Intifada Drowns Out Calls to Resume Negotiations

To most Arab leaders, Israel is a state they must make peace with.

To most ordinary Arabs, Israel is an occupier and must be forced out of their lands.

Three months into the current Palestinian uprising, these divided viewpoints remain a constant in the Arab world, much as they have for the past three decades.

But it’s people’s anger, not political expediency, that has taken the lead in this intifada, thwarting attempts to get Israeli and Palestinians officials back to the negotiating table.

The effect of that bitterness is perhaps reflected most clearly by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who has the same inclinations toward moderation as many other Arab leaders but also faces popular outrage. One moment he expresses a belief that peace is at long last at hand; the next he raises myriad objections to a framework for achieving it.

The leaders of Egypt and Jordan are among those finding it difficult to juggle their roles both as peace advocates and as voices for their people’s anger against mounting Palestinian casualties.

“Our governments want to continue the peace process, but the people are resisting,” prominent Egyptian journalist Fahmi Howeidi said in a recent interview. “I don’t know how they’ll act and not violate people’s feelings.”

The anger is fueled daily by television and newspaper images of dead and maimed Palestinians, of Israeli soldiers firing at rock-wielding Palestinian youths or of Muslims prevented by armed Israeli police from entering Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

Unlike the intifada that began in 1987, which ultimately led Arabs to the negotiating table, the new one highlights what many believe is the futility of dealing with Israel, a state often likened in the Arab world to South Africa in the days of apartheid.

Arabs argue that Israel conquered Arab territory in 1948 and 1967 and that it should give the land back before any more discussions of peace are pursued.

“For so many years now, there were the [1993] Oslo accords, half implemented or not implemented at all,” Egyptian government spokesman Nabil Osman said. Arab frustration over those and subsequent negotiations is being vented in the current uprising, which Osman predicted will continue for the foreseeable future.

“What you are dealing with is an occupied-versus-occupier relationship, not a relationship based on parity,” said a senior Jordanian official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The credibility of the [peace] process is gone.” The violence, which has led to caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s political comedown and probably will cost President Clinton the prize of brokering peace in the Middle East, has galvanized Arabs regionwide into a hardened stance toward Israel.

“Young men and children with stones have created a major defeat for the Israelis,” said one retired senior Jordanian official, who also asked not to be identified. “The last intifada lasted seven years and did not have the effect like this one is having.”

The prevailing Arab sentiment is one that several Arab political leaders and experts say they haven’t seen since the Middle East War in 1967, when Arab rhetoric focused on the destruction of Israel.

Recent American actions, such as holding Arafat accountable for the failure of the Camp David summit in July, have also turned a growing number of Arabs against the United States.

Arabs See Pro-Israel Bias on U.S. Part

Vice President Al Gore’s selection of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), an Orthodox Jew, as his running mate in his failed presidential bid was criticized by Egyptians and Jordanians on the street as the ultimate sign of the Clinton administration’s pro-Israel bias.

Anti-American sentiment prompted the official Palestinian Authority television network to call for a “day of confrontation” with the United States this month, urging Palestinians to stop buying American products.

Several Arab-language newspapers have also pushed for boycotts of U.S. companies doing business in their countries, although a few Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, warned that such measures would be a “double-edged sword.”

A few students at the American University in Cairo agreed. Boycotting McDonald’s, for example, would only cost the jobs of Egyptian employees, they said.

Still, hostility toward the United States and Israel is widespread on campus. Juniors Amir Riad and Osama Aly told of an impromptu protest at the school two months ago in which students burned an Israeli flag and removed an American one flying atop the university.

A school ban on unapproved rallies did not keep students from staging sit-ins, said Aly, a 21-year-old physics major.

“Israelis do not want peace,” added Riad, 22, an economics major. “That’s why I was very, very pleased to see the intifada start again.”

The Palestinians should not give in until “Jerusalem is returned to us,” Aly said, reiterating what has become an unofficial motto of the current uprising.

Each Palestinian death appears to strengthen Arab resolve, political analysts say.

“Life has become not worth it for Palestinians under occupation,” said Labib Kamhawi, a political science professor at Jordan University. “If they die, they have less to lose. A human can’t live under occupation all of his life.”

The accords that were “supposed to improve the quality of life for the Palestinians actually deteriorated their life,” said Abdul Monein Said, director of the Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in the Egyptian capital. “Israel was gaining, Palestinians were losing” with a poor economic outlook for an area where ports and borders are controlled by Israel.

Said said the “apartheid” practiced by Israelis upon Palestinians is especially felt at the borders. He described an incident last spring when he was asked to give a lecture in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Said said he met his Palestinian contact at the Jordanian border, where the two were separated by Israeli border guards.

Said was ushered through one passport line, which he cleared in five minutes. His Palestinian colleague, however, stood in a Palestinian line and was not allowed through for more than 90 minutes, Said recalled.

“In Arab countries, you can do a lot of things, but not humiliation, and that was humiliation,” he said.

The final straw, Arab politicians and academicians agree, was right-wing Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon’s late September visit to the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that Muslims call Haram al Sharif, or “noble sanctuary,” and that Jews refer to as the Temple Mount.

That visit also gave all Arabs a powerful symbol of their demand for political sovereignty within Jerusalem. For example, the image of the Al Aqsa mosque in the holy compound appears in almost every poster depicting Palestinian casualties of the intifada.

“I call this the Al Quds intifada,” said Kamhawi, referring to the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

Still, most Arab politicians and pundits remain convinced that there will eventually be an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, even as newspapers like the weekly Al Ahram dub the prospect “Mission Impossible.”

Some Believe Peace Is More Likely Than Ever

In fact, a Saudi Foreign Ministry official, speaking Thursday on the customary condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that his country believes peace is more likely than ever.

“The peace, and peace process itself, is a must,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said earlier this month.

If nothing else, peace is an economic imperative, Al Ahram’s Said explained, adding that companies worldwide are interested in doing business throughout the region, not state by state.

Also, Israelis and Palestinians have a lot more in common than anyone wants to admit, even culturally, he said.

“From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” he observed, “if there were a normal highway, you’d be talking 45 minutes by car. You’re not talking about great distances.”

“Our only option is peace,” agreed the top Jordanian official. “No matter what, people will have to go back to the negotiation table. You can’t negotiate across the street” while throwing rocks.