Barak Setting the Stage for Peace With Palestinians

With just weeks to go until a deadline for making peace with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has started to dribble out details of a final treaty.

In his most explicit language to date, Barak told his Cabinet this week that Israel will release eastern suburbs of Jerusalem to Palestinian control. Annexing the 50,000 or more Palestinians who live just east of the Old City, he said, is not in Israel’s security or social interest.

And Barak has, with renewed emphasis, offered to recognize a Palestinian state, outlining conditions he wants met.

The statements do not represent a departure from already familiar Israeli positions, but they come as part of what Barak’s aides say is a campaign to get Israelis accustomed to the reality that awaits them in settling decades of conflict with the Palestinians.

“In the past, we could be idealistic with our visions and dreams, but now it’s time to be realistic about what we want to get and what we can get,” a senior government official said. “Time is running out.”

Israel and the Palestinians, under U.S. mediation, have pledged to reach a framework agreement next month, a document that will set the terms of a “final-status,” comprehensive peace package that the parties hope to complete in September.

Barak has concluded that he desperately needs to show progress with the Palestinians, having failed to negotiate a peace agreement with taciturn Syrian President Hafez Assad. He also is facing what may be a tumultuous extrication of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.

Israel officially informed the United Nations on Monday that it will withdraw from Lebanon by July 7 in fulfillment of U.N. resolutions adopted in 1978.

There is no guarantee that the mid-May deadline in the talks with the Palestinians will be met. It is already a substitute for an earlier, missed target date. And even as Israeli officials were using words such as “sacrifice” and “realism,” Palestinian officials rejected the latest statements as inadequate.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, one of the Palestinians’ chief negotiators, said the character of an independent Palestinian state is a matter for Palestinians, and he accused the Israelis of attempting to impose their will on the final settlement.

Abed-Rabbo was speaking Monday after a late-night session in which he briefed Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his Cabinet on the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian talks, held near Washington. Arafat is scheduled to meet with President Clinton in Washington on Thursday.

However, Abed-Rabbo noted what he called one positive aspect of the current situation: “The Israelis realize a Palestinian state is inevitable.”

Since returning from his own summit with Clinton last week, Barak has made a point of telling aides and his Cabinet that he is prepared to recognize a Palestinian “entity” as long as Arafat relinquishes his demand to bring Palestinian refugees home to what is today the Jewish state. A number of Jewish settlements will also remain in Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he has said.

In a concession to the Palestinians, Barak said the entity would definitely have contiguous territory, rather than its current patchwork design, and he threw in the few suburbs east of Jerusalem to further sweeten the offer. These included Abu Dis, often mentioned as a future Palestinian capital, and Azariya, both of which are already under Palestinian civil administration but are places where Israel has retained security control. Releasing them, Barak suggested, would not undermine Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its united capital.

“We have always prayed toward Jerusalem and have never directed any prayer toward Azariya and Abu Dis,” Barak told his Cabinet. “The annexation of 50-70,000 Palestinians [living there] serves neither the security nor any other national interest of Israel.”

And in a Monday night interview with Israeli television timed for the Passover holiday, Barak said: “It needs to be clear to us that what will emerge from an agreement is not a limited autonomy or a protectorate. There will not be good neighborliness between the two if one of them is a collection of islands on a map.”

Officials Debating Plans for West Bank

Israeli officials are also debating various plans for how much of the West Bank will finally be ceded to the Palestinian Authority. According to one plan, first suggested by Nobel Peace laureate and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Israel would give 80% of the West Bank to the Palestinians while retaining 20%. Currently, after a series of Israeli troop withdrawals, the Palestinian Authority controls in some measure about 40% of the West Bank.

The Palestinians remain skeptical. The deal, as far as Abed-Rabbo is concerned, is that “100% of Palestinian lands will be exchanged for 100% of peace.”

They complain that Israel wasted a lot of time while Barak focused exclusively on the Syrians. In contravention of Barak’s original desires, but in answer to Palestinian demands, starting at the end of this month the U.S. will take a far more active role in negotiations.

Akiva Eldar, one of Israel’s best-informed political commentators, said Barak is in fact making far more demands on the Palestinians than the concessions he is offering. The prime minister has “pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes” and is merely “beating the drums of peace” with the Palestinians in hopes of luring the Syrians back to the negotiating table, Eldar said.

“The final-status settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is not a single centimeter closer today than it was in the days of [right-wing former Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [hawkish former Foreign Minister] Ariel Sharon,” Eldar wrote Monday in the liberal newspaper Haaretz.

Others suggested that Barak’s efforts were more sincere than that. According to this interpretation, he genuinely hopes to get talks with the Palestinians moving again and wants to appear flexible on territorial issues so that Arafat in turn can be flexible. He also has to prepare public opinion for what are sure to be unpopular concessions. While most Israelis understand that a Palestinian state is all but inevitable, issues such as Jerusalem and refugees are still extremely sensitive.

“We are trying to adjust the public to the reality and show that if we reach agreement, it will be after compromises, and compromises are compromises,” Barak’s spokesman, Gadi Baltiansky, said.

Lack of Deal Has Led to Array of Criticism

For Barak, some raw politics are also involved. His landslide election 11 months ago was based in large part on his promise to finally make peace with Israel’s remaining Arab enemies. Whether through his own fault or not, he hasn’t delivered, and that has opened him up to an unusually wide array of criticism.

“[Barak] has not been able to control his unruly coalition, create order in his recalcitrant party or inspire confidence in a fragmented and impatient population,” Naomi Chazan, whose leftist Meretz Party is part of Barak’s government, said last week. “In some respects, although hardly in others, he is coming to resemble his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was ushered out of office after barely three years.”