Panelists Explore the Obstacles to Middle East Peace

The Camp David accords, the historic agreement reached 10 years ago between Egypt and Israel, has failed to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. But factions from both sides still disagree on who is responsible for the continuing conflict.

One Palestinian-American and two Jews, who were in Orange County to speak at the Freshman Seminar Program at Chapman College, discussed the obstacles to peace in the Middle East during interviews Thursday.

Mubarak Awad, an activist who was deported from Israel for advocating nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said the United States clearly has thwarted efforts to obtain peace by consistently siding with the Israelis and refusing to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But Oded Neuman, a retired career officer with the Israeli Defense Force, said extremists on both sides in the conflict are hampering efforts to reach a peace agreement, and New York Rabbi Balfour Brickner was critical of Israelis for refusing to talk with the PLO and of the United States for failing to play the role of broker between the two sides.

“The United States likes to take sides, and when you take sides . . . the other will be the enemy,” Awad said. “To the United States, Israel is the good guy and the rest are bad guys.

“The United States does not have a policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, so the United States uses Israeli policies and they become U.S. policies. It’s whatever Israel wants to be done there.”

An example of that loyalty, Awad said, occurred last month when the United States barred PLO leader Yasser Arafat from attending a session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Awad said the action will in the long run benefit Arafat.

“What this will do is create Arafat to be a moderate man of vision, a man who has to fight for peace. It proves that the United States is not interested in hearing anything that has to do with peace,” said Awad, founder of the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Jerusalem and Washington.

Awad, an American citizen, also said Israel and the United States should believe that Arafat was sincere when he told a group of American Jews in Stockholm on Wednesday that the PLO accepts Israel’s right to exist and condemns all forms of terrorism. The Palestine National Council, the PLO’s Parliament-in-exile, also adopted a resolution last month to establish the independent state of Palestine, accept the existence of Israel as a state in the region and reject terrorism in all forms.

“He (Arafat) meant that a long time ago. The United States, even if they put the conditions on paper and he signed it, they would not believe him,” Awad said.

But Neuman, who was with the Israeli Defense Force for 21 years, said the PLO, because of its history of terrorism, has to prove that the resolution is real and not just a move to appeal to American public opinion.

“I believe it’s an interesting step. If it’s just a PR maneuver, then that should be revealed. But if it’s a real step, it should be encouraged,” said Neuman, who is working on his doctorate at UCLA.

“They are saying directly and openly to the worldwide media, ‘Yes, we recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist. We decided to stop any terrorist activity against Israel and Jewish people, and we are positively willing to negotiate with Israel,’ abandoning the Palestinian National Covenant, which in several of its articles, is calling for the destruction of Israel.”

The Camp David accords, which were reached in 1978 by Israel and Egypt, included plans for Israel’s withdrawal from all of the Sinai and for autonomy for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It also called for the creation of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The next step would have been to reach a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Neuman said extremists on both sides are hampering the efforts to reach a peace agreement--Israeli extremists who fear losing political power if they give back territories of the occupied West Bank, and Palestinian terrorists who assassinate moderates working for peace.

Rabbi Brickner of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City criticized Israelis for refusing to talk with the PLO and the United States for failing to act as a mediator in the conflict.

“The United States has to play the role of honest broker. The conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis will be resolved only when Israelis and Palestinians resolve it by face-to-face direct negotiations. It will take a non-Israeli and a non-Palestinian . . . to draw them together and keep them together,” said Brickner, a Reform Jew who has been openly critical of the Israeli government.

He said the United States’ refusal to allow Arafat into the country will delay the peace process.

“The American government’s refusal . . . has jeopardized their credibility in the eyes of the Palestinians and weakened their ability to be the honest brokers they will have to be,” Brickner said. “We’ve lost face with the world. The effort was psychologically unjustifiable and legally questionable.”

The seminar series began in September to encourage Chapman College freshmen to explore the causes of war and options for peace.