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Law and Disorder in the Middle East
Norway While all this was going on, and unbeknownst to Dr. Abdel Shafi and myself, the Israeli government opened up a secret channel of communications in Norway with P.L.O. emissaries who reported personally and in private to President Yasir Arafat. Eventually, during the course of these negotiations, the Israeli team re-tendered its original bantustan proposal that had already been rejected by the Palestinian delegation in Washington. It was this proposal that became known as the Oslo Agreement, and which was signed on the White House Lawn on 13 September 1993. Dr. Abdel Shafi and I knew full well that we were engaged in a most desperate struggle against the Israelis --- working hand-in-hand with the Americans --- to prevent the Palestinian leadership in Tunis from accepting Israel's bantustan proposal. Of course we lost. In the summer of 1993, the wire services reported that a secret agreement between Israel and P.L.O. emissaries had been reached in Norway. Soon thereafter, Dr. Abdel Shafi phoned me from Washington and asked if I could analyze the Norwegian document for him immediately. He faxed it to my office. After a detailed study, I called him back with my report: "This is the exact same document we have already rejected in Washington!" Dr. Abdel Shafi responded in his customarily low-key manner: "Yes, that was my impression too." Then he added: "I will call Abu Amar and demand that he get a written opinion from you on this document before he signs it! Can you give me that opinion right away?" Once again, the emphases were that of Dr. Abdel Shafi. "Yes, of course, you can count on me," I replied. "I will call Abu Amar immediately," said a determined Dr. Abdel Shafi. Abu Amar is the nom-de-guerre of Yasir Arafat. The two men go all the way back to the founding of the P.L.O. So that must have been one tumultuous conversation. But President Arafat had already made up his mind to sign the bantustan proposal, now emanating from Norway instead of Washington. Dr. Abdel Shafi, the head of the Palestinian delegation in Washington, could do nothing to change his mind. When the proposal was signed on the White House Lawn on 13 September 1993, Dr. Abdel Shafi did not attend. He knew Oslo was a bantustan and he wanted nothing to do with it. As for me, on that day I had to be in the International Court of Justice in The Hague in order to accept the second World Court Order I would win for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against the rump Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Bosnian people. So I had to watch the ceremony on television in my Amsterdam hotel room. "This will never work," I reflected with a heavy heart, "but perhaps President Arafat knows something that I do not." Still, the question remains: Why would President Arafat accept and sign an Israeli proposal that he knew would constitute a bantustan for the Palestinian people? I really do not know the answer to that question. President Arafat did not discuss this matter with me. He did discuss it with Dr. Abdel Shafi. But I was not privy to that conversation, and I have never asked Dr. Abdel Shafi about it. In fairness to President Arafat, I believe he felt that he must take what little was offered, even if he knew it was nothing more than a bantustan. Perhaps he thought that Palestinians would live in peace with Israel throughout the trial period of five years, under their bantustan model, at the end of which he would negotiate a legitimate, free, viable, and independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with its capital in Jerusalem. Also, in fairness to President Arafat, the Oslo Agreement made it quite clear that all issues would be open for negotiations in the so-called final status negotiations. And this included Jerusalem, despite the massive Israeli rhetoric and propaganda that Jerusalem was "their," "eternal," "undivided," "capital." You do not agree in writing to negotiate over "your," "eternal," "undivided," "capital," if it is really yours. Finally, in fairness to President Arafat, there was already on the books a resolution that had been adopted by the Palestine National Council that authorized the P.L.O. to take control of any portion of occupied Palestine that was offered to them by Israel. This is precisely what President Arafat and the Tunisian P.L.O. leaders did. For the record, though, it should be noted that the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations --- all of whom lived in occupied Palestine, not in Tunis --- had explicitly rejected this Israeli bantustan proposal during the course of the formal negotiations in Washington. For that reason, in addition to Dr. Abdel Shafi, other accredited Palestinian negotiators refused to attend the signing ceremony on the White House Lawn, including my friend who had personally instructed me to analyze the Israeli bantustan proposal for the delegation. Like Dr. Abdel Shafi, they knew full well that Oslo was a bantustan, and they wanted nothing to do with it.
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