel, government and opposition spokesmen in Israel called it "deluded," "insane," "ridiculous" and "treacherous." But even if the negotiations had official sanction -- which they decidedly did not, having been rejected by the elected government of Israel -- the agreements amounted to a wholesale capitulation by Israel and reflected deep ignorance of the lessons learned from past attempts to reach peace with the Palestinian Arabs.
The Geneva agreement was written as if the Oslo Accords never happened. Geneva includes Palestinian Arab pledges to recognize Israel, renounce terror, end anti-Israel incitement, remain disarmed etc. -- the same promises made in the Oslo Accords. In return for a similar list of commitments in 1993, Israel recognized the terrorist PLO headed by Yasser Arafat as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian Arabs, presided over their return from exile in Tunisia, established the Palestinian Authority, allowed the PA to arm 50,000 "police" and opened the doors to billions of dollars of donations to the PA from sympathetic supporters in Europe, the US and the world.
The result of the Oslo agreements was a disaster for Israel. Arafat accepted every Israeli concession, and used them to turn the territory under PA control into an armed camp. In 2000, after the Camp David meeting in which he was offered a comprehensive peace arrangement that was unprecedented in Israel's additional concessions, Arafat launched the al-Aqsa intifada, a vicious terror war that was still ongoing as the Geneva agreement was signed, involving the deaths of 1,000 Israelis.
Ignoring all this history, the Geneva Accord calls on Israel to agree to a Palestinian Arab state, abandon many of the Jewish communities in areas claimed by Palestinian Arabs, redivide Jerusalem, and to grant sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the new Palestinian Arab state. The latter point is especially hard to accept for many Israelis since the Arabs of Palestine and other countries have been hostile to Jewish holy sites and have never kept agreements allowing Jews to visit and maintain the shrines. To hand over the central location of Jewish history and worship to the Palestinian Authority is a ghastly idea to many.
And as if to make sure that Israel has no future under the Geneva plan, it calls for a return to the arbitrary and indefensible borders of 1967 with no security provisions for Israel's safety. The Palestinian Arabs under Arafat have been relentless in acquiring arms and using them against Israel, even under conditions where Israel had some control over borders and activity in Palestinian Arab areas. Under the Geneva plan, all control by Israel would cease and the new State of Palestine could arm itself without bounds.
The Geneva plan is a suicidal plan for Israel -- it is not hard to see why Palestinian Arab politicians embraced it, but it is incomprehensible why even hard left-wing Israeli's like Yossi Beilin participated. For some Palestinian Arabs, however, even the Geneva plan is not enough. Since it leaves the question of "refugees" somewhat open -- very dangerous to Israel -- there are Palestinian Arabs who reject Geneva, demanding the explicit "right of return" to Israel for millions of Palestinian Arabs still classified as "refugees". Demonstrations against the Geneva Accords broke out in Gaza and the West Bank as delegates prepared to leave for Switzerland.
Evidence then surfaced that Palestinian Arab elements involved saw the Geneva ploy as part of continuing efforts to weaken Israel, but others in Arafat's organizations did not understand or agree. Fatah official Hatem Abdel Khader, who was deeply involved in the secret talks that spawned Geneva, told The Jerusalem Post that his team had helped author the agreement primarily in order to cause a rift in Israeli society and to undermine the Sharon government. "Some Fatah leaders are exploiting the agreement to incite against us and organize street protests," Abdel Khader said in a telephone interview the night before the signing. "Our aim was to create divisions inside Israel and block the growth of the right wing in Israel."
The December 1st signing ceremony in Geneva was largely a Palestinian Arab opportunity to heap scorn and hate upon Israel. Nothing was said about Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks, the history of the Oslo Peace Accords and who was responsible for their failure, or even the Middle East Road Map of 2003. A Palestinian Arab group played and sang the Prisoners Song by Muhammad Darwish, the anthem of the Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons. The Israeli delegates did not protest or offer counter-views.
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