Netanyahu’s Visit to U.S. Confirms Palestinians’ Fears on Rigid Stance

Ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s May 29 election victory, there has been a great effort on the part of Palestinian leaders, foreign diplomats and the Israeli press to discern exactly what his policy would be on peacemaking with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Would Netanyahu follow through on the hard-line positions laid out consistently in his books, campaign speeches and government guidelines? Many people heard Netanyahu offer to continue negotiations with the Palestinians and Syrians and figured that the 46-year-old prime minister would be more of a pragmatist than his rhetoric suggested.

Not anymore.

Netanyahu’s first state visit to Washington has convinced Palestinians, in particular, that the Israeli prime minister is a right-wing ideologue bent on turning back the clock, and they fear his policy will lead to confrontation.

The Palestinians had hoped Netanyahu would outline a proactive peace policy on his trip to the United States, or at least tender a sign of flexibility--a date to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a commitment to withdraw Israeli troops from Hebron in accordance with the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, or an easing of the closure on Palestinian-ruled areas.

Instead, they heard Netanyahu say he means to increase the population of West Bank settlements at his own time and pace, and by unilateral design in violation of the peace accords. The settlements will grow “naturally” again by at least 50%, as they did under the Labor government, Netanyahu said with President Clinton standing by his side. “No one expects us to do less than the Labor government.”

Palestinian irritation boiled to anger when Netanyahu vowed before the U.S. Congress never to let the Palestinians divide Jerusalem and ruled out multiple sovereignty. In Palestinians’ view, an Israeli prime minister was speaking against the U.S.-backed accords--which left such issues as Jerusalem, West Bank settlements and Palestinian statehood for final status negotiations--while members of Congress stood up and clapped like seals.

“When we agreed to leave these issues to the final status, we agreed that there will be no changes on the ground,” said Ahmed Korei, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who helped negotiate the agreements with the previous government.

“Israel is now creating new realities on the ground . . . which will destroy the peace process, not only on the Palestinian track but on the Arab track as well,” he said.

Korei said Netanyahu insisted that there be no preconditions on negotiations, but he wanted “pre-results.” The U.S., meanwhile, was “accommodating the Israeli position” in view of upcoming elections, instead of fulfilling its role as guarantor of the peace accords.

Netanyahu wowed Capitol Hill and Wall Street with his talk of privatization and cutting dependence on U.S. aid. But back home in the Middle East, Arabs heard his call for the re-education of their schoolchildren to embrace Israelis, and his view of Israel as the yardstick by which the Arab world should measure itself on democracy and human rights. They called him arrogant and condescending.

In Washington, journalists were advised that Netanyahu had told Clinton in private that he would indeed advance negotiations with the Palestinians, withdraw troops from Hebron, meet with Arafat and hold final status negotiations.

In Gaza and the West Bank, meanwhile, Palestinians decided that Netanyahu had abandoned the basic principle behind the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords--that Israel exchange land it captured in 1967 for peace--and returned to his Likud Party’s old concept of trading peace for peace, or what Netanyahu now calls peace with security.

“It is very clear now that this is an ideological, right-wing policy and that the whole terrain has shifted,” said Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, minister of higher education in the Palestinian Authority.

“People are not going to sit back and take whatever Netanyahu dishes out,” she said, adding that Netanyahu “cannot keep the land and keep the peace.”

A Western diplomat who closely follows the Israeli-Palestinian peace process agreed that tensions could quickly escalate to a confrontation, particularly over control of Jerusalem.

While Netanyahu was in Washington, Ashrawi and other Palestinian legislators elected by East Jerusalem Arabs received a summons to Israeli police headquarters--a command they had not received since the first peace agreement was signed in September 1993. They said the summons was the act of an “occupier” and refused to go.

At the same time, Israeli officials told the press that the government will ask the Palestinians to close several offices in Jerusalem, including Orient House, the Palestinian Authority’s unofficial headquarters in Jerusalem which Israel says is a violation of the peace accords.

With Netanyahu in Washington, the peace process seemed to be sinking quickly into a quagmire of mutual accusations about who had violated the peace accords first, more often and most egregiously.

Arafat was notably reserved in his comments amid this. “Peace is not just a Palestinian need but also an Israeli need and an international need,” he said, adding only that “from Netanyahu’s remarks, it would seem that peace is a prize that the Palestinians get for good behavior.”

The diplomat, however, did not think this restraint would last.

“Whereas Arafat was willing to back off of Jerusalem issues when he could see the peace process moving forward, now he is going to behave very differently,” he predicted.

The Israeli press concurred with his grim assessment, adding that conflict with the Palestinians is likely to have repercussions in the rest of the Arab world. First of all, they said, it will keep Jordan’s King Hussein from openly cooperating with Netanyahu, since a majority of the citizens of Jordan are Palestinian.

Netanyahu announced he would make a trip to Cairo this week to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to Jordan next week to see King Hussein. The two countries have peace treaties with Israel, but Israeli media predicated an increasingly cold peace on both fronts in light of the deteriorating situation with the Palestinians and Syrians.

After Netanyahu’s visit, the Clinton administration conceded that its four-year effort to broker a peace agreement between Syria and Israel was at a standstill and unlikely to progress any time soon. Summarizing the mood of Palestinians and the Israeli press, Yediot Aharonot’s Smadar Peri wrote, “The Israeli normalization with the Arab world seems now like dominoes under threat of collapsing one by one.”