Oslo System Baumgarten April 2015.docx

Helga Baumgarten, Jerusalem The “Oslo System” and the War on Gaza From early July to late August 2014, Israel's war on Gaza raged: For 50 days, from July 7 to the ceasefire on the evening of August 26, the Israeli army bombed and shelled the Gaza Strip in the longest war ever fought by Israel. During this time, the Palestinian armed organizations, led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fired what were usually homemade rockets at Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and even Eilat. The victims in Gaza were mainly civilians—between 70% and 80% of the more than 2,100 killed. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers were killed in direct clashes with Palestinian militants, while six civilians were killed by Palestinian rockets. The asymmetry of this war is reflected in the numbers and needs no further explanation. September 2014 marked the 21st year of the signing of the Oslo Accords. On September 13, 1993, Israel and the PLO agreed to end the decades-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict and pledged to reach a solution within 5 years. All pending problems were to be resolved through negotiation. Such a solution has not been reached, and its chances of success now seem more unlikely than ever. Several Israeli Army (IDF) attacks on Palestinian territories and the three wars waged against the people in the Gaza Strip within 7 years (2008/9, 2012, and 2014) make such an outlook seem even less realistic. This paper analyses the relation between the “Oslo system” and the Gaza war of 2014. The “Oslo System” There is not just one Oslo, but rather three Oslos. Oslo I stands for hope and the desire for peace. Oslo I always remained wishful thinking, although it is set at the center of the Palestinian political and public discourse, the discourse of the international community, and that of political representatives worldwide. But Oslo I has never been implemented, not even rudimentarily. The term Oslo II refers to the agreements between the declaration of principles on September 13, 1993 and the signature of the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum on September 4, 1999. There is no space to get into the details here, but from a Palestinian perspective, they were disastrous: Oslo II did not contain the notion of a Palestinian state, did not define a strategy for the actual implementation of the agreements (i.e., an acceptable negotiation mechanism), and, above all, it did not create a mutually acceptable set of advantages to be gained through compliance with the agreements, let alone a timeframe in which those measures could be implemented . Rabin's speech, “no data is holy”. New York Times, 14 Dezember 19931. Oslo III, the “Oslo System” as I shall call it, will be examined in more detail. This analysis will show how the recent war on Gaza is related to this system and why it is the only way to explain the war as such. So, what exactly is the “Oslo System?” In the following, I shall analyze six of the key pillars of Oslo III. 1. The occupation of Palestinian land is maintained, the colonial settlements remain in place and expand continuously; new settlements are built under the cover of the expansion of older ones. The underlying principle is simple: Only the occupation allows Israel to build and expand the settlements, and this, in turn, necessitates the perpetuation of the occupation. 2. The Oslo System forces the PA (Palestinian Authority, known as the “Sulta”) to pointless and countless new rounds of, obviously, unfruitful negotiations with the Israeli government. 3. The Oslo System forces the PA to participate in a so-called “Security Cooperation.” This means, put simply, that the PA actively polices the Occupied Territories for the occupier, as stated in the Declaration of Principles of September 1993 and expounded in more detail in the 1995 Interim Agreement. Thus, the occupied, the Palestinians, help their occupiers, the Israelis, to maintain and perpetuate their occupation. This situation is unique in the history of national liberation movements, as Edward Said critically assessed as early as 1993 . Edward Said, The Morning After, London Review of Books 15.20: 21 October 19932. 4. Meanwhile, the process of fragmentation imposed on Palestine and its society is driven to new heights . Meron Benvenisti, United We Stand, Haaretz 28 January 20103. Alongside the geographic and social fragmentation, the Oslo System added the fragmentation of the political landscape of Palestine, which was successfully prevented after the first summit conference of Camp David in 1978. This fragmentation emerged with the beginning of the Oslo agreements in 1993. It was implemented systematically in the following years and is maintained until today. 5. The implementation of the Paris Agreements and the associated integration of the Palestinian economy into the neo-liberal international monetary system and its extreme dependence on the Israeli economy created a permanent economic crisis. These mechanisms benefit an almost obscenely rich economic elite while the majority of the population has become impoverished and is increasingly dependent on bank loans. Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing constantly . Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildemann, Can Oslo's failed aid model be laid to rest, Al-Shabaka 19.9.2013 and Tariq Dana, The Palestinian Capitalists have gone too far, Al-Shabaka 14.1.20144. 6. The progressive international integration through the recognition of Palestinian statehood marginalized Palestine in the region. The Palestine conflict, which continues to be the central problem in the region, is overshadowed by other conflicts such as the Arab uprising since 2011, the “Iran problem,” the new “Cold War,” and the expansion of Islamic State ISIS. Colonial Settlements create the necessity for occupation and the occupation needs the colonial settlements to maintain its legitimacy The Oslo system allows Israel to strengthen its control over the entire West Bank both figuratively and physically. The life of every Palestinian is controlled by the Occupation:  Freedom of movement inside and outside  Problem of papers/documents: The “registration office” is in Israeli hands; thus an Israeli institution decides who is granted residence and who is not  Legal system: Israeli military courts try Palestinians who are accused of “security breaches”  Building permits and house demolitions  Control over water consumption. Referring to the current debate on this topic, the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, held a speech in the Knesset in February 2014 in which he drew on accurate numbers to heavily criticize Israeli policies. This led to a predictably harsh reaction from Knesset MPs. When we examine the total consumption in agriculture, industry, and drinking water, an Israeli citizen uses almost five times as much water as a Palestinian: precisely 646 liters per day compared to 133 liters. If we only consider the water used in agriculture, the Israeli consumption (368 liters) is six and a half times higher than that of the Palestinians (57 liters). Daily, an Israeli consumes 278 liters of drinking and industrial process water, while a Palestinian has only 77 liters, which is 3.6 times less. The World Health Organization considers 100 liters of drinking water per day as the minimum for a decent life . Clemens Messerschmid, Wasser und Krieg, Süddeutsche Zeitung 10.3.2014 and Clemens Messerschmid: 20 Jahre Oslo – Bilanz im Wassersektor, inamo Nr. 76, Winter 2013.5. This system of occupation is maintained by Israel with all its military might. Again, I want to present a few numbers to illustrate this. Even in the year 1993, the beginning of the Oslo negotiation process, the Israeli state allowed 112,000 people to settle in the West Bank and 153,000 in East Jerusalem, adding up to 265,000 settlers that year alone. In the year 2000, the year that Oslo II should have produced a solution to the conflict, the number of settlers had almost doubled, reaching 193,000 in the West Bank and 172,000 in East Jerusalem, adding up to a total sum of 365,000 settlers. The year 2010/11 saw a further massive increase in settlers. Their number in the West Bank increased to 328,000, and in East Jerusalem to 200,000, a total of 528,000. Today, the estimated number of settlers is 350,000 in the West Bank and slightly more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem. This amounts to 550,000 settlers. To contrast these figures: There are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and an additional 300,000 in East Jerusalem. (Until 2005, about 7,500 settlers lived in Gaza; today, 1.7 to 1.8 million Palestinians live there. . Foundation for Middle East Peace: www.fmep.org6) As a quick look at the demographic data illustrates, Israel is systematically undermining Oslo I, the Oslo of peace and hope, and turning its initial purpose upside down. Instead of using the Oslo System to achieve the Two-State Solution, it is using it to make it impossible. On the economic level, the same pattern is being repeated. Instead of handing over occupied land to the Palestinians, settlements expand. To put this into numbers: 20 years after Oslo, 61% of Palestinian land is economically inaccessible, creating an annual loss of $ 3.5 billion (according to a World Bank report of October 2013). This figure represents 35% of Palestinian GDP . Animation by the World Bank on www.maannews.net 11.9.20147. Without the United States, the EU (which has not strictly enforced the guidelines adopted in July 2013), and other international actors being outright accomplices, this expansion of the Oslo System would never have been possible. Security cooperation and political fragmentation The Oslo System forces the PA to maintain security cooperation with Israel. In effect, they engage in policing their population for the occupation. Thus, the aim of this cooperation, and the main objective of the security services of the PA, is to control any opposition to the occupation. This inevitably leads to a permanent conflict with other major political actors such as the largest political movement, the Hamas. This conflict, therefore, is of a systematic nature and inherent to the Oslo System. A short look at inter-Palestinian relations illustrates this. In 2003, at the end of the 2nd Intifada, all Palestinian organizations, led by Fatah and Hamas, decided to embrace the notion of primacy of politics, not violence. This