Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process Stalled, Amid Challenges to Leaders' Status

American Jewish Committee
Tuesday, 25 November 1997

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is effectively stalemated. Recent U.S. efforts did not persuade Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to offer the territorial concessions PLO Chairman Arafat has set as a precondition to enter final status negotiations. Netanyahu continued to demand better Palestinian performance on security. Meanwhile, for only partially related reasons, Netanyahu's premiership has come under increasing attack, while Arafat's health is declining; speculation is rife in both camps about possible leadership changes. This briefing looks at the stalemate in the peace process, and the current political dynamics in Israel and the PLO.

Stalemate

Prime Minister Netanyahu's most recent essay in discussing the peace process beyond the confines of Israel was his mid-November visit to London, where he met both British Prime Minister Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Albright. The meetings failed to generate any sort of breakthrough. The package deal that the U.S. has been advancing -- an Israeli "time out" in settlement construction and commitment to a generous second further redeployment, in return for Palestinian security measures and PLO agreement to enter final status talks -- remains stalled. While Netanyahu is understood by the Administration to have committed Israel to carry out the two measures demanded of it, he denies this. When pressed, he cites the Palestinians' very real failures to carry out their commitments in the security sphere, made within the framework of the January 1997 Hebron agreement, as justification for avoiding any new movement.

The interaction among these issues was highlighted by two developments in late November. One was an Israeli decision to settle additional Jews in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem, in response to a Palestinian attack on yeshiva students there that left one dead. The other was the revelation that Netanyahu and his emissaries have been showing maps of his proposed final status plan to American and Jordanian leaders, apparently in an effort to press them to persuade Arafat to discuss the plan without preconditions.

The deadline for the second further redeployment -- early September 1997 according to the Palestinian and American interpretation -- has passed. The Netanyahu government insists the deadline, as negotiated in the January 1997 Hebron withdrawal deal, is early December 1997, but there is as yet no indication that it plans to adhere to that date either. Under these circumstances, Chairman Arafat is not prepared to enter final status talks, and the U.S. administration does not appear to be pressuring him to do so. Netanyahu takes pains to explain to peace process interlocutors that a settlement time out, as well as any additional further redeployment, are both territorial issues that pit him against a large part of his coalition. Why risk his coalition, he asks, for every interim territorial measure -- particularly insofar as Oslo provides for no Palestinian quid pro quo in return for additional Israeli unilateral withdrawals? It would be better to move directly into final status talks, make one big territorial concession, and reach agreement. If that causes the coalition to fall, then the issue at stake will in any case justify new elections or the establishment of a national unity government with Labor.

In this connection, his aides claim he is engaged in far-reaching contacts with the Palestinians that go beyond the bounds of his coalition guidelines and would endanger his coalition if their substance were to be revealed. Further, on November 23 the Prime Minister's office informed the press unofficially that Netanyahu was preparing a proposal for further redeployment that would turn over 6 to 8 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian rule. In response, coalition hard-liners predictably threatened to provoke a new crisis, while the U.S. administration intimated that the scope of land transfer envisaged was insufficient.

Netanyahu's argument concerning the coalition constraints under which he is operating appears also to find expression in his increasingly frequent comments on the nature of the final status map that he envisages: Israel will insist on holding onto greater Jerusalem as well as areas that are heavily settled by Israelis; the Jordan Valley will remain an Israeli security border (though not necessarily a sovereign border); some settlement blocs will remain temporarily in security zones; and some borders will be renegotiable at a later date. (He has not commented in public on his vision of the future of the 30 percent of the Gaza Strip that Israel continues to hold.) Ostensibly, this appears to be a reasonable Israeli opening position for negotiations, and one that might encourage the PLO to accept the challenge of immediate final status talks. But the PLO -- and U.S. Administration -- insist on both a second further redeployment and a construction time out as preconditions for final status talks. This reflects not only their loyalty to the spirit (the construction time out) and the letter (the second further redeployment) of Oslo. It also is characteristic of the growing credibility gap that is plaguing the Prime Minister. He publicly rejects a construction time out, and his deliberations over further redeployment appear to reflect coalition pressures more than the Arab and American understanding of his commitments. Specifically, the PLO fears that, once he has maneuvered them into final status talks, Netanyahu will hold to a more rigid and hard-line map of final status than he has intimated, and the talks will dissolve, along with the entire Oslo process.

