Posted on 18-12-2003

A regional peace forecast

Palestinians and Israelis are weary of conflict but in Iraq it could be just beginning, writes Brian Whitaker

Which will end first ... the occupation of Iraq or the occupation of Palestine? It is a question that has been niggling me for a while, and last week I put it to an eminent professor of international relations.
His reply was succinct but would have got him no marks in a university exam. "That's a very good question," he said. Full stop, end of answer.

In the absence of any further guidance from the professor, I am inclined to put my money on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ending first - mainly because of a gut feeling that the Americans will be stuck in Iraq far longer than they imagine.

Although the Israeli-Palestinian situation looks bleak at the moment, two important factors suggest change. One is that ordinary people on both sides are weary of the conflict. The other is the existence of a broad consensus about the shape that an eventual peace settlement will take.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may have almost run its course, the same cannot be said of Iraq. The Americans made the mistake of invading without much idea what to do next and the aftermath has been a case of the deaf playing it by ear.

Despite the promise of handing power back to the Iraqis next June, the most likely result is a weak and fractious government incapable of surviving without American military support. As yet, there is no road map for Iraq, and no consensus among experts as to the best long-term political solution.

In Iraq, in contrast to the war-weariness of Israelis and Palestinians, we also have a number of political elements raring to test their strength as soon as the US gives them half a chance. If the Americans want to prevent an ethnic and religious bloodbath, the possible break-up of Iraq and untold consequences for the region as a whole, they will have to stay.

By staying, they could become even more deeply embroiled than at present, but that is the price of getting involved in the first place. One recent prediction that the US will eventually end up fighting Kurdish separatists is by no means beyond the realms of possibility.

My hunch that prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are better than those for peace in Iraq was reinforced last weekend during a visit to the Netherlands, where I was assisting at a workshop for Arab and Israeli journalists.

It was one of a series of workshops funded by the EU and organised by the Jemstone Network, which specialises in media training in the Middle East. On this occasion discussion focused on the Geneva accord - the unofficial peace treaty drafted by a group of Israelis and Palestinians - and how the media should be covering it.

Most of the Arab and Israeli journalists - about a dozen in all - had met each other at previous workshops and, despite their differences, had established a good rapport. Over dinner on the last night they cheerfully exchanged jokes about Mr Arafat and Mr Sharon, most of which cannot be repeated in polite company.

In much of the Arab world such contacts are still regarded as treasonable, and several of the journalists who attended did so at considerable risk to their careers. For that reason, I was asked not to name any of them or say which countries they came from.

Although almost everyone at the Netherlands workshop had concerns about specific points in the Geneva Accord, there was general agreement that it could provide a basis for official peace talks.

This is not surprising since the Geneva document draws on the last formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, at Taba in 2001. It is also very similar to a report issued last year by the International Crisis Group setting out the organisation's "best assessment of what both sides can accept as fair, comprehensive and lasting and what, ultimately, their agreement will have to look like".

The attitude of the Israeli journalists was especially interesting because their views were so unlike what we usually hear from Ariel Sharon. They were worried about the economic situation in Israel resulting from the conflict and about Hamas and Islamic Jihad taking over in the Palestinian territories if fighting continues.

"This is a [warning] traffic light," one of them said. "If there were free elections, Hamas and Jihad would win, at least in Gaza."

For that reason, he suggested that Israel should make a deal with Mr Arafat before the militants gained power. "The strongest [peace] agreement would be with Yasser Arafat," he said.

The options for the future, as outlined by the Geneva group, are three: perpetuation of the conflict, creation of a single binational state embracing both Israelis and Palestinians, or two separate states based on the 1967 borders.

The one-state solution, if implemented now, would have a Jewish majority of 56% but this would disappear over the next 10 years - in effect bringing the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Demographic calculations by Professor Sergio de la Pergula of the Hebrew University suggest Jews would account for only 51% of the population by 2010, 47% by 2020 and 37% by 2050.

A division into two states based on the 1967 borders, however, would preserve Israel as a predominantly Jewish state, with Jews accounting for 79% of the population by 2010, declining very slowly to 74% by 2050.

These figures provide strong reasons why Israelis who want to preserve the Jewish character of their country should support the creation of a separate Palestinian state as soon as possible.

The journalists' workshop also looked at figures produced by the Geneva group comparing the effect of a peace agreement based on the 1967 borders with the effect of an Israeli withdrawal to the line of Mr Sharon's new wall (which may be what Mr Sharon ultimately has in mind).