lead to a period of elections in the Occupied Territories: the local elections in 2004–2005, the presidential elections of January 2005, and the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Immediately after the parliamentary elections, the inherently conflict-oriented Oslo System began to come into effect. Hamas won the elections with a program aiming to achieve Palestinian statehood in the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital and the recognition of Israel. Fatah refused to submit to the government of national unity offered by Hamas. Instead, Fatah began, under the leadership of Mohammed Dahlan, to mobilize the secret service and armed factions. This mobilization led to a coup against the elected Hamas party with the full support and even initiation of the United States . David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair April 2008: www.vanityfair.com 8. As Alvaro de Soto, the UN special envoy for the Middle East Peace Process in Palestine, wrote quite bluntly in his final report: “Before going on, I want to stress that, in effect, a National Unity Government with a compromise platform along the lines of Mecca might have been achieved soon after the election, in February or March 2006, had the US not led the Quartet (US, EU, UN, Russia, author's note) to set impossible demands, and opposed a NUG in principle.” . De Soto Report 2007 as quoted in: Helga Baumgarten, Kampf um Palästina, Freiburg 2013: p. 1579 Under these circumstances, and considering the interior tensions between the political camps, bloody fights erupted leading to the split between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. This territorial fragmentation further increased the initial split that evolved after the founding of the State of Israel. In the meantime, the Palestinian actors themselves are stabilizing and extending this fragmentation by focusing on their own group's immediate interests. Though there have been Palestinian politicians who, with massive popular support, tried to enact a political “U-turn,” all successive Israeli governments were concerned with stifling any attempts at reconciliation. Israel simply does not allow the Palestinians to overcome their detrimental division. The aim of their policies was, and still is, to ensure the continuation of the occupation and thus to expand their colonial settlements, that is, to prevent a Palestinian state. Those policies have been conducted with the full support of the United States and with hardly any criticism from the European Union. Soon after, a transparent pattern evolved: Whenever the Palestinian parties had agreed on a unification process, massive pressure was exerted on Fatah to decide between “terror,” that is, reconciliation with Hamas, or agreement to the terms of the so-called “Peace Process” with Israel. This was accompanied by pressure from Washington to agree to a new round of negotiations initiated by the United States. These negotiations failed, as did all previous peace attempts, because the Israeli side was unwilling to take a first step toward the implementation of a Two-State Solution. The Government of National Unity 2014: Can the Palestinians cast off the shackles of the “Oslo System?” The failure of the Kerry Initiative after months of fruitless negotiations from summer 2013 to spring 2014 led to a completely new constellation. The Palestinians, led by Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas under Ismail Haniyeh, agreed on a national unity government that was sworn into office and began its work in May 2014. For the first time since the beginning of the Oslo Peace Process, the United States were prepared to tolerate such a government, a government consisting of technocrats without Fatah or Hamas being officially involved. The EU was prepared to go a step further and launched direct cooperation with the new government. In this new constellation, the United States, for the first time, acknowledged that the refusal of the Israeli government to stop their settlement program was the main obstacle to resolving the conflict. Considering this, even a politician as obsessively focused on negotiations as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had to embark on a new course of action. Under his leadership, the PA agreed to form the first Government of National Unity that is still in power today. At the same time, he applied for, and achieved in many cases, admission to several UN organizations. How is one to judge this new approach by Palestinian politicians? Are the Palestinians, especially the PA in Ramallah under Mahmoud Abbas, ready to cast off the shackles of the “Oslo System”? The crucial first question concerns the motives of both parties to agree to submit to such a government of national unity. The answer is obvious when one considers Mahmoud Abbas' decision. The failure of the Kerry Initiative, the relentless expansion of the colonial settlement project, and the ongoing violence of the Israeli occupation left no space for alternatives to Abbas. Judging this policy shift remains a hard task. Will Ramallah continue to walk this path, or is Abbas simply waiting, as he has done so often before, for a signal from Tel Aviv to once again engage in doomed negotiations? Two decisions of