Monday-Friday reports by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)
Geneva, Rafah
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
The Loving Dream, acrylics on paper, 50x65, by Silvia Rosenberg
While the debate rages in both Israeli and Palestinian political arenas over the agreement so far dubbed the Geneva ‘accords,’ ‘document,’ ‘paper,’ and ‘agreement’ the IDF was in Rafah again this morning, hunting for smuggling tunnels that come into the Gaza neighborhood on the Egyptian border. UNWRA was saying that at least 100 houses were demolished and about 1,400 people left homeless.
The renewed Rafah move comes as the IDF announced it was ‘relocating’ 15 administrative detainees from the West Bank to Gaza, fist moving them from the detention center where they are being held in the West Bank. Israel Radio’s Moshe Negbi predicted the move would likely be brought to the High Court of Justice in a petition that will argue it violates the Geneva conventions. Meretz MK Zehava Galon predicted that the court would not prevent the expulsion of the 15 – none of whom have faced charges in court regarding – because ‘in our times, the court regrettably approves things that in the past it would not approve.’
The debate over the Geneva paper was along the lines of doves and hawks in Israel, and there was talk that it could lead to a split in the Labor Party, with Avraham Burg, Amram Mitzna, and others quitting Labor to go to a new Meretz headed by Yossi Beilin. Ehud Barak’s nearly panicky run from one channel to the next to attack the Geneva accords, is being taken as a signal that the former prime minister is on his way back to party politics – as a ‘mainstream’ hawk.
In a rare interview since quitting politics, former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami was not critical of the Geneva accords, saying that ‘in these difficult times, unorthodox methods are needed,’ but he was extremely skeptical of ‘agreements with Yasser Abed Rabo, subsequently denied by Yasser Arafat.’
While political commentator Hanan Kristal was telling Israel Radio that the accords’ real purpose might be to create the split in Labor that leads to a strengthened Meretz under Beilin’s leadership, Ben-Ami told Israel Radio that the accords were part of a .longstanding Palestinian strategy to green light talks with the Israeli Left, only to then disown the agreements.
Ben-Ami said that’s exactly what happened at Camp David, when he proposed to Arafat and Abu Mazin that instead of trying to work out a whole new deal, they simply put the Beilin-Abu Mazin document on the table for talks – and Arafat turned it down, saying the Beilin-Abu Mazin paper was a private matter. He also noted that he accepts the Geneva document at face value ‘as Clinton Framework Plus’ – and is still waiting to hear from the Palestinians that they accept the Clinton Framework.
Ben-Ami, who so far is sticking to his decision to stay out of politics but maintains an interested observer’s view of the Israeli Left, disagreed with Kristal’s’ assessment of the paper’s impact on the Israeli Left, saying that ‘the negotiations to bring Amir Peretz back to Labor are far more important for the salvation of the Left than the Geneva accords.’
And as if Arafat had been listening to Ben-Ami’s interview, he was reported to have said that the Geneva Accords were not representative of the Palestinian Authority, while the Israeli press was playing up the dissenting voices against the Geneva plan, inside the PA.
Predictably, on the Right, MK Uri Ariel and Tourism Minister Benny Elon, both from the National Union bloc, were calling for the attorney general to prosecute the MKs who signed the accords. Elon referred to Beilin as a ‘collaborator,’ using derogative Israeli slang for Palestinian collaborators, mashtap to describe the former justice minister. Ariel insists on referring to the Geneva agreement as ‘the Munich agreement,’ a reference to Chamberlain’s surrender of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
Ariga Recommends
 Death as a Way of Life David Grossman's collection of essays, starting in 1993, on the arc of the peace process from its optimistic begbeginnings the disaster known as the intifada. Highly recommended reading for anyone wanting to know what life is like in a land caught up in a spiraling madness in which people are taught terror and counter-terror, which have grown so interwoven that it has become impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, is preferable to generosity of spirit, and compromise resulting from dialogue.
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in Frosties, the anthology of quotations
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