Despite recent terrorist attacks and some public diplomatic wrangling, Israeli and Palestinian policymakers see it as their common goal to keep up the momentum of the peace process.
This week, the two sides focused on the implementation of the so-called “early empowerment,” the transfer from Israeli to Palestinian control of such areas as education, health, welfare, tourism and taxation throughout the West Bank.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have already concluded an agreement for giving the Palestinians responsibility for tourism in the West Bank.
And by the end of the week — just a few days before the start of the new school year on Sept. 1 — Israeli authorities were scheduled to officially hand over the administration of schools in the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm. “For the first time in history, the Palestinian people will be responsible for their own children, for their own education,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced at a news conference after meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip last Friday.
Peres, the highest-ranking Israeli official to visit Gaza since the start of Palestinian autonomy in mid-May, met with Arafat to mark the first anniversary of the agreement reached in Oslo, Norway, last year.
That agreement set the stage for the Israeli-PLO self-rule accord signed last September on the South Lawn of the White House.
SOME BUMPY DIPLOMATIC EXCHANGES
Much has transpired since a year ago, when many Israelis were shocked by the news that Israel was going to extend official recognition to the PLO and grant the Palestinians full autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.
Following the signing of the self-rule accord last fall and the Cairo accord for implementing autonomy in May, the focus now has shifted to giving Palestinians throughout the West Bank some control over managing their own affairs.
Following the agreements reached on education and tourism, the next spheres to be transferred will be health and welfare. And finally, under the early empowerment program originally agreed to in Oslo last year, responsibility for taxes and finances will be vested in Palestinian hands.
The Peres-Arafat meeting in Gaza, while having a few bumpy diplomatic exchanges, was intended to maintain momentum in the year-old peace initiative.
While the substance of that conclave was hardly overwhelming — the early empowerment talks had already been moving ahead quite briskly for several weeks — Peres and his closest aides came away encouraged.
“It’s a going concern,” said one top Israeli privately, referring to the still small and makeshift offices of the Palestinian governing authority in Gaza. “They’re in business.”
Peres told the Cabinet on Sunday that he felt Arafat was, at last, beginning to understand the delicate and intricate, but vitally important, workings of Israeli public opinion.
According to Peres, Arafat finally seemed to understand that the Israeli government’s ability to move ahead was predicated upon continued public support for the peace process.
Despite Peres’ upbeat assessment, two issues continue to affect Israeli public opinion in this context: the PLO’s still-unfulfilled commitment to revoke clauses from its charter that call for the destruction of Israel, and the periodic instances of terrorism that continue to mar life for Israeli civilians and soldiers inside Gaza.
At a news conference following his meeting with Peres last Friday, Arafat blamed Israel for the PLO’s delay in revising the organization’s charter.
He said the anti-Israel clauses of the PLO charter could not be changed because Israel was not allowing all 480 members of the Palestine National Council to enter the Gaza Strip to attend a meeting at which a vote to change the charter would be taken. In a show of disharmony rare at diplomatic news conferences, Peres, appearing disturbed, interrupted Arafat to say to reporters, “I told the chairman we shall not object to have the PNC meet in Gaza, and (we) invite all its members to come and participate in the meeting.”
At which point Arafat appeared to throw the whole issue into question, saying he could not guarantee that the 480-member council would change the anti-Israel clauses.
ARAFAT’S POLITICAL STRENGTH A CONCERN
Peres has said he is hopeful that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will persuade the Palestinians to honor the pledge that was made a year ago.
Israel, for its part, has said it will allow the PNC — the PLO’s so-called parliament-in-exile — to convene in Gaza for the purpose of revoking the offensive passages, even if this means admitting persons with terrorist records whom Israel has previously barred.
Privately, though, officials in Jerusalem wonder and worry whether Arafat — even if he is persuaded to introduce the measure — has the political strength to push it through.
Some senior Palestinian officials say that although they broadly support the peace process with Israel, they are not prepared to vote in favor of annulling the offensive clauses until Israel withdraws its troops from key cities in the West Bank.
Others have suggested that Israel should release the remaining Palestinian prisoners. Last week, Israel released 250 additional Palestinian prisoners. Israel said the latest release brought the total to 5,000 since the Cairo accord was signed.
Citing the terms of the accords already agreed to by both parties, Israeli officials are maintaining that the withdrawal from the West Bank will accompany Palestinian elections, tentatively scheduled for December.
More sensitive, however, is the issue of terrorism.
Still unreconciled to the Palestinian autonomy, Israeli leaders in Gaza’s Gush Katif settlement bloc charged over the weekend that incidents of terror have been on the rise since the first phase of Palestinian autonomy went into effect in May.
This prompted Maj. Gen. Matan Vilnai, the commander of the Israeli army’s southern sector, to issue official statistics showing that the number of terrorist attacks against Israelis has dropped by two-thirds since Palestinian self-rule was launched.
Despite the drop, however, the remaining third included bloody and sometimes fatal attacks, such as one on Aug. 14 that felled an 18-year-old Israeli, Ron Sobol, who was riding on a main road in Gaza with a team of communications engineers.
The inability of the Palestinian police to thwart such actions gravely damaged the standing of the entire Palestinian governing authority in the eyes of many middle-of-the-road Israelis.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, acutely aware of the public mood, accused the Palestinians of being “not serious” in their purported efforts to hunt down the miscreants and to arrest known fundamentalist activists.
Walking a narrow line as he attempts to cope with the demands of Palestinian public opinion, Arafat pledged to fight terrorism, but refused to embark on a showdown with the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement.
Hamas is not only his main political rival, but was also behind the Aug. 14 attack as well as numerous other attacks against Israelis.
Arafat’s words showed his canny regard for Palestinian public opinion and reflected his ongoing desire to win over as broad a swath as possible of the Palestinian public — fundamentalists as well as secular nationalists — for his peace policies.
What remains to be proven is that he is developing the same awareness and understanding of his need to win the confidence of the Israeli public.
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