A unilateral withdrawal to the wall would almost certainly not end the conflict, but it would have other disadvantages for Israel, too.

The border proposed in the Geneva accord is just 445km long, but the meandering wall - if it became the border - would add a further 268km to the border's length, making it correspondingly more difficult to police.

The implications for the Israeli and Palestinian population of a border based on the wall are also rather curious and illogical. Adopting the wall as a border would mean annexing 345,000 Palestinians into Israel, whereas none would be annexed under the Geneva proposal. Mr Sharon's wall would also preserve 54 Jewish settlements, housing 329,000 settlers. The Geneva plan would preserve almost as many - 310,000 - but in only 21 settlements.

The territorial proposals in the Geneva document aroused relatively little controversy among either the Arab or the Israeli journalists present in the Netherlands.

The basic plan is to adopt the 1967 border with "reciprocal modifications". This means that any adjustment of the 1967 line in one direction will be matched by an equal adjustment elsewhere in the opposite direction. Both states, according to the plan, will have their capitals "on the areas of Jerusalem under their respective sovereignty".

What really exercised the Arab journalists, however, was the question of Palestinian refugees, and at times the discussion became highly emotional.

The Geneva document has been widely portrayed as abandoning the refugees' right of return - which is obviously a plus point for Israelis but a strong minus point on the Arab and Palestinian side.

In fact, the document is a bit more subtle than that. It does not so much abandon the right of return as omit to mention it. It also sets out a mechanism that would give some of the refugees an opportunity to return, if not the right to do so.

The document aims to give refugees a "free and informed choice" of where to live, based on five options: Israel itself (in limited numbers), the new state of Palestine, their present host countries, third countries, or areas of Israel that would be transferred to Palestine under the exchange of territory.

It also talks of compensation for "refugeehood" and loss of property. How much they would get remains to be seen. A modest but reasonably meaningful payment of, say, $10,000 (£5,700) a refugee would cost around $40bn-$50bn and it is unclear who would be willing to cough up the money.

It was plain from the discussion that more work will have to be done on the refugee proposals, but there is also a substantial gap between the expectations of the Arab public about the right of return and what Arab politicians privately believe they will eventually have to accept.

The journalists attending the Netherlands workshop had brought with them press clippings relating to the ceremony in Geneva where the accord was unveiled.

In the Israeli press, this had been the main news of the day and the coverage, by and large, reflected debate in Israel about the document. Some papers, such as the liberal Ha'aretz, were more in favour of the document than others. One reported the ceremony through the eyes of various Israeli celebrities who attended - an actor, a chef, a comedian, etc - and all seemed to be disappointed in one way or another. The chef, for instance, disapproved of the food that was on offer.

On the day of the Geneva ceremony, Israel launched its biggest military action in the West Bank since April. Some of the Israeli journalists said they had suspected this was a stunt by Mr Sharon to divert attention away from Geneva, but they had not allowed it to displace Geneva as the main item on their front pages. (One journalist said he had later investigated the timing of the West Bank offensive and concluded that there were good reasons for it.)

On the Arab side, judging by the clippings presented, the accord was a less important story. Some of the Gulf newspapers had not bothered sending a reporter to Geneva and instead had used translations of wire stories. One of the journalists attributed this to "reader fatigue" with the conflict.

There were also a number of hostile - one might even say ranting - columns attacking the accord. Amid all the predictable opinions there seemed to be a scarcity of hard facts, including detailed discussion of the document's contents, though I was told later that the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam had printed the text of the accord in full.

One article complained that the authors of the accord had not properly consulted the Palestinian refugees, but the indignant writer seemed to have made no effort to interview refugees about the proposals either.

What became clear from this clippings exercise was that ordinary Israelis are probably better informed about the Geneva accord than ordinary Arabs.

Israeli supporters of the accord are also using marketing techniques to "sell" its proposals to the public, not only in Israel but also among Jewish communities in the US. A leading Israeli advertising man is said to be helping them.

Nothing comparable appears to be happening on the Arab and Palestinian side. This is not necessarily the fault of Arab journalists. There are practical difficulties which make it hard for them to do things that journalists routinely do in other countries - though there is more that they could do, with a little ingenuity.

It may not be a journalist's job to promote peace but, as one of the Arabs at the workshop noted, "it is a journalist's job to promote debate", particularly when the end of such a long-running and important conflict is almost in sight.

If parts of the Geneva proposals are not acceptable, then who has a better idea? What are the alternatives? The Arab and Palestinian public have a right to know, and to join in the debate.