Download PDF Version     Printable Version

| More

"From Camp David to Annapolis: Requirements for a Genuine Peace"

Edited Transcript of Remarks by Maen Areikat, Gregory Khalil and Khaled Elgindy
'For the Record' No. 287 (24 October 2007)

The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
23 October 2007


Maen Areikat:

Thank you, Samar.  It's good to be here again.  It's become a tradition to talk at the Palestine Center.    Actually, we are starting off our activities here.  This is part of a regular schedule that we like to maintain'come at least twice a year to Washington, DC to exchange views with different people and address different audiences.  On this particular trip, we will be meeting with officials in the Administration, the State Department, National Security Council and the Vice President's office.  And we will also have meetings on the Hill.  So, it's an attempt on our part to explain the Palestinian position'leadership and people'in regard to two important issues that are the focus of activities.  One is the Annapolis meeting, which is scheduled to be held at the end of November, and the other one is the continued Israeli policies on the ground, which clearly undermine the prospects of any agreement, any peace and even the viability of the two-state solution.  Today's presentation will be twofold'one on the Annapolis meeting and our expectations, which Gregory will do, and then Khaled will try to tie that to what is going on the ground and try to explain why it is important that there will be certain deliverables, immediate deliverables to the Palestinian people to restore faith and hope in this political process.

On this Annapolis meeting, we still do not know exactly when the meeting is scheduled to take place.  We don't know who'll be officially invited and we don't know exactly what is the agenda or the ToR [Terms of Reference] for such a meeting.  All what we can say is that we are doing our best in regard to this upcoming meeting in terms of having meetings with the Israelis.  As you all know, [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas met with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert more than six times over the last four to five months.  There have been extensive discussions on a wide range of issues, fundamental issues, the permanent status issues but there has been no agreement.  Nothing has been translated into a written agreement. But discussions were very intense and very extensive on all the issues.

Therefore, there has been a certain level of discussions between the two sides to try to make sure that if we decide to go and we all go to this meeting that we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past and the Palestinian side will not be held responsible for any outcomes.  We all hope that the outcomes will be positive.  But we need to make sure that we know exactly why we are going to Annapolis.  Nobody is saying that Annapolis will be the end of the road, but we want it to be a very significant milestone, a very major step in the path to reaching an agreement with the Israelis that could end the conflict.  And therefore, Annapolis is important because it must be a springboard for subsequent negotiations and talks that hopefully within an acceptable timeframe will conclude in an agreement, a comprehensive agreement, permanent status agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will allow the Palestinians to exercise their rights and establish their viable democratic state and live side by side with Israel. 

So, there will be certain requirements.  They are not conditions.  But there are requirements.  People should learn from their past experiences. Camp David is seven years ago, but it's still vivid in the minds of everybody.  And, unfortunately, we Palestinians took the blame for the failure of Camp David when actually what was offered in Camp David fell significantly short of our expectations.  And therefore, we need to prepare the ground very, very carefully so that when we meet in Annapolis we all know where we are heading and [that] we go based on very clearly defined issues that will allow the two parties to discuss all the fundamental outstanding issues between the two sides.  This is what Gregory will try to explain to you and touch on.

The other issue is, unfortunately, in recent weeks, actually recent in days, Israel announced plans to confiscate additional Palestinian land. They continue building the Wall around Jerusalem and in the West Bank.  They are intruding much deeper into Palestinian territory under the pretext of preserving the security of Israel at a time when they are saying that we want to go and talk peace with the Palestinians.  And the ordinary Palestinian, which doesn't have all the information that we have and you have about the situation, all that they see is the confiscation of the land, the building of additional settlement units and housing units in the various settlements, the building of the Wall, the demolition of homes [and] demolition orders in Silwan and other areas of Jerusalem.  So, this very much negatively affect[s] the faith and the confidence that the Palestinian people have in the process and makes it difficult for the Palestinian leadership who is doing all it can to deliver on an agreement that will put an end to the Palestinian suffering.  This issue of the facts on the ground, which unfortunately Israel continues on that course, will be covered by Khaled. 