Ramallah clarify how unstable the new political course actually is. Although Abbas signed a number of membership applications in international organizations, the crucial signature, which truly points in new directions, is still missing: the ratification of the Rome Statute and therefore membership of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Despite massive pressure from Palestinian civil society as well as from all Palestinian parties . Polls August 2014: 84% of the population support signing the statute. PSR Special Gaza War Poll: www.pcpsr.org/eng/special-gaza-war-poll 10, Abbas is still unwilling to ratify the Statute to this very day. Contrary to public statements by Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki (who supported signing the Rome Statute in order to take Israel before the International Criminal Court in The Hague), a letter from the Prosecutor of the Tribunal shows that the PA was not prepared to declare the lawsuit from Gaza as the official Palestinian action and thus set the legal process in motion. The elites surrounding Abbas want to avoid the International Criminal Court, as internal information from a PLO Executive Committee meeting indicates. An even more problematic issue at hand is Abbas' support for the central success of the Israelis within the framework of the Oslo System: the security cooperation. In a speech addressed to the Israeli Peace Forces in Ramallah, he called the security cooperation “holy” . Amira Hass, Haaretz, 8 July 201411. Now Hamas' motives for approving of the Government of National Unity and cooperation with the PA must be examined. The decisive change in the region seems to have been the end of the Muslim Brotherhood led government in Egypt starting with the military coup. For the first time since the electoral victory of Hamas in 2006 and its exclusive control over the Gaza Strip since June 2007, the borders were sealed not only to the east and the north by Israel's blockade but also to its southern neighbor Egypt. Thus, the entire Gaza Strip is not only sealed off by Israel but, more importantly, by Egypt as well, closing off the vital supply line through the Rafah tunnels. The land, society, and each and every individual are now facing an economic disaster hand in hand with a veritable political crisis within the Brotherhood-based Hamas. Faced with such an ultimate blockade, approaching Fatah offered a way out. The Government of National Unity was the first step. It remains impossible to determine whether Hamas saw this newly arising situation as an opportunity to break free from the Oslo System altogether. The failure of the Kerry Initiative, the widespread frustration among the population regarding “peace negotiations,” plus the new course of action by Abbas might have led to such a scenario. It is equally unclear whether a promising new strategy of resistance was being discussed or intended for a future confrontation that could have offered an alternative to the Oslo System. This leads to an important question: Has there been, from the start, a politically calculated scenario involving a direct military confrontation with the occupation forces and, thus, undoubtedly an intention to break free from the shackles of Oslo? The massive expansion of the militarily usable tunnel system under the Gaza Strip and its eastern and northern borders does point toward this possibility. Parallel to this development, Hamas' military preparations suggest that a new conflict is looming on the horizon. Is Hamas expecting a new war and preparing for that? Was the entry into the Government of National Unity an attempt to get Fatah and the PA on its side, or did it simply endorse this agreement to obtain more time to prepare for the next war? Two test cases show the problem of inter-Palestinian cooperation: the kidnapping of three young settlers in the West Bank in June 2014 and Israel’s third war against Gaza under Hamas control in summer (July–August) 2014 named “Operation Protective Edge” in the Israeli attempt to trivialize it. Test Case I: Kidnapping and murder of three young settlers in the occupied south West Bank The kidnapping of three young settlers near Hebron, an area under full military control, gave the Netanyahu government the long-awaited chance to launch a massive blow against Hamas and to start undermining the Government of National Unity. Tel Aviv expected that Hamas would break away from the unity government after being attacked, because Ramallah was sticking to the security cooperation. This, however, was a miscalculation. Instead of widening the gap between Fatah and Hamas, popular support for Abbas in the West Bank collapsed. Weakened by the failure of the Kerry Initiative, massively criticized for upholding the security cooperation under such circumstances, and being regarded as a caricature of himself, Abbas fought for his political survival in June. He was obviously not ready to take the first step to free himself from the shackles of the Oslo System. He did not abandon the security cooperation nor did he sign the Rome Statute. Instead, he held on to the boundaries set by the US. Test Case II: Israel's war on Gaza or “Operation Protective Edge” Israel's war on Hamas was in reality a ruthless war against the entire Palestinian