Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has dismissed a draft peace agreement drawn up by left-wing Israeli politicians and Palestinian leaders as the ”greatest historic mistake” since the Oslo peace accords a decade ago.
But supporters of the new ”Geneva accords”, while acknowledging that the agreement is unlikely to persuade Sharon to abandon his militarist approach to the conflict, say that the deal is a breakthrough because it nails the government’s lie that there is no one to negotiate with.
”The Geneva agreement has caused panic in the prime minister’s office because it proves there are Palestinians with whom we can talk, and that there are things worth talking about,” said Yuli Tamir, a former Israeli Cabinet minister who took part in the talks.
The negotiations were led by another former Israeli minister, Yossi Beilin, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close associate of Yasser Arafat, who is unlikely to have reached such a deal without the Palestinian president’s blessing.
The key element of the deal for the Israelis was the Palestinians’ effective surrender of their demand for the right of return for hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled the Jewish state in 1948, and their millions of descendants.
The agreement refers to United Nations Resolution 194, which allows Palestinian refugees to choose between returning to their land and compensation. But the ”Geneva accords” add that the refugees can only return with Israel’s consent, meaning that the Palestinians have effectively relinquished the ”right” to return.
For their part, the Israeli negotiators agreed to Palestinian administration of most of east Jerusalem, the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, and to abandon the bulk of the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, with the exception of some close to Jerusalem.
The Palestinian state would be demilitarised and its borders would be controlled by an international force.
Supporters of the accords plan a signing ceremony in about a fortnight, probably on the anniversary of the assassination of the then Israeli prime minister and architect of the Oslo accords, Yitzhak Rabin. Among those invited to attend is Bill Clinton.
But the ”Geneva accords” have been widely scorned by Israelis on the right and left. Sharon stopped just short of accusing the Israeli negotiators of treason. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, dismissed them as failed politicians.
”It is pathetic, in that the public cast aside these people, threw some of them out of positions of influence in Israel, and they presume to do these things,” Olmert said. ”It is grave, because they knowingly want to act as levers in the hands of foreign powers in order to put pressure on Israel.”
But the Israeli delegation included not only the ”Oslo lunatics”, as they have been called in the local press, but the former Israeli army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and two other generals.
Beilin, a former negotiator at Oslo, dismissed the criticism. ”Does anyone truly believe that Sharon is in the midst of serious negotiations and Yossi Beilin is hampering him by bringing an agreement with someone else?” he asked.
”Even if it’s not today or tomorrow, within a relatively short time, the Israeli public will become convinced that this is the best plan for it.” — Â