Virtually the entire international community that is involved with the peace process appears to share these doubts.

The twin issues of the peace process and challenges to the Prime Minister's credibility have now combined to ensure almost constant, growing external and domestic pressure on him. As one close aide of Netanyahu's put it recently, "we have a beleaguered Prime Minister. "Moreover, the peace process stalemate is becoming more acute, because it can no longer be confined to the geostrategic sphere of Israel and its immediate neighbors, and the more far-flung ramifications are of great concern to the U.S. and the moderate Arab countries.

The recent difficulties with Iraq are a case in point. According to American policy planners, moderate Arab states were relatively more reluctant to support a strong American stand against Baghdad in the absence of an Arab-Israeli peace process. In a more general sense, the U.S. Administration appears to view its entire effort to enforce dual containment against both Iraq and Iran as complicated by the negotiating stalemate; Russia's current drive to restore a modicum of its former superpower status in the region is seen as having been made easier. President Clinton alluded to these developments in critical remarks he reportedly made to Shimon Peres on November 21, when he noted that the window of opportunity that had been kept open by the peace process led by Peres and the late Yitzhak Rabin, was now closing and that he, too, had lost faith in Netanyahu. The fallout from the peace process slowdown was felt in Doha, Qatar, too, where the fourth Middle East-North Africa economic conference (downgraded this year from the status of a summit) convened in mid-November, with minimal Arab participation, and issued a statement critical of the Israeli position. The growing external pressures are such that President Clinton has avoided meeting with Netanyahu, while German Chancellor Kohl has sent signals that he can no longer offer special support for Israel, and that Germany will in future conform to the more critical EU line.

Jordan

One interesting episode -- in some ways an interlude -- in this pattern of pressure was Netanyahu's meeting with King Hussein, at the King's initiative, in England on November 18. Arab sources indicated Hussein had summoned the meeting in coordination with President Clinton, in order to pressure Netanyahu to come up with new proposals on further redeployment and construction as a precondition to a December meeting with Clinton. Israeli sources indicated that Netanyahu solicited the King's involvement in mediating between him and Arafat. Hussein undoubtedly also wished to ensure that he and Netanyahu would be in close coordination in the event of renewed hostilities involving Iraq. But additional Arab circles also speculated the King and Netanyahu may have begun to discuss a possibly enhanced Jordanian role in deciding the fate of Jerusalem and the West Bank, in the event that Arafat disappears from the scene (see below). Hussein's successful manipulation of the Meshal Affair is seen to have strengthened his credentials among Palestinian circles, while Netanyahu's advisers have made no secret of their desire to replace Arafat with a more congenial partner. The very fact that such a scenario is a topic of speculation reflects the current flux and uncertainty in the entire process.

Netanyahu

The pressures on Netanyahu are increasingly domestic, as well. Here they focus more on Netanyahu's overall leadership image rather than on the peace process per se. Matters reached a new extreme in early November, at a Likud Central Committee convention of some 2,750 delegates, which voted to cancel party primaries in future elections, thereby curtailing involvement of the party's 200,000 members in candidate selection and leaving the formulation of the Likud's next Knesset list to the Central Committee. Virtually all the Likud's government ministers saw this as a measure that was inspired by Netanyahu and is designed to give him greater control over them. The internal convention maneuvering was spearheaded by the director general of the Prime Minister's office, Avigdor Lieberman, using what many described as "bolshevik" tactics. But behind it all, Netanyahu was accused by his ministers of deception, as he lulled them into silence for weeks while he set the stage for a measure that effectively places their electoral future in his hands. Many speculated that Netanyahu himself understood that he would soon fall to a vote of no-confidence, and that he might preempt this by declaring new elections himself -- hence his effort to ensure his control over the party apparatus.

