Making Peace With The Plo

The Rabin Government's Road To The Oslo Accord

David Makovsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813324258
• eBook ISBN: 9780429978722
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the personal, domestic, regional, and international factors that led Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other top aides to negotiate the peace accords. It describes in fascinating detail the intricacies of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bargaining.

IV
Brinkmanship

“Everyone went home smiling” from the July 5 meeting, Hirschfeld later recalled, “and then the brinkmanship began.”¹ When talks resumed on July 10 at the Halvorsbole hotel outside of Oslo, the Palestinians sought no less than twenty-six revisions of the Gressheim DOP, apparently withdrawing concessions made at the end of June and early July. They wanted to insert into the DOP key parts of the Arafat document that had been presented to Rabin in Ismailiya in April—including control of the Allenby Bridge and extraterritorial roads between Gaza and Jericho (and adding an air corridor). The new draft called for the Gaza and Jericho crossing points to be “under the responsibility of the Palestinian authorities, with international supervision and in cooperation with Israel.”

Although Israeli negotiators saw this as an indication that, for the first time, Arafat was concentrating on all the details of the accord, they feared that the Palestinians were returning to their opening positions and complained that the changes would effectively vitiate the DOP. Arafat’s personal involvement was confirmed during that session when Abu Alaa delivered the PLO chairman’s first direct message to Israeli negotiators. Sounding conciliatory, Arafat nonetheless made clear that he wanted Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to be eligible as candidates in elections for a self-rule council. The Israelis thought this controversial issue had already been finessed by saying that they could “participate” in self-rule elections.

Savir threw the latest Palestinian version of the DOP back at Abu Alaa, telling him it was simply unacceptable. Everything that had been said about the Palestinians was true, he said; they never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The changes created an atmosphere of crisis that permeated the negotiations for several weeks. PLO officials believed that adopting a tougher line was fair because Israel had done so when its officials took over from the academics after Sarpsborg. “We had [agreed to] a document with Hirschfeld, and then suddenly you came with a new proposal,” Abu Alaa reportedly responded to Savir. “We felt the same then as you are feeling now. We have the right to do what you did to us.”² Savir refuted this assertion, noting that there had been many hours of negotiation and compromise since Singer had presented his first draft on June 25.

The Israelis viewed the Palestinian negotiating strategy as an inversion of the standard model, wherein both sides start from maximalist positions and gradually move toward a compromise somewhere in the middle. According to Singer, the Palestinians began with a relatively centrist position and then moved backward as the opposing party moved toward them. “The Palestinians put forward their opening position,” Singer later recalled, “but then instead of moving toward you, like in any other negotiation, they move beyond their opening position, so that you are almost at their opening position as negotiations move on.”³

On July 11, a day after talks started at Halvorsbole, Norwegian Foreign Minister Holst (who had replaced Stoltenberg in April) used an official visit with Tunisian president General Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as a cover for his real business in Tunis, a meeting with Arafat.⁴ Accompanied by Larsen and Juul, who briefed him on the crisis at Halvorsbole, Holst tried to resolve the negotiating deadlock between Israel and the PLO by assuring him that Israel was committed to reaching an agreement in Oslo and by trying to resolve the logjam on the issue of the extraterritorial road and air corridor between Gaza and Jericho. Knowing that Israel would not accept an actual physical corridor, he convinced Arafat to accept “safe passage,” otherwise known as “guaranteed access.”

Like the Palestinians, the Israelis sought assurances from the Norwegians about the extent of the other side’s commitment to the Oslo channel.⁵ They wanted to know whether Arafat was fully engaged in the details of the secret talks and committed to the negotiations’ success. More critically, they were concerned that the Oslo talks had been doomed by the impasse in the previous round and wanted an authoritative view of whether the deadlock was intractable. “The Israelis asked us to come [to Jerusalem] because they were about to end the [Oslo] channel,” recalled Juul.⁶

Holst dispatched Juul and Larsen to Israel on July 12 with a letter assuring Peres that the negotiations were worth pursuing. “The letter was partly substance, noting that Arafat was no longer discussing extraterritoriality,” she explained. “But it was also psychological. Holst stressed his impression that Arafat was very much behind the Norway talks. He was involved in the details and dedicated to the talks’ success. This made an impression on the Israelis.”⁷ In addition, Larsen and Juul briefed virtually every Israeli involved in Oslo about their meeting with Arafat.

At a private lunch with the Norwegians the next day at the Laromme Hotel in Jerusalem, Peres resumed discussions on the details of a deal. After insisting that they not divulge anything to the Palestinians, he told his guests that Israel would allow Arafat to come to Gaza and Jericho “as long as he does not call himself ‘president’,” Juul said.⁸ She and Larsen returned to Tunis with a letter from Peres to Holst seeking clarification of the PLO leader’s intentions. Holst passed it to Arafat, who conceded on issues of extraterritoriality, and Rabin permitted talks to continue. “I think [our assurances] helped keep the talks going,” Juul said.⁹

The lunch with the Norwegians marked the first known occasion on which Peres or any other Israeli involved in Oslo confided to a third party that Israel would allow Arafat himself to return to Gaza. Although the DOP would not be officially linked to mutual recognition, it was clear by now to both Peres and Rabin that the former would not happen without the latter.

