It would be a macabre exercise, but if anyone were ever to compile a league table of political assassins, ranked solely by success in achieving their goals, there is no doubt who would come out on top. It would surely be Yigal Amir, the Jewish extremist who murdered Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin eight years ago yesterday.
Amir’s aim was to stop the Oslo peace process that was then two years old. He succeeded spectacularly. Without Rabin to drive it forward, Oslo sputtered and died. Distrust led to failure and to an intifada which rages to this day. Today Ariel Sharon sits in the premier’s office and George Bush’s ”road map” is turning to dust. Israelis and Palestinians continue to die while Amir lives in his prison cell, chuckling with satisfaction.
Yet there are suddenly some stirrings in the undergrowth, signs that the years of paralysis could be coming to an end. On Saturday night 100 000 Israelis converged on Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to remember the slain warrior-turned-peacemaker — the greatest show of strength by the left since Sharon’s election in early 2001.
Earlier there was a boost from an unexpected quarter. The army chief of staff broke ranks and admitted that Sharon’s iron-fist treatment of the Palestinians was ”increasing hatred for Israel and strengthening the terror organisations”. There could only be a political, not a military, way out.
Still, the biggest boost to the doves has come through an unorthodox attempt at conflict resolution. Rather than wait for the two leaderships, a team of freelance negotiators — Israeli opposition politicians and Palestinian ex-ministers still close to Yasser Arafat — has spent the last two years thrashing out a full and final peace agreement between their two peoples. Last month they made the breakthrough. With the backing of the Swiss government they now have a text, running to some 10 000 words: the Geneva accord.
Already this ”virtual agreement” is building momentum. The Israeli op-ed pages are full of it; soon the document will be sent to every Israeli household, so that citizens can read it for themselves (an idea inspired by the mass distribution of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement). Public meetings to explain the accord have been standing-room only. Among the Palestinians, the indications are similarly positive: when al-Ayyam printed the Geneva text in Arabic for the first time at the weekend, the paper sold out; a reprint is on the way. Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk have shown interest in attending the signing ceremony in Geneva later this year. Tony Blair has welcomed it; on Monday, Jack Straw huddled with aides to discuss how Britain might help.
And what exactly are they all supporting? Geneva is not a revolutionary document. It merely takes the solution most assume to be the only one possible — partition of Palestine into two states, one for each people — and spells out the details. But, as every cliche-monger knows, that’s where the devil lives. Geneva works them out. Instead of postponing the thorny, ”final status” questions, the new accord tackles them one by one.
Jerusalem? It will be divided, becoming the capital of two states with sovereignty for each side over their respective holy sites. Palestinians’ right of return? The document does not use the phrase, but proposes a solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees that will combine financial compensation with a return to the new state of Palestine, rather than to Israel itself. Jewish settlements in the occupied territories? Most settlers would stay under Israeli jurisdiction, thanks to a redrawing of the border — in return the Palestinians would gain territory from pre-1967 Israel, equivalent to the amount they had lost.
It is a phenomenal piece of work. The negotiators, led by former ministers Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, have thought of everything. In place of the ”constructive ambiguity” that characterises most diplomatic prose, Geneva goes for decisive clarity. The pain of compromise is not postponed, but laid bare.
Proof of the accord’s significance has come in the vehemence of its condemnation by Sharon and his ministers. They have denounced it, branding Beilin and friends as virtual traitors for daring to contact the enemy ”behind the government’s back at a time of war”.
More serious criticism has come from those who should be allies. Former PM Ehud Barak told me yesterday that Geneva was ”the peace of ostriches, a plan that only serves Arafat”. For him, signing a deal while terror continues rewards violence: ”It is capitulation,” he said.
Some senior Palestinians worry that any future Israeli government will feel obliged to give less than Geneva offers — lest they be seen as Beilin-style leftists. Some Israelis echo the same doubts: won’t future Palestinian negotiators regard Geneva as a starting point, and demand more?
Of course, that’s a risk for both sides — a fact which cancels itself out. But the obstacles are real. On the Palestinian side, it is legitimate to doubt whether Arafat has what it takes to do a final deal for peace. He seems to prefer the role of revolutionary struggler to pragmatic state-builder. Maybe Geneva has to wait till a new leadership is in place. Still, a hopeful sign is the presence on the Palestinian team of a pair of lieutenants to Marwan Barghouti, the widely respected leader now in an Israeli jail. (That duo, Qaddura Fares and Muhammad Hourani, have been touring the refugee camps, selling the Geneva plan.)
For the Israelis, it is surely fanciful to imagine Sharon making peace on Geneva terms. Most observers believe a festering corruption scandal will drive him from office within the next year anyway. But his likely successor, Bibi Netanyahu, is unlikely to be any more accommodating. Instead what is required is a political change of direction. In the past, that has all been about finding a new man, whether Rabin or Barak. Now the left has no man, and no real party — but it does have a plan.
There are two key players who can make a difference. The first are the Arab states. They should endorse the Geneva pact, and revive the Saudi initiative they endorsed in March 2002 — which promised Israel full recognition from the entire Arab world if it returned to its pre-1967 borders. That prospect would hugely appeal to Israelis and accelerate the momentum for Geneva. The EU, and eventually even the United States, might prefer to jump on that bandwagon than miss it.
But the greatest role belongs to the people of Israel and Palestine. For too long polls have shown both sides desperate to make a deal, yet backing leaders who hesitate to do what’s needed. Israelis and Palestinians need to break through that paradox. They need to read this agreement, word for word, and then, if they can live with it, demand that the politicians make it happen. Neither side can say any longer that there is ”no partner on the other side”. Geneva shows there is. All it takes is the will. – Guardian Unlimited Â