Now that the Palestinian autonomy accord has been signed and implemented, Peace Watch, a new group dedicated to monitoring the agreement, wants to make sure that its promises are delivered.
Established last October, just weeks after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the declaration of principles Sept. 13, the group is comprised of nine prominent Israelis from every part of the political spectrum.
Their goal is to monitor Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the peace agreement, and to blow the whistle when either side fails to hold up its end of the bargain.
While no one expects the accord to run like clockwork so soon after its implementation last month, Peace Watch Director Dan Polisar maintains that a minimum level of compliance is necessary for its success.
“The agreement is very complicated, and there is tremendous potential for friction. It simply can’t work without cooperation between Israel and the PLO, whether it be joint patrols or joint economic ventures,” Polisar said.
Toward that end, Peace Watch has enlisted the assistance of several Israelis and Palestinians, many of whom live in the territories, to report alleged violations to the monitoring group.
HOTLINES TO BE CREATED
“Obviously, we can’t watch every interaction between Israelis and Palestinians, but having people on the ground is essential,” Polisar said. “The people who have the information are the people who live there. Soon, we’ll also have hotlines that anyone can call if they spot a problem.”
With the help of its volunteers and a full-time staff of five, Peace Watch is keeping a close watch on how security forces on both sides are dealing with civilians and each other.
“We’re looking at how Israeli soldiers interact with Palestinians and how the Palestinian police interact with Israelis,” said Polisar. “Potentially, there could be thousands of contacts per day between the two sides, which could build or undermine the agreement.”
The group is also checking whether Israel transfers responsibility for schools and other institutions to the Palestinians, and whether the Palestinians provide their citizens with necessary services. An even more important yardstick of the accord’s success will be the degree to which Israel and the PLO prevent terror attacks, and the way they coordinate actions when such attacks occur, the group’s organizers said.
Barely a month into the accord, there have already been a number of violent episodes involving Israelis and Palestinians.
Recently, two Jewish settlers from Gaza were murdered by Palestinian gunmen while driving on a road near Hebron. The same week, two IDF soldiers were gunned down at the Erez checkpoint, at the entrance to the Gaza Strip.
In both cases, the terrorists fled to the Palestinian autonomous region — which, according to the agreement, is off-limits to the IDF. The Palestinian police, who are responsible for tracking down alleged terrorists in the autonomous zone, have made no arrests to date.
Ziv Hellman, who heads Peace Watch’s research department, said the group “is in contact with Palestinian sources, both within the PLO leadership and the Gaza police. They told us that the Palestinian police have opened a file but have taken no concrete steps toward capturing the terrorists.”
A half-hour later, Hellman called to say that, according to a radio interview with the Palestinian police, steps were being taken to apprehend the murderers.
NUMEROUS FAILURES TO COMPLY CITED
Though the Gaza-Jericho plan is still new, Polisar noted that the group has been monitoring activities in the territories and in Israel proper for more than eight months. “The knowledge we gained from this experience is helping us monitor the accord more effectively,” he said.
Last month, Peace Watch published a report that stresses the need for greater compliance, now and in the future.
The report, which covers the period from Sept. 13, 1993 to May 4, 1994 — the day the implementation accord for the autonomy plan was signed in Cairo — cites numerous instances in which both Israel and the PLO failed to comply with the procedures set forth by the declaration of principles.
The majority of the study is devoted to security issues and underscores the fact that neither the Israeli government nor the PLO had significantly reduced terrorism during the 7 1/2-month period.
According to the study, “the PLO made insufficient efforts to halt terror by PLO groups, including Fatah; failed to call on groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to end violence; and tried to circumvent negotiations on issues such as the future of Jerusalem by creating facts on the ground.”
The report’s authors, including former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, and Elisha Shapira, a leader of the left-wing Ha-shomer Hatzair Movement, also criticized the Israeli government’s “insufficient efforts to curb anti-Arab violence by Israeli citizens.”
They noted that since Sept. 13, Israeli citizens were involved in four murderous attacks on Palestinians, claiming 33 lives, 29 of them in the Hebron massacre on Feb. 25.
The Israeli government, it said, did not sufficiently prepare for the possibility of “murderous attacks on Palestinians.” In addition, government officials did not pay enough attention to radical Jewish elements that had previously been involved in acts of violence.
The report did include some positive remarks, including the fact that, thanks to preventative measures taken by the army and police, Israeli authorities substantially reduced Israeli-perpetrated acts of vandalism on Palestinian property.
According to Polisar, by monitoring compliance to the declaration of principles over several months, the group has been able to pinpoint past — and potential — trouble spots between Israelis and Palestinians.
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