Global Policy Forum

The Geneva Accord: A Critical Assessment

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By Marwan Bishara*

Daily Star
December 1, 2003

The so-called "Geneva Accord" (GA), to be officially announced today by Palestinians and Israelis in Switzerland, is the culmination of two years of dialogue and negotiations by some of the participants in the defunct Taba round of negotiations, following the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000. Already before it has been signed, the accord has hijacked the parameters of the international debate on the terms of a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.


The main sponsors of the Geneva Accord, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin, follow the example of another one-page peace plan finalized several months ago by Sari Nusseibeh, ex-Palestinian minister for Jerusalem, and Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's internal security service. It is more expansive, but posits similar terms on the question of refugees, Jerusalem and the settlements.

The GA gives the impression of a forward looking initiative that tries hard to avoid mentioning the past, in favor of finding common ground for future settlement. This approach, typical of conflict resolution practices, reckons that a fresh start is needed in order to solve the conflict and that too much bickering over the source of the problem can only undermine the resolution of the conflict. This is by all means an Israeli interest, not a Palestinian one.

While resolving the conflict must be forward-looking, it nonetheless cannot ignore or sideline the moral basis of the Palestinian tragedy. For only a sincere recognition by Israel of its colonial past and an apology for its crimes against the Palestinian people, including the premeditated expulsion of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs could pave the way to peace between the two peoples. Otherwise, no Palestinian pragmatism, no Western diplomatic acrobatics and certainly no Israeli security plan will resolve this conflict.

The GA offers, in theory, more Israeli withdrawals and clearer language on Palestinian sovereignty than any Israeli government was willing to concede in the past, and are backed by a minority among the Israeli political opposition, not by its government. The Palestinian side, which made historical compromises, is made up of high-ranking Palestinian officials, including three ministers close to Yasser Arafat, (Abed Rabbo, Abdul Razek, Qassis). It seems they could not have negotiated without Arafat's blessings.

This has allowed Sharon's coalition partners to call the accords "subversive" and the Israeli negotiators "traitors," deserving to be executed, while at the same time attempting to exploit the historic Palestinian compromises contained in the accords, without offering anything in return. In other words, there is a virtual agreement with real compromises made by the Palestinians, but no real peace.

Although the Israeli side was careful to satisfy the Palestinians' need to refer to UN resolutions, the subsequent action plan proposed hardly satisfies the spirit or the content of those resolutions. For example, the document mentions UN resolution 194 concerning the right of return as a base for the accord on refugees, only to nullify it in practical terms.

Advocates of the accord claim that even though the right of return is not recognized, and despite the fact that it is not literally mentioned in the text, the fact that the refugees are given options, including repatriation into Israel proper subject to Israeli authorization, and are eligible for compensation, means their rights are recognized. Supposedly, you don't offer compensation, and options of resettlement, including repatriation to Israel, to people who don't have rights.

But international law prohibits any government of the Palestinian people from negotiating such terms, which are meant to supercede all previous UN resolutions and international law. The Geneva Conventions prohibit negotiating away these rights, especially Article 47.

The GA's formulations are palatable to the Israeli language and sensitivity. There is no mention of the "right of return," but there is a pretense to make up for it. There is no clear recognition of the right of return as an inalienable human right; and no Israeli responsibility for the injustice and suffering Israel caused the Palestinians. If Israelis did not understand the historical and symbolic importance of such a step for the much-needed reconciliation process between the two peoples, at least the Palestinian side should have known better.

In my view, the refugee tragedy is the root of the conflict for which Israel holds moral and political responsibility. This is not a question of financial compensation, but one from which the Palestinians derive their national and security rights. Predictably, giving up the moral ground on this question translates into an accord full of Palestinian obligations to satisfy Israeli security conditions rather than a demand on Israel and the international community to not repeat the Palestinian tragedy. After all, what will stop a radical Israeli government in the future from invading a demilitarized and fragile Palestinian state? In the GA, the Palestinian side has also bestowed on all the Jews of the world a right for a Jewish state in Palestine, instead of simply accepting the right of the Israelis to self-determination in their homeland as a fait accompli.