The upshot of the affair was an open declaration of internal party revolt by several of the Likud's most powerful leaders, led by former ministers Beni Begin and Dan Meridor, along with Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo, and Minister of Transportation Limor Livnat. They and others increasingly characterized Netanyahu as a liability to the Likud. They reportedly began to explore new tactical departures designed to topple the Prime Minister and force new elections. Alternatively, an even wider constituency of Likud MKs supported a demand that Netanyahu remove Lieberman from the Prime Minister's office and from his position of party strongman. On November 23, Lieberman resigned his official post, stated that he was doing so in order to increase his activities within the Likud in support of Netanyahu, and launched a bitter attack on the Prime Minister's detractors within the Likud. (Simultaneously it became known that the Israel Police recommended indicting Lieberman for fraud and theft -- a factor that may have had some connection to the resignation.)

Lieberman's departure appeared to placate some of those detractors. Netanyahu also sought to mollify internal party criticism by appointing a commission to investigate all aspects of the Likud convention, and promising that he would take the primaries issue to a referendum of all party members. Moreover, the positions of ministers Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Mordechai appeared to be crucial to the outcome, and they declared that they did not favor removing Netanyahu. Many of the rebellious MKs were thought to lack the motivation to sacrifice a Likud government, and their own Knesset membership, in order to remove the Prime Minister and party leader, however openly they now criticized his leadership capabilities. On the other hand, it was also considered possible that if a majority of 61 for a no-confidence vote were seen to exist, thereby mandating new Knesset as well as prime ministerial elections, then a band-wagon effect might take place, swaying enough MKs to reach the super-majority of 80 needed to mandate only prime ministerial elections while allowing Knesset members to retain their seats until the year 2000.

One alternative again being actively advocated by non-Likud members of the coalition such as Foreign Minister David Levy (Gesher), Minister of Trade and Industry Natan Sharansky (Yisrael Ba'Aliya) and Minister of Internal Security Avigdor Kahalani (Third Way) is a government of national unity, based on the Likud and Labor. This is seen as a way of both constraining Netanyahu and providing him the more moderate coalition he will need to carry out peace process obligations like further redeployment. Netanyahu himself seemed to hint at such a possibility at the second Knesset commemoration of the Rabin assassination, in early November. Speaking in an atmosphere supercharged by the public controversy over the role of the political right, as opposed to a security service agent provocateur, in generating the atmosphere of hate and recrimination that produced the assassination in November 1995, Netanyahu suggested talks with Labor leader Ehud Barak about "greater unity." If Netanyahu does offer Labor a place in a reformed coalition, he will have to recast its guidelines to reflect a far more moderate official position on such issues as settlements and territory. Thus far there is no indication he intends to move in this direction. But the threat of a national unity government has been used successfully by Netanyahu throughout the past 18 months to discipline rebellious members of his present coalition.

As for Barak, he may be sufficiently encouraged by Netanyahu's growing leadership problem within his own party to prefer to remain on the sidelines, on the assumption that new elections are preferable to a decision to join the coalition and thereby bolster Netanyahu's credibility. On November 24, Barak declared that he might provide Netanyahu with a Knesset "safety net" on the further redeployment issue if part of his coalition abandoned him, but that Labor was dedicated to toppling the Prime Minister. By mid-November, for the first time, Barak had a sizable lead over Netanyahu in the polls -- more than 10 percentage points -- although the large number of "undecided" indicates that, of the many dissatisfied Netanyahu voters, few have as yet opted firmly to vote for Barak. According to one scenario boosted by Labor, it and the Likud's growing anti-Netanyahu faction would agree that, following new elections, the Prime Minister-elect, whether from Likud or Labor, would be committed to form a national unity government comprising both parties.

The coming months offer a number of potential crises -- over the peace process, the conversion issue and the government's budget-cutting in the face of a weakened economy, to name but three -- which might precipitate the fall of Netanyahu and/or his coalition. Many political observers assume that Netanyahu himself will provide the crisis, in the form of some new and controversial political move. On the other hand, the Prime Minister has thus far proven adept at maneuvering around such crises and he may well survive the current challenge as well. Clearly, though, the growing mistrust of Netanyahu within the highest ranks of the Likud, coupled with the enhanced external pressures over the peace process, reflect an ongoing erosion in the Prime Minister's image and his staying power. As Ha'aretz columnist Yoel Marcus, a centrist, put it on November 21: "As a national leader [Netanyahu] has reached a divide -- there's not a single politician left who trusts him."