people in Gaza. Could the new united front policy of the Palestinians, especially Abbas' PA in Ramallah, prevail? Would it survive the war, the subsequent negotiations, and the period of reconstruction in the Gaza Strip . Protocol of the meeting between Abbas and Meshal in Qatar in: Al-Akhbar, 5/6 September 2014: http://english.al-akhbar.com/print21402 12? Two issues urgently need to be solved: - Paying the salaries of the newly appointed PA employees who were hired after Abbas, in 2006/7, commanded that all PA employees should refuse to work under the new Hamas government - Negotiations over lifting the Gaza blockade and whether or not Abbas is serious about ending the security cooperation and addressing the UN over the question of Israeli occupation . see detailed Qatar - Protocol in Al-Akhbar13 Today, only a few weeks after the end of the war, a solution to the conflict seems further away than ever before. Disputes between Hamas and Fatah escalate on a daily basis, further fueled by information spread by Israeli security sources that Hamas was attempting a coup against the PA. It seems as if Abbas more readily believes information from Israeli sources than from his own coalition partner, Hamas. This also illustrates the desperate attempts by Tel Aviv to further undermine the Government of National Unity. The focus of Palestinian politics is on the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas—not on the future of the Gaza Strip nor the future of Palestine; not the end of the occupation nor freedom or political independence. Desperately attempting to block Hamas' rise in popularity, Fatah members are engaging in unprecedented forms of verbal polemic against their rival. Fatah and PA representatives do not hold Israel accountable for the recent war, but Hamas. Further, Abbas accuses Hamas of wanting to destabilize the West Bank in order to attempt a coup against him and his PA. The polemics have gone to such extremes that an official representative of the Government of National Unity portrayed Hamas as being non-Palestinian . Al-Akhbar (Qatar – Protocol), Fatah representative Ahmad Assaf in Al-Mayadeen, 30.8.2014 and a speech of a Fatah official hold on the PASSIA seminar on 9.9.2014, Jerusalem at which the author was present14. As we see, the Oslo System continues to work efficiently. The Palestinian public and the Oslo system In the meantime, the Palestinian public has adopted a clear position. According to a survey conducted between the end of August and the beginning of September 2014 . PSR Special Gaza War Poll: www.pcpsr.org/eng/special-gaza-war-poll15, 53% of the population believe that armed resistance is the most efficient way to achieve Palestinian statehood. Only 22% consider negotiations as being promising and only 20% prefer peaceful mass resistance As many as 86% were in favor of rocket attacks on Israel until the end of the blockade, and 79% see Israel as the party responsible for the outbreak of the war. Just as many believe that Hamas won the war. These numbers show a reversal of the dominant political positions since 2007. For the first time, Ismail Haniyeh, the Prime Minister elected in 2006/7, later deposed by Abbas, would win with 61% to 31%. In parliamentary elections, Hamas would gain 46% of the votes compared to only 31% for Fatah. In contrast to Fatah and the government in Ramallah, 83% of the population want the salaries of employees in Gaza, who have been hired by the separate Hamas government, to be paid by the Government of National Unity. Central to the policies of a new government should be, according to the poll, the control of border crossings (51%) and the reconstruction of Gaza (44%). The general optimism of the population regarding reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah has risen sharply to 69%, and 60% support a unity government formed by both parties instead of the current government of technocrats. What will happen to the Oslo system after the war on Gaza? Where does Palestinian policy stand today with its two most important representatives of Fatah and Hamas? What is the position of the Palestinian public? Will Israel maintain the “Oslo System?” Who on the Palestinian side is ready to break out and is able to destroy this system? Mahmoud Abbas and his political elite in Ramallah seem to be trapped in Oslo to such an extent that they cannot take future-oriented steps. On the contrary, they are doing everything in their power to preserve this system from which they have benefited financially ever since 1993/4. However, Hamas tried to break the bonds of the system through military resistance. At the same time, it showed a willingness to accept a two-state solution and to act within this framework. The Palestinian public supports Hamas on their course. To this date, however, no real success has been achieved. Palestinian society lacks the will and ability to become involved in a violent mass resistance and rebellion—the only act that could smash the Oslo system. One way to achieve this could be to strengthen the BDS movement. This is now being widely implemented in the Occupied Territories through a boycott of at least some of the Israeli goods that have dominated the Palestinian market since 1967. The “Oslo System” and the War on Gaza 10