All that I want to say is that in the next two, three days, we'll try to have more information from people who we will be meeting to try to get some more information about what is it they have in mind for us.  We have to have very clear Terms of Reference for any future meeting.  And the Terms of Reference, in our opinion, must be based on the Arab Peace Initiative, the Road Map, the Bush vision of two states living side by side in peace and security and also to try to build on past efforts such as Taba [talks], the Clinton parameters and other issues.  There's nothing wrong to try to go back to these meetings and these efforts and try to somehow come up with some creative ideas about solving all these problems.  And not to forget also that any future solution must be connected to relevant and pertinent UN resolutions vis-'-vis the Palestine question.  I hope that we will have enough clarity about all these issues in the future.  What is important for you today is to listen to my colleagues and try to understand the Palestinian position.  Thank you very much.


Gregory Khalil:

Hi, my name is Gregory Khalil. Again, I am a legal advisor with the Negotiations Support Unit in Ramallah. I will be here in Washington, D.C. for the next few weeks. So, please feel free to contact me and use me as a resource.

Drawing on what Maen said, I would like to take a step back. This is potentially an unprecedented opportunity for peace. For the first time in history, we're potentially talking about all of the Arab states coming together within an internationally recognized framework, namely the Arab Peace Initiative, and negotiating peace with Israel. But if we take just one step back, I want to explain what the significance of the current moment is, whether within the context of Annapolis or whether within the context of some other framework.

Think of the Gaza Strip for one moment in the year 2020. That's not too far off. But by that time, there will be somewhere between 2.2 /2.4 million people there. Today, there are 1.5 million people there. It's the sixth most densely populated area on the planet. About 60 percent of that population will be under the age of 18 suffering from chronic malnourishment, chronic disease and largely illiterate. Now, that's a huge figure because ten years ago, Gaza literacy was comparable to rates inside Israel and other western developed countries as well. But today already given the social disintegration that's occurred in the last few years since disengagement, we see failure rates in mathematics of 90 percent [and] Arabic at 40 percent.

So, the reason why I mention this is not to be bleak. We have a real opportunity to create some momentum if there's sustained U.S. engagement of the next fifteen months not a one offer with Annapolis. The stakes could not be higher. There's a real convergence of interest today between Palestinian interests for our nationhood, for our people to avoid a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, for Israeli interests and for American interests in containing and creating a viable two-state solution for both Israelis and Palestinians today.

So on that note, I am just going to go very briefly through what Palestinians are expecting from Annapolis. Basically, we are expecting three things, three things that the Palestinian leadership can go back and say, 'Look. We are getting something for the negotiations process from Israel and for our relations with the West.' Those three things are basic'paper, on the ground deliverables and a timeline for the day after Annapolis. So in other words, the paper is going to be a joint document that deals with the core issues. I am going to speak to this, say what we are looking for and why. And then, the second things are tangible improvements on the ground. That's on the ground deliverables related to settlement freezes, removal of checkpoints that can show that the paper is not enough. Good paper is good but you have to have something that gives that paper substance and credibility, and that is changes that occur in tandem on the ground with the revived negotiations process. Finally, we're looking forward to the day after Annapolis. Annapolis is just a small step in a much larger process. So, we have to have sustained engagement for many months of negotiations and more importantly many years of implementation. Khaled will talk about the last two.

In terms of what we're looking for, basic requirements for the document'it's going to outline sort of basic Palestinian expectations for what a future Palestinian state would look like. And I know there's been a lot of talk particularly since Camp David about the true nature of the Palestinian intentions. But Palestinians seeking a two-state solution want the same thing today that they wanted in 1988 when the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] recognized Israel's existence. That's a key point right here, the 1988 Declaration, because if you look at this map (and I'm sorry I didn't zoom out on it), it shows you three things. It shows you Israel, the northern Gaza Strip, West Bank. In order to fully understand the Palestinian perspective going into Annapolis, we have to understand what Palestinians saw in 1988 when the PLO recognized Israel's existence. What they saw was they felt they were making a historic compromise by recognizing Israel here on 78 percent of historic Palestine and thereby agreeing to geographically delimit the Palestinian national movement to the remaining 22 percent. So, the Palestinian expectations for negotiations were that any negotiations wouldn't be about dividing this territory any further but rather implementing a fully free sovereign Palestinian state on that territory with a just resolution to the refugee crisis. Khaled will show sort of what's happened on the ground since then. But that's an important framework because that's how all Palestinians see expected negotiations.