Already noted is the possibility that Netanyahu may preempt his political rivals and initiate new elections himself. Conceivably Lieberman's decision to devote all his energies to the Prime Minister's status within the Likud bespeaks such an intention. In any event, if new elections do evolve in the near term, Netanyahu will probably have to fight for the Likud nomination against Ehud Olmert, who has all but declared his candidacy. Olmert is thought to possess both the "fire in the belly" and the requisite close alliances in the orthodox and ultra-orthodox communities. Another leading Likud challenger, Roni Milo, is threatening to run on behalf of a new centrist party, while Minister of Defense Yitzhak Mordechai -- the most popular Likud politician -- remains conspicuously silent.

Arafat

The status of PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat has also become somewhat ambiguous in recent months -- but in vastly different circumstances and for vastly different reasons.

The most obvious indicator of Arafat's difficulties is his health. The tremor in his legs that has been so noticeable to his interlocutors for years has now moved to his lips and hands as well. He has reportedly briefly fainted, or collapsed, at a number of meetings. Arafat, who is officially 66 (some in his entourage speculate he is at least 70), claims in public that he is healthy. Informed speculation about his situation runs from Parkinson's disease, aggravated by head injuries sustained in a plane crash some years ago, to the psychological effects, including extreme fatigue, of his worsening political situation: the ongoing stalemate in a peace process upon which he has staked his leadership; the radical downturn in the Palestinian economy brought on by years of closure; and the growth in popularity of the PLO's rival, Hamas, following the release of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The incident that prompted Yassin's release -- the bungled assassination attempt on Hamas activist Khaled Meshal in Jordan in September -- has raised speculation and suspicion in Palestinian circles, against the backdrop of Netanyahu's alleged desire to see Arafat removed, that Israel might try to assassinate him as well. The Palestinian rumor mill also features a theory that Arafat encourages speculation about his health in order to generate external pressures on Netanyahu to hasten the peace process before he disappears from the scene, as well as a counter-theory that it is Netanyahu who is encouraging the rumors about Arafat's health.

One way or another, there is growing debate among Palestinians about the succession. The Palestinian Authority constitution provides for Council Chairman Abu Alaa to succeed the Rais ("Head," Arafat's official title in the Authority) for an interim period of 60 days, following which elections will be held. Arafat reportedly wishes to amend this provision and designate his deputy, Abu Maazen, instead of the Council chair. In any event, Arafat holds two key posts: he is also Chairman of the PLO. And it is the PLO, not the Authority, that, according to all of the Oslo agreements, negotiates agreements with Israel.

This points to the large number of foci of power within the Palestinians' current bureaucracy that might compete for the leadership. Abu Alaa's power base is the elected council that he chairs. Abu Maazen's is little more than his prestige as Arafat's designated No. 2. The many competing security networks that Arafat has established have produced at least one leader, Jibril Rajoub, who is seen by many as a potential candidate for regime strongman. Then there are the PLO leaders who have elected to remain in Tunis, led by hard-liner Farouq Qaddoumi. One additional key factor in a succession struggle is Israel. The current fragmentation of Palestinian rule -- full autonomy covers only 3 percent of the West Bank (the cities), and some 70 percent of the Gaza Strip -- guarantees that Israel will be dragged into at least some sort of involvement. Whoever wishes to rule the Palestinian Authority after Arafat will need Israel's good will merely to be able to move from one enclave to another in order to muster his supporters.

For the time being, however, Arafat appears to be most concerned about the cumulative effects of the deterioration in the peace process. As his political situation worsens, so does his ability -- but also his motivation -- to suppress the forces of terrorism within his midst. He simply refuses to, or considers himself unable to, supply Israel with the security arrangements the Prime Minister requires, unless the latter offers him a political-territorial quid pro quo that he can show his supporters. Further, if Sheikh Yassin succeeds in rallying Hamas and unifying its ranks, Arafat's very authority may be challenged. In this eventuality, only a successful peace process can ensure not only Arafat's survival in power, but that of the PLO as well.

Hamas, clearly, is not interested in a compromise peace with Israel. The PLO, with its many faults -- including its inclination to condone or even encourage violence -- is committed to such a peace. Yet there is no guarantee that any alternative leader within its ranks can persuade the Palestinian masses to accept the heavy concessions (from the Palestinian standpoint) that will be necessary to finalize a deal. In this sense, at least for the time being, Arafat may indeed be indispensable to a successful peace process.

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