Raja Shehadeh:
"From Occupation to Interim Accords: Israel and the Palestinian Territories",
published by Kluwer Law International.
Anmeldelsen er funnet på hjemmesiden til "Foundation of Middle East Peace"
/ "Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories Volume 7,
Number 6, November-December 1997" (http://www2.ari.net/fmep/1197.html#new).
Her er forøvrig mye annet spennende stoff.
Knut Rognes
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NEW BOOK ASSESSES PLO NEGOTIATING STRATEGY
The struggle for Palestine has always been a contest for control of the
land. Few have observed Israel's evolving land policies in the occupied
territories with the skill and attention of Palestinian attorney Raja
Shehadeh.
For most of his legal career, Shehadeh has been intimately involved in the
thankless but vital task of contesting as violations of law the principal
devices that Israel has employed to effect the transformation of
the occupied territories into the Land of Israel.
Few can claim his degree of experience with, and knowledge of, Israeli
efforts to codify through law and diplomacy its claim to lands Palestinians
consider their patrimony. It was only natural, therefore, that Shehadeh
agreed to participate as a legal adviser to the Palestinian delegation sent
to Washington after Madrid. However, the lessons that Shehadeh and others
had learned from their lifetime of professional experience opposing
Israel's land and settlement policies were systematically ignored by
Palestinian decision makers from the outset of negotiations with the U.S.
on the "terms of reference" that preceded the convening of the Madrid Peace
Conference in October 1991.
Shehadeh has now produced an important reflection on the diplomatic and
legal texts that define the relationship between Israel, the land that it
covets, the Palestinians who reside on it, and the Palestinian government
created for them. In his recent book, From Occupation to Interim Accords:
Israel and the
Palestinian Territories, published by Kluwer Law International, he has
placed these historic developments in the vital political context in which
they were addressed. In so doing, he has gone a long way toward answering
the central question of why the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
and after it the
Palestinian Authority, representing the national aspirations of the
Palestinian people, has been prepared to recognize the protected status of
Israel's land and settlement claims in the occupied territories at such
grave cost to its own aspirations.
Shehadeh has an unparalleled understanding of the extraordinary legal
framework that Israel has fashioned since 1967 to justify and explain its
land expropriation and settlement expansion policies. This perspective
enables him to make the convincing case that the agreements reached between
Israel and the
PLO "are a culmination of a legal process that began much earlier"--a
process based on creating a basis for permanent Israeli control over and
settlement throughout the occupied territories. This assessment stands in
stark contrast to the conventional wisdom outside of Palestine, and of
Israel for that matter, which has tended to view the contemporary
rapprochement between Israel and the PLO without reference either to
Israeli or PLO policy objectives.
Only with the Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed amidst much ceremony
on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, did the PLO win recognition
from Israel as the representative of the Palestinian people. Even after the
establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO continues to be
the
Palestinian party to negotiations. Recognition as the Palestinian
interlocutor was the main, if not the sole, Palestinian diplomatic
objective during this entire process, Shehadeh argues. The creation of a
negotiating framework aimed at undercutting a generation of land
confiscation and settlement was viewed
by PLO leaders as a distraction.
The Declaration of Principles and subsequent agreements reflect
"fundamental conceptual similarities" with Israel's proposals at Camp
David, where many of the Israeli negotiators first distinguished
themselves. In negotiations with the PLO, Israel succeeded in attaining the
three principal objectives formulated in the course of the Camp David
negotiations with Egypt--an open-ended agreement with an autonomous
authority that exercised functional but not territorial powers and that did
not preclude eventual annexation of occupied territory or impede settlement
expansion. As Shehadeh notes, "the only consistent
diplomatic objective which was pursued by the PLO . . . was the attainment
of recognition and the status of a full negotiating partner with Israel
which was disallowed in Camp David. Other than this overriding political
objective, the Palestinian side does not seem to have pursued clear,
well-developed objectives
which influenced the structure or substance of the document which the two
sides ended up signing."
