Anthony Zinnis «meklerrolle» består i å stille betingelsesløse krav
til palestinerne, mens Israel skal få lov til å gjøre akkurat som de
vil. Hans siste forslag gikk ut på at Israel skulle kunne fortsette å
skyte på palestinske fengsler og administrasjonsbygninger.
Palestinerne skal naturligvis stoppe all voldsaktivitet.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Truce plan let Israel continue attacks
Furious Palestinians leak 'one-sided' US envoy draft
Brian Whitaker
Wednesday April 03 2002
The Guardian
Israel would be allowed to continue attacks on Palestinian
presidential buildings, security headquarters and prisons as part of a
Middle East "ceasefire" plan proposed by US envoy General Anthony
Zinni, it emerged yesterday.
Furious Palestinian negotiators have released a copy of the document,
presented by Gen Zinni on March 26, the day before Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat had been due to attend the Arab summit in Beirut.
Israel treated the document as an ultimatum, demanding Mr Arafat sign
it as a condition of being allowed to attend the summit, but he
refused.
Gen Zinni submitted a first draft of his plan on March 25 for both
sides to comment, and came back 24 hours later with a new draft -
called a "bridging proposal" at the time - which was much more
favourable towards the Israelis.
One main Palestinian objection is that the plan tries to satisfy
Israel's immediate security demands without pledging any political
follow-up leading to peace talks.
Both drafts ignore what the Mitchell report - commissioned by
President Bill Clinton and published last May - recognised as a key
problem: "That security cooperation cannot long be sustained if
meaningful negotiations are unreasonably deferred."
Mitchell's proposed solution was to follow a ceasefire with
confidence-building measures - including a freeze on Jewish settlement
activity in the occupied territories - and a resumption of peace
talks.
Since the report, one of the main goals of the Israeli prime minister,
Ariel Sharon, has been to avoid being manoeuvred into the
confidence-building stage because of the political difficulties a
freeze on settlements would cause him.
Gen Zinni's stated aim in talks last week was to find a mechanism to
implement an earlier ceasefire plan put forward by CIA director George
Tenet and accepted by both sides last June. But Palestinian
negotiators accuse him of backtracking on the Tenet plan and rewriting
parts of it.
Gen Zinni dropped the Tenet requirement that Israel should not attack
"innocent civilian targets". In Gen Zinni's first draft, Israel would
"commit" to cease "proactive" operations in areas under Palestinian
Authority control, "including attacks on PA security forces or
institutions".
His revised version would permit Israeli attacks on PA buildings,
including prisons, "in self-defence to an imminent terrorist attack".
In a commentary sent to the Guardian, the Palestinian negotiators say:
"It is impossible to imagine a scenario in which bombing a prison or
the president's compound would be 'self-defence' ... this, in effect,
justifies all the so-called 'retaliatory' attacks the Israelis have
conducted so far."
The negotiators, who included two Palestinian security chiefs,
Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, also said that: "The proposal uses
unconditional language requiring the PA 'to cease' [violent]
activities, whereas the Israelis ... are only asked to 'commit to
cease'."
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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