The Oslo Process Needs an Overhaul

NEW YORK —  As U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright leaves on her first visit to the Middle East, she is being urged to restart the Oslo peace process. Her task is much more daunting. The Oslo process, having exhausted its possibilities, needs to be redesigned.

The Oslo accord represents the culmination of a step-by-step approach devised nearly 25 years ago when the Middle East had just emerged war. The Arab oil producers had cut their production. Europe, panicked by quadrupling oil prices, demanded diplomatic relief. The Soviet Union was backing the Arab demand that Israel return to its 1967 frontiers but offered no definition of peace in return. Israel was so shellshocked from the surprise attack on it that it could not even conceive of staking its survival on withdrawing to borders that, at least on the West Bank, are indefensible.

A comprehensive negotiation under such conditions guaranteed deadlock and threatened a new war. Accordingly, such issues as borders, definition of peace and security arrangements to remove the legacies of the war were set aside. None of the parties attained all its objectives. Israel did not achieve contractual peace; the Arabs did not regain all the territory they had lost in previous wars. But each benefited to some extent. In two disengagement agreements with Egypt and one with Syria, some conquered territory was returned to Arab control; Israel gained a respite by trading land for time.

The Oslo accord of 1993 tried to apply the same formula to relations between Israelis and Palestinians. Like the early disengagement agreements, it resulted from exhaustion, not conviction. Israel was worn down by the intifada; the Palestine Liberation Organization was isolated and broke after backing Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. Contentious issues were set aside: borders, statehood, precise security arrangements, Jerusalem. Phased Israeli withdrawals would turn over Israeli-occupied territory to PLO control until talks for a final settlement would start several years hence.

It soon became apparent that any analogy to the initial stages of the peace process was illusory. In the earlier negotiation, step-by-step progress relieved tensions and built confidence. On the West Bank, the opposite occurred. Both sides had jumped into the “peace process” without having clarified workable objectives and expected to wrest that clarity from the process itself. Instead, it has compounded their perplexities.

This was no accident. Yasser Arafat was led to believe by Israeli, U.S. and European interlocutors that the final destination was at least the ’67 borders and recognition of a Palestinian statehood. For its part, Israel has rejected statehood for the PLO for much the same reason that the PLO refuses to alter its charter: A significant segment of the Israeli population passionately believes that the entire Palestine is Israel’s by divine dispensation, rendering the creation of a non-Jewish state on that soil a sacrilege. The weird aspect of the Oslo process is that two political units are discussing territorial adjustments without really accepting each other’s legitimacy.

Inevitably, the internal politics of both sides overwhelmed the peace process. Israel entered the negotiations with the PLO deeply divided. Doves treated the talks as a kind of eschatological fulfillment that would reconcile the parties, obliterate mutual suspicions and make the exact location of the border unimportant. Hawks rejected this as a fantasy.

The PLO has been similarly divided. It has three groups: a small, essentially ineffectual, counterpart to the Israeli doves; “moderates” who view the negotiating process as a stage in a continuing struggle, and hawks who favor continued confrontation.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin kept these incongruities in check. Convinced that Israel owed it to its people’s yearning for peace to try the route charted at Oslo, he also said that, should its incongruities become dominant, he would initiate a strategic reassessment with all the greater determination because of a clear conscience.

That moment has now arrived. The step-by-step approach made sense so long as each step built confidence toward a final settlement. But when each step turns into a surrogate for a final settlement, it has all the disadvantages of a comprehensive negotiation without the release of tensions that a final agreement would bring. In the absence of a clear destination, the progressive turnover of territory amounts to a series of unilateral Israeli concessions that whet Palestinian appetites without bringing closer a genuine acceptance by the PLO of the Jewish state.

The negotiating process, when it resumes, should concentrate on these issues:

* Israel’s final borders and a staged withdrawal to them;

* Recognition by Israel of a sovereign Palestinian state;

* Security guarantees for Israel within that context;

* Restrictions on Israeli changes of the status quo while final-status talks are taking place.

Each of these topics is a challenge no sympathizer should wish on a new secretary of state.

* Under U.N. Resolution 242, Israel is entitled to “secure borders.” The ’67 borders do not meet this test. More than the “minor modifications of” standard U.S. position papers are necessary.

* Israel must recognize that its reluctance to accept a Palestinian state is a wasting asset. The Palestinian entity is being recognized by an increasing number of countries; even now, Arafat is treated on his travels as a head of state. Palestinian statehood has become the inevitable quid pro quo for PLO acceptance of secure borders for Israel.

* Given the way populations are mixed on the West Bank, a Palestinian state will have to accept unprecedented restrictions on its military capabilities. But history shows that numerical limits on arms, equipment and manpower will not be enough; there must be control machinery not dependent on the PLO and there must be agreed obligatory sanctions for violations.

* If negotiations are to turn into a definition of final borders, rather than cumulative territorial concessions, Israel must not burden them by altering the status quo of the West Bank unilaterally. For the duration of the talks on final status, Israel should agree not to approve new construction sites in Jerusalem or new settlements on the West Bank, including no expansion of existing settlements that amount to a subterfuge for new settlements.

The issue of Jerusalem should be set aside until at least an agreement in principle is reached on borders and statehood. For it is irrelevant until then and can only inflame passions if discussed prematurely.

The invocation of diplomatic turning points is so frequent with respect to the Middle East that it no longer compels attention. But Albright’s journey does genuinely occur at such a juncture. All concerned with peace in the Middle East can only wish her luck.