Four issues are excluded from the scope of the interim agreements signed
between Israel and the PLO--Jerusalem, settlements and settlers, military
locations, and Israelis. The Palestinians succeeded in winning Israeli
agreement to the proviso asserting that the West Bank and Gaza Strip
constitute a single territorial unit, whose integrity is to be preserved
during the interim period. Palestinians, Shehadeh explains, hoped that this
clause would fortify their claim that settlements violate the agreement
because they impair the territories' integrity. Such a claim, like all
Palestinian complaints about settlement expansion during the interim
period, have been made episodically, if at all, and without substantive
impact on settlement policy.
Shehadeh notes that the ambiguity of the terms "settlements" and "military
locations," even the absence of an agreed upon definition of "Jerusalem" in
the agreements, evidence an Israeli preference to claim the most expansive
definition of these terms. The PLO acquiesced in this as in other areas --
such as the creation of bypass roads -- where greater precision might have
constrained Israeli policies and resulted in less than 72 percent of the
West Bank being included in Area C, which remains under exclusive Israeli
jurisdiction.
One of Shehadeh's more important observations relates to the powers of the
Palestinian Authority, limited to those transferred from Israel's military
administration, which remains the ultimate source of authority and the
legal sovereign throughout the territories, even those under the nominal
rule of the PA. These powers, he argues, "build on the legal situation
existing prior to the DOP" and are consistent with Israel's objective of
devolving administrative -- functional rather than territorial, and thus
truly sovereign -- powers to the
autonomous authority.
Shehadeh has developed a keen appreciation for the legal framework
established by Israel in the territories since 1967. The change of a word
or a phrase does not often go unnoticed. For example, Israel's military
government remains the legal sovereign in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
including the settlements. However, there are indications in the text of
the interim agreement, approved by the PLO, suggesting an Israeli interest
in exercising direct jurisdiction over its settlements without the
mediating factor of the military government. "If this happens," he writes,
"it will be tantamount to the annexation of
these settlements to Israel." He is also one of the few to notice that the
PLO has already agreed to respect the "legal rights" of Israelis to
significant lands located in areas under Palestinian jurisdiction rather
than to leave them for adjudication during final-status talks. ÆJfr min
kronikk i Klassekampen 23. september 1997: "90 prosent av Vestbredden?",
basert bl.a. på et foredrag av Noam Chomsky, som poengterte dette forhold.
KRs anmÅ
Shehadeh views Israel's diplomacy with the PLO as a consolidation rather
than a repudiation of its territorial and settlement objectives as
expressed during 30 years of occupation. The framework of negotiations has
occurred "within the context of existing laws and not outside it." For
Shehadeh, who has spent almost his entire legal career seeking to frustrate
and repudiate this legal framework, the PLO's participation under these
conditions can only be a source of tremendous frustration and sadness.
"At the end of the day," he writes, "the Agreements have consolidated this
ÆlegalÅ system, especially as it regards the separation achieved through it
between settlers and Palestinians. This separation became the guiding
principle on which the very first document to be signed between Israel and
the PLO, the
Declaration of Principles, was developed. Thereafter, no amount of skillful
negotiations could expand the authorities and powers of the Palestinian
Council to encompass territory or powers lost to the Israeli settlers in
the course of twenty-eight years of occupation."
Now that it has gained recognition, the PLO remains engaged in what it
views as a political struggle with Israel (and the U.S.) to achieve the
Palestinians' right to independence and sovereignty. The history that
Shehadeh has outlined in such compelling fashion suggests a future course
of diplomacy in which PLO
aspirations for sovereignty will be acknowledged as legitimate, first by
Washington, and later by Israel, as a prelude to the declaration of a
Palestinian state in parts of Gaza. In return for this achievement, the
text of
an eventual agreement will solidify Israel's success in winning PLO
acknowledgment of the wide scope of its powers and authority throughout the
occupied territories -- continued settlement and land control foremost
among them -- that have been presaged in agreements reached until now.
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