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Law and Disorder in the Middle East The Participants The Palestinian delegation entered the negotiations in good faith in order to negotiate an interim peace agreement with Israel that would create a Palestinian interim self-government for a transitional five-year period. Immediately following the ceremonial opening at Madrid on 30 October 1991, I was instructed to draft several position papers on numerous issues that were expected to come up during the first round of negotiations scheduled to begin a month later in Washington, D.C. But when we got to our headquarters at the Grand Hotel in Washington, nothing happened. At the U.S. State Department headquarters, which served as the venue for all tracks of the Middle East peace negotiations, the Israeli team offered no reasonable good-faith proposals for dealing with the Palestinians. At that time the Israeli government was headed by the Likud party under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Later on, Shamir admitted that his strategy at the peace negotiations was to drag them out for the next decade. Having been personally subjected to this process, I can assure you that Prime Minister Shamir accomplished his objective for as long as he was in power. Most distressing of all, however, was that the United States State Department went along with Shamir's strategy. It soon became obvious that U.S. officials had no intention whatsoever to pressure Israel to negotiate in good faith. To the contrary, they usually sided with the Israeli delegation against the Palestinian delegation in support of Shamir's stall-strategy. Furthermore --- having done some work at the request of the Syrian delegation to the peace negotiations --- I can certify that the same stall-strategy was operative during the first round of the Israeli-Syrian negotiations in Washington. When the Likud party lost the elections in June of 1992, the Labor party came to power under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. One of the first changes Rabin made in the negotiations was to fire the Israeli-Syrian team and bring in new and dynamic leadership under Professor Itimar Rabinowitz, generally considered to be Israel's top expert on Syria. With the new Syrian team in place, substantial progress was made during the course of the Israeli-Syrian track to such an extent that, if Labor had won the next round of Israeli elections, there would have been an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement along the lines of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. This still could happen now if Israel ever becomes willing to implement U. N. Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), which Israel is obligated to do in any event. By comparison, Prime Minister Rabin kept the Likud team for negotiating with the Palestinian delegation. This was a most inauspicious sign. Soon thereafter, in the late summer of 1992, the Israeli team tendered a proposal to the Palestinian delegation for an interim peace agreement that included a draft Palestinian interim self-government. Israel's Bantustan Proposal Because of its importance, the head of the Palestinian delegation, Dr. Abdel Shafi, asked me to fly to Washington to analyze the Israeli proposal in situ for the Palestinian delegation. Part of my responsibilities was to review all preceding peace proposals put forward by Israel with respect to the Palestinians, going back to the original Camp David Accords, including the "Linowitz negotiations" that took place thereafter under the Carter Administration. Upon my arrival at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, where the Palestinian delegation was headquartered, I was ushered into a suite where the delegation leaders had assembled. There I was instructed by one of its accredited negotiators to tell them what was the closest historical analogue to what they were being offered. I returned to my hotel room and spent an entire day analyzing the Israeli proposal. When I finished, I returned to the same suite and reported to the delegation: "A bantustan. They are offering you a bantustan. As you know, the Israelis have very close relations with the Afrikaner Apartheid regime in South Africa. It appears that they have studied the bantustan system quite closely. So it is a bantustan that they are offering you." I proceeded to go through the entire Israeli proposal in detail to substantiate my conclusion. I pointed out that this proposal basically carried out Prime Minister Menachim Begin's disingenuous misinterpretation of the Camp David Accords --- rejected by U.S. President Jimmy Carter --- that all they called for was autonomy for the Palestinian people and not for the Palestinian land as well. Worse yet, Israel's proposed Palestinian interim self-government would be legally set up to function as the civilian arm of the Israeli military occupation forces! Not surprisingly, after consultations among themselves, and under the chairmanship of Dr. Abdel Shafi, the members of the Palestinian delegation rejected Israel's bantustan proposal.
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