The bitter fruits of Oslo peace

Socialist Outlook February 2000
Roland Rance

Assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the architect of the Oslo agreement, was characteristically blunt when he explained his support for transferring policing of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation from the Israeli army to the PLO. Yasser Arafat, he explained, would be able to control the Palestinians because he would rule without restraint, "Bli Bagatz ubli BaTzelem" - without the High Court (which had ensured a modicum of respect for the rule of law) and without the human rights groups (which had struggled to ensure that human rights were respected despite the military occupation). It becomes ever clearer that the Palestinian Authority, in alliance with its Israeli and US sponsors, is admirably fulfilling the role which Rabin allocated it.

Respected Palestinian human rights organisations such as the Palestine Centre for Human Rights , LAW and Al Haq, which previously worked to expose the crimes of Israeli occupation, now devote an increasing proportion of their time to opposing the offences of the PA. Under pressure from Israel, the PA has harassed and repressed Islamist and leftist groups, showing little regard for any legal constraints. Lawyers, civil rights workers and journalists have also suffered from the arbitrary brutality of the dozens of independent Palestinian security agencies.

In many cases, the Palestinian courts have ordered the release of people arbitrarily arrested; the prisoners remain in prison. The Attorney General resigned over 18 months ago, in protest at the refusal of security forces to carry out his orders. In 1997, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) called for the resignation of all of Arafat’s ministers, following an investigation into corruption; none has resigned. Tales of corruption abound; it has become clear that many officials see the PA as a temporary money-making scam rather than a state-in-waiting. At the pinnacle of this system is Arafat himself, with his palace in Gaza and his slush fund in an Israeli bank. Ironically, this fund, based on a levy on all goods entering or leaving the PA areas, has been set up in order to enable Arafat, if expelled by the Palestinian masses, to set up an Israeli-backed government in exile and to wage a struggle to return.

Popular discontent at this situation came to a head at the end of November, with the publication of a declaration by twenty prominent Palestinian leftists - academics and political activists, including nine members of the PLC. Other signatories included Bassam Shaka’a, former mayor of Nablus who lost both of his legs in a bomb attack by Israeli terrorists in 1980; Ahmed Qatamesh, released from an Israeli prison last year after more than five years internment without trial; and Marxist economist Adel Samara, The response of Arafat was to order the arrest of nine of the signatories, and to place two under house arrest. The nine PLC members were threatened with the loss of their parliamentary immunity, and two of them - including 68-year-old former agriculture minister Abdel Jawad Salah - were severely beaten by members of the Palestine security forces.

The arrests drew widespread attention to the original statement, and to its complaints against the practices of the PA. Several hundred Palestinians, including many who have not previously publicly criticised Arafat’s regime, signed a statement calling for the immediate release of the detainees and concluding: "the agreements so far signed with Israel have utterly failed to secure Palestinian rights or to stop the continued assault on the Palestinian people from without. . .Palestinian national aspirations cannot be achieved in the absence of a fully democratic and open political system and no agreements signed with Israel will be legitimate unless they represent a genuine, broad-based national consensus. Hence, new free and fair elections are an urgent requirement."

All of the prisoners have now been released on bail. But the threat of prosecution, and of violence from the authorities, remains. As Adel Samara concludes in a letter to Socialist Outlook, the Palestinian democratic opposition is weak. The task of building a genuine Palestinian left, which is the only way to lead to the liberation of Palestine from Israeli military, political and economic occupation, is more urgent than ever.

Roland Rance has been a socialist activist in Israeli, Palestinian and British politics for many years.