What is the problem in the Middle East?
Regional, Analysis, 9/19/1997

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat warns that unless United States efforts can breathe life into the peace process, "We will enter into an era of confusion where all is possible, including war."

His warning was repeated by Ehud Barak, the leader of Israel's opposition Labor party, in front of 20,000 Israelis at a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. "War is just around the corner, only a blind man cannot see the threat looming," he warned, blaming right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line polices.

Some 200 Palestinians marched in a refugee camp in Bethlehem on Saturday to mark the anniversary, bearing a coffin draped with a banner reading "Oslo is dead." A similar demonstration took place in Jordan.

The so-called "Oslo" series of interim accords signed in 1993-1995 created Arafat's self-rule authority and envisaged an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank before starting negotiations on a final resolution which the Palestinians want to result in independent state.

But the Oslo accord peace process has came to a dangerous halt since the arrival in power in June 1996 of Netanyahu, the Likud prime minister who from the beginning opposed the peace deals of Rabin and his Labor successor Shimon Peres.

Netanyahu swept into office on a wave of anger among Israelis who, after a series of suicide bombings by the Islamic movement Hamas, accused the Labor party of choosing peace at the cost of security.

But the spectre of terrorism returned under Netanyahu after the bombings which shook Jerusalem in recent months.

While Arafat cracked down on the Hamas movement as a result of the 1996 bombings, he has refused to do so now. Palestinians have condemned the attacks, but there is growing feeling that only violence can win a settlement from Netanyahu.

"The peace process is dead and buried. But Netanyahu, as much as, Arafat, does not want to publish the obituary," said an editorial in the Israel daily Yediot Aharanet on Friday.

The paper reported that for the first time since 1993, the Israeli army had prepared exercises for "Limited armed conflict" with the Palestinians.

If the situation deteriorates, the army is preparing for armed clashes with Palestinian policemen and "surgical strikes" inside self-rule areas, although re-occupying these zones in not planned, it added.

In September 1996, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police engaged in gun battles across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaving 87 dead in the worst violence since Israel occupied the area in 1967.

The Palestinian Authority, which officially has some 15,000 armed security forces, has said it will defend its "liberated lands" if Israeli troops enter the Gaza Strip or the three percent of the West Bank under its control.

But the public on both sides still maintain its support for some form of peace. And Arab leaders, especially Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak, insist the "Oslo" process "can endure the current crisis."

Also US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that peace in the Middle East should be based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, including the principle of land for peace, but before she left, had warned the feuding Israeli and Palestinian leaders that she would not return to the region until they had made "hard decisions" that could allow their peace process to resume.

The Oslo accord is not the Middle East's problem, the problem is Likud and its leader Netanyahu's policies.

Previous Stories:
  Foreign ministers meeting to tackle Palestinian issue, many topics   (9/18/1997)
  Palestinians are angry - Eruption may take place after Friday's prayer   (9/18/1997)
  Arafat accuses Israel of planning settler takeover   (9/18/1997)

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