 Now what I'd like to do is you see these very loose terms up on the PowerPoint: statehood, East Jerusalem and refugees. I think those are the founding pillars of a future viable Palestinian state and a future end to conflict. And I just want to show you what happened with Camp David very, very simply, probably too simply and with Gaza disengagement which of course was something of an antithesis to a negotiations paradigm. So, I'm going to show you this map here first to show you what Palestinians saw as the failure of Camp David, which was largely a substantive failure, and thereby what will still be expected to have happened from Annapolis. This map was actually created by the Negotiations Support Unit by some of our colleagues who were in the Camp David negotiations. And what it shows you is how the West Bank would have looked according to the Palestinian interpretation of negotiations in Israel. Here you will see again Israel and then you will see that the West Bank would have been divided into three separate cantons. If we're talking about statehood, what does that mean for the functioning of a viable Palestinian state internally? Well, imagine if you're a farmer here in Nablus and you want to sell your vegetables here in Ramallah. If the territories are divided into three separate cantons that means you are going to have to actually go through the territory of a foreign sovereign state just to get to other areas of your own population.

Now, that extended not just on the ground but to the air space as well. Israel wanted to retain control over such things as the airspace and electromagnetic sphere, which is critical for modern satellite communications and what not. Also, what's important is Israel wanted to retain a large portion of the West Bank. There have been a variety of percentages that we've heard, but you can see on the map regardless of the total percentages, Israel is purporting keeping most of East Jerusalem. I'll talk about that in a second. This large area next to Bethlehem and up here near Ariel are areas that are rich in water resources, agricultural land'things that are essential to a viable Palestinian economy. In addition to that fragmentation in retaining those key resources, there was also a proposal here, you'll notice along Jordan, to retain a security strip. Actually, this would have been under Palestinian sovereignty under the proposed agreement. However, Israel wanted to retain a 99-year leaseback provision to be able to keep its military there. So, what that would have meant is that this territory would have been fragmented and Palestinians could not relate to one another or to the outside world without going through the foreign sovereign state of Israel. Even if that's 95 percent of the Palestinian West Bank or the Palestinian territory, think of this. Think of the example of a prison because in a prison, ostensibly 95 percent of the facilities are for the use of the prisoners'the cafeteria, the outside exercise areas, the cells. But what makes a prison a prison is not the amount of space for the prisoners rather it's that matrix of control. And Palestinians very much felt that with Camp David. What they were agreeing to was not sort of negotiating their freedom but rather renegotiating with the terms of their imprisonment.

More importantly, as Khaled will allude to, he'll go into detail on this, Camp David left out a suitable solution for East Jerusalem. A lot of people say that Camp David dealt with Jerusalem. That wasn't really talked to until the Clinton parameters in Taba six months later. And then finally, it did not have a solution that dealt with the refugees, which it sort of obliquely referred to. And this issue for every Palestinian is probably the fundamental issue of the conflict and the toughest compromise for Palestinians to make. That wasn't even seriously broached at Camp David, although again it was talked about later at Taba. So with Camp David, we saw the substantive failure of offering Palestinians the option of a truly viable Palestinian state, which of course is a necessary component of the goal that we're trying to achieve for everyone in the Middle East. That's a viable two-state solution for both Palestinians and Israelis.

Just to go over Gaza very briefly, I'll show you what happened with Gaza. And I'm going to skip the details because I'm taking a little too much time here. This is the Gaza Strip after disengagement. Our office actually engaged Israel in negotiations for a period of eight months that were mediated by James Wolfensohn, the Quartet special envoy for Middle East peace. We helped negotiate the Agreement on Movement and Access, which was concluded after eight months with a 24 hour marathon session with [U.S.] Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice. And we did that by hoping that Gaza disengagement would jumpstart a renewed political process. Unfortunately, the whole idea of Gaza disengagement to begin with was to avoid a political process. It was a unilateral, therefore not negotiated move by Israel one of the primary failures according to Palestinians.