"This agreement marks the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to statehood and the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the parties' respective citizens."

Such phrasing contradicts the Palestinians' historiography and torpedoes the moral foundation of their century-old struggle against colonialism and occupation. It also fails to recognize the right of the 1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to live in a democratic state for all its citizens: Jews and Palestinians. Once the Palestinians compromise their history in return for a bit more of their geography and barter parts of occupied Jerusalem in return for compromising the collective and individual rights of 3.7 million refugees, they lose the moral essence of their struggle.

The last article, 17, of the GA foresees this document being endorsed by the UN as a replacement that will supersede all previous UN resolutions on the Palestinian question. One must wonder why a peace document seeks to erase five decades of UN resolutions that make up the history of the conflict, in return for a promise. At the end of the day, the Palestinian side in the GA has compromised on the Palestinians' "right of return" to their towns and villages and agreed to Israel extending its sovereignty over the majority of the illegal Israeli settlers and allowed it to keep all the areas of occupied East Jerusalem, annexed illegally since 1967.

Yet, as leading Israeli security expert Yossi Alpher puts it, no Israeli government could agree to abandoning most of the settlements and repatriating 100,000 settlers. Moreover, there is a constant mention in the GA of "Annex X" and "Map X," which are referred to especially in the security articles but which have not been published.

Once again this is where Beilin's genie lies: in the details. He agrees to assert a certain symmetry between future Israel and Palestine, and then moves to burden the Palestinian state with security measures and complex calendars and many exceptions that put the two states on asymmetrical grounds. His use of military experts and retired army generals helped him fulfill the Israeli requirement for comprehensive security measures that would satisfy the Israeli military establishment.

The GA does not mention the conflict between occupied and occupier and the asymmetry between them. Instead, it gives the impression of firm future equality and symmetry between the two states, while burdening the Palestinians with Israeli security preoccupations, instead of the contrary: Israel guaranteeing no more aggression against the Palestinian people.

Israeli opponents compared the accords with the Democrats in the US negotiating a deal with Osama bin Laden and the Taleban. Among the fiercest critics has been Ehud Barak, who derided the proposal as "delusional." The Palestinian people have anything but approved or shown any enthusiasm for the deal, contrary to what fabricated polls may indicate. In the final analysis, the key to the implementation of the GA depends on whether the international community adopts the accord and imposes it on the parties, which remains unlikely.

European leaders limit themselves to cheering the accords, as they did with all previous failed and forgotten ones. Contrary to European public opinion whose majority considers Israel a "grave danger to world peace," the leaders chose to condemn Hamas' terrorism while preparing a new association agreement with Sharon's government, who even Amnesty International has lambasted for its "war crimes." Likewise, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, British Premier Tony Blair and American Secretary of State Collin Powell, considered the accord important and courageous but refused to endorse it.

Western GA supporters argue, without any particular evidence, that the accord draws on "wide support" from Israelis and Palestinians and demonstrate that there are solutions to the contentious final status issues. In fact, the support might be shrinking on both sides. For now and the foreseeable future, it is the Bush administration that is monopolizing the diplomatic process. That's bad news for the Geneva Accord (and the rest of those keen on solving the Israeli Palestinian question). Without actual support from Washington, the GA is unlikely to have any operative significance.

All in all, the balance sheet looks bleak for the Palestinians. They have another virtual agreement that contains more compromises from their end, but doesn't translate into a final peace agreement because it has been denounced by Israel's leadership and ignored by its public. Neither Palestinian compromises, nor Western and Arab cheerleading will liberate their elected leadership or save them from Sharon's oppression, while he goes on erecting walls and fences, expanding the settlements blocks that are accepted in the accords and apparently blessed by the international community.

*Marwan Bishara is a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris.


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FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.