Now, what we saw with disengagement'well, there are three concerns. First I mentioned, it's not negotiated, unilateral. The second had to do with what would the Gaza Strip look like the day after disengagement. This was the real Palestinian concern. Palestinians were very excited about the fact that Israel had decided to remove settlers from Occupied Palestinian Territory. Everyone recognized that was difficult for the majority of Israelis to do, and that was an important step forward. But what we were concerned about was that Gaza would not be free afterwards. Again, think of that prison analogy. It would've still been surrounded and legally occupied under international law by the state of Israel. So what we saw after Gaza disengagement is, because of the tightening of control around Gaza, Palestinians' fears came to fruition. We saw in the first year after disengagement, despite the Agreement on Movement and Access, a rise in deep poverty from 23 to 79 percent in less than a year. So, dramatic figures are related to those restrictions on movement. The third procedural failure, I think, with Gaza disengagement or the concern that Palestinians had was that it was sort of a shell game in a much larger Middle East chess game. And what I mean by that is that Palestinians feel that Gaza had a lot less to do with what Israel was supposedly giving up in the Gaza Strip and more to do with what it was taking in the West Bank. And Khaled will talk about that. But in fact, there is a huge increase in the number of settlers since disengagement two years ago, notwithstanding the settler population.

But most importantly when we draw those three fears together, we come up with one lesson. And that relates to the AMA that I talked about, the Agreement on Movement and Access. That's a good document. If you go back and read through the history of that document and the set of protocols associated with that document, we would have never gotten that document had the U.S. not come and engaged both parties substantively for a period of eight months. The reason it didn't get implemented in our view is that the same commitment that the U.S., the third party, had during the negotiation phase didn't evaporate but it dried up during implementation.

So going forward in Annapolis, we're not just going to need a good framework document on what a Palestinian state might look like and how the decidable issues might be decided, but we are going to need that sense of commitment and timeline. So finally, what that brings us to is what Palestinians will be looking for in a joint document. This was already mentioned by Maen, the terms of reference the Palestinians are seeking. I think chief among them is the Arab Peace Initiative, which by the way is referenced in Senate Resolution 321 currently signed by 35 U.S. senators [and] sponsored by [U.S.] Senators [Dianne] Feinstein and [Richard] Lugar. This is historic. This is not Camp David. This is potentially every Arab state offering Israel peace on terms that we've all discussed for years right now.

Aside from the terms of reference, we want an outline on the end game. What will the Palestinian state look like? What can President Abbas take back to Palestinians and say this process is worth engaging for the next five years because we're going to get something that you want? So in order to do that, we are going to need some framework model for issues such as borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees and economics, and finally we need those clear timelines that I mentioned earlier. But just as we're seeing advancement in this stage'negotiators just met this last Friday as you may have heard'we're seeing some troubling developments on the ground, and my colleague Khaled will outline those right now. 
 

Khaled Elgindy:

Thank you, Greg.  I am actually going to be brief.  Two numbers:  100,000 and 50 percent.  I'm done.  If you only remember those two numbers, then the rest really is garnishing. One hundred thousand new settlers since 2000.  That's an increase of about 30 percent in settler population. In the seven years in which there was no peace process, no political process being made either on the ground or at the negotiating table, the settler population increased by 100,000. The other number that I want you to remember is 50 percent.  Fifty percent more closures than there were during the signing of the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) just a little over two years ago.  That essentially summarizes where we are today.  We're on a trajectory politically in one direction where things are starting to look up; things are looking more optimistic. The Bush administration appears to be engaged. There's a conference being scheduled, a meeting, a summit, whatever it might actually turn out to be.  Palestinians and Israelis are talking to each other, for the first time in seven years, on core issues.  So, things look positive.  On the ground, however, the trajectory is in exactly the opposite direction.

The main message that we have for people here in Washington is that if there's going to be any progress at the political level, it has to be parallel with progress on the ground.  Otherwise, we get more Gazas duplicated in the West Bank. I think most of you are familiar with our presentations.  Those of you who haven't, let me just point out some important changes. This is the new Wall route that Israel recently approved in April of this year.  The previous Wall route took nine percent of the West Bank territory; the new Wall route takes twelve percent.  That's again just the Wall.  Again, put this trajectory moving in the opposite direction from where we appear to be going politically and the rest of the situation on the ground.  This is what the territorial picture looks like on a good day, frankly, because what's not shown here are 563, or however many there are this week, internal closures.  And when we're talking about closures, we're really talking about more than just roadblocks.  That's how we measure them or at least how the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs measures them.  Closures are much broader.  Closures are limited access or restricted access or prohibited access to certain roads in the West Bank.  There are whole roads that Palestinians are banned from.  There are roads that only some Palestinians are banned from.  There are roads that only some Palestinians during certain periods are banned from.  There are roads that some Palestinians during certain periods under certain conditions are banned from. It's a very complex situation, multi-layered'as Greg referred to, matrix of control.  Obviously, that situation is being intensified particularly in the Jerusalem area.

And here I want to focus again just on two key points.  First is the E-1 plan where Israel continues to build two police stations and prepare the ground for infrastructure in violation of its commitments to the United States to suspend construction in E-1.  And as Maen alluded to, the recent confiscations in the Jerusalem area for what Israel cynically calls a 'fabric of life' road for Palestinians.  As you can see, this new road circumvents Jerusalem because'well, it's very clear'of the Wall around Ma'ale Adumim settlement block and future plans to develop E-1.  There is no purpose for this road unless Israel intends to permanently seize the area between it.  So, this is the significance of this road.  In addition to settlement activity, there are numerous other measures Israel is taking on the ground in an attempt to artificially change the demographic and cultural character of the city of Jerusalem.  Remember again the trajectory moving in the opposite direction of where we are looking politically.  Residency rights in Jerusalem, obviously something that's very important for the future of the city and for future negotiations and for future Palestinian viability.  In 2005, there were a little over 200 Palestinians [who] had their IDs revoked, their Jerusalem IDs.  In other words, their right to live in Jerusalem was revoked.  Last year that number increased by more than 500 percent.  Now that's a figure that went largely unnoticed by the international community mainly because they were focused on Gaza, on Hamas, on Fateh or on something else.  Go back to this idea of the trajectory moving in the opposite direction.

So, where do we go the day after, as Greg referred to it?  In particular, the idea of monitoring and verification mechanisms is explicitly mentioned in the Road Map as something to be established under the auspices of the Quartet.  So, what we need to start doing today is not talk about the need for a freeze.  The need is clear'a hundred thousand settlers, more closures, more settlement infrastructure.  The need is clear.  What we need to do is start talking about how we implement a freeze, how we structure the mechanism.  And that's one of the key messages that we have for the Administration is some of our ideas for at least the elements of something, like a settlement freeze, that need to be monitored and verified, which you can see on the screen.  These all correspond to the situation on the ground.  So, we're not just talking about an end to housing construction; an end to all construction including those roads that are ostensibly for Palestinians, these called 'fabric of life' or alternate roads that wouldn't need to exist were it not for the settlements; an end to land confiscation regardless of the pretext; an end to all planning and financing for settlements.  These are the essential elements of a freeze that need to be monitored and verified, most preferably by third parties.

Once again just to reiterate, the basic requirements that both Maen and Greg pointed out and based on the lessons that we've learned from Camp David as well as the Gaza disengagement, there has to be an agreement on core issues that addresses all of the main issues, including borders.  We often think about the core issues being borders, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem.  But water is a very key issue that deals directly with the viability of a future Palestinian state. There has to be, again, the link between the situation on the ground, and progress at the negotiation table must be reestablished.  One cannot exist without the other.  There has to be immediate, tangible, significant improvements on the ground, primarily we believe can be achieved through the implementation of a settlement freeze, a genuine settlement freeze  and clear timetables for reaching a comprehensive agreement as well as other aspects in terms of the day after.  Thank you.


Mr. Maen Areikat is Director-General of the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department. Mr. Khaled Elgindy is a policy advisor on settlements with the Negotiations Support Unit. Mr. Gregory Khalil is a legal advisor with the Negotiations Support Unit.

Related Documents

• "From Camp David to Annapolis: Requirements for a Genuine Peace"
  "From Camp David to Annapolis: Requirements for a Genuine Peace"