Nonetheless, most senior Israeli officials were apparently wary of how the Israeli public would react to an explicit deal with the PLO and wanted the Palestinian negotiators in Washington to sign the final deal—though they had no doubt that PLO officials would be in charge of the new Palestinian entity once mutual recognition occurred.

Rabin had reason to believe that the public would support a peace deal even if Arafat were involved. Pollster Kalman Geyer had conducted a poll for the prime minister indicating that the public was willing to support a deal with the PLO. Though he refused to say whether it was specifically intended to determine public attitudes toward a Oslo breakthrough, Geyer said that Rabin “had enough information at that time . . . [to tell him that] the public would back him up. The Israelis wanted to get out of Gaza so much, they were willing to accept Arafat as long as he agreed to end the state of war and amend the [PNC] Charter.”¹⁰

Gil, for example, had long supported direct negotiations with the PLO, but even he was concerned that Arafat’s return to Gaza could doom the deal, because the Israeli public viewed the PLO leader as the Devil incarnate. Since the Gulf War, however, many Israelis had begun to perceive Arafat as a weakened figure who feared being eclipsed by indigenous leaders such as Husseini on the one hand and Hamas on the other. Arafat considered his return to Gaza not merely the symbolic embodiment of Palestinian nationalism but vital for his personal and institutional survival. Thus, although Arafat’s approval was a sine qua non for any deal, the symbolism of his return was a chip that Israel could use to extract substantive concessions.

Savir had cabled his superiors from Oslo saying that the Palestinians wanted a “package deal”—the DOP in exchange for mutual recognition. For tactical reasons, however, Rabin and Peres had repeatedly rejected proposals to put mutual recognition on the negotiating table. Rabin wanted the DOP to stand independently of mutual recognition, and Peres worried that by pursuing both objectives simultaneously, they would “overload the wagon” and achieve neither.¹¹

Both men knew, however, that mutual recognition was essential to the PLO (and thus to reaching a deal), and they decided that negotiations on the two elements should be handled sequentially rather than simultaneously. Rabin authorized Savir to mention recognition in passing during the July 11 session and then to offer specific terms for mutual recognition during the July 25-26 meeting, but only as an off-the-record personal initiative outside his role as an official representative of the Israeli government.¹² Nonetheless, allowing an Israeli negotiator to offer Israel’s terms for mutual recognition was a crucial step down Rabin’s road to negotiating with the PLO. It represented his recognition that Arafat was going to be his partner.

At the July 25-26 meeting at the Halversbole Hotel, the PLO used substantive objections to the DOP as a means of forcing the issue of mutual recognition. Although Arafat had abandoned his insistence on control of an extraterritorial road after Holst’s intervention, the Palestinians continued to demand almost all of their other twenty-six amendments to the DOP. The Israelis were furious and refused to discuss the revisions; Abu Alaa announced he was resigning from the talks. Both sides made farewell remarks, saying that history would judge them poorly for failing. Yet each side knew that Middle East diplomacy thrived on brinkmanship; halting talks or threatening to do so is an integral part of negotiations. Having deferred discussion of substantive areas of disagreement to the end, no final breakthrough could occur without some kind of crisis.

As Abu Alaa was leaving, Savir realized he might not get another opportunity to float the idea of recognition. In a private meeting between the two, he took out of his pocket a single sheet of paper listing seven pre-conditions for mutual recognition with the PLO. Savir told Abu Alaa he would try to obtain Rabin’s approval for mutual recognition if the PLO would agree to the seven points and yield on eight areas of dispute in the DOP, for which he would try to obtain eight Israeli substantive concessions to match. It had to be a package deal—the “seven points” and “eight for eight” concessions—or there could be no deal, Savir said.

The seven points were PLO recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security; its commitment to resolving the conflict on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338; repeal of the provisions of the PLO covenant calling for the destruction of Israel; renunciation of terrorism and cooperation with Israel in countering violence; ending the intifada; a commitment to resolve all outstanding issues with Israel peacefully; and Arafat’s agreement to represent himself in meetings with Israelis in his capacity as chairman of the PLO and not as the president of Palestine. Hereafter, Israeli insiders referred to the idea of mutual recognition simply as the “seven points.”¹³

Ending the Stalemate

A series of Palestinian concessions that ended the impasse about ten days later seems to have been triggered both by Israel’s willingness to put mutual recognition on the table and PLO concerns that Israel was refocusing its interest on negotiations with Syria—an impression that Israeli officials later admitted they reinforced by making positive public statements about prospects for progress in talks with Damascus.

In contrast, Israel’s endgame strategy was influenced by concerns about the long-term viability of the Rabin government in the wake of a domestic political scandal involving a small but important member of the ruling coalition, the orthodox Shas party. Ultimately, both sides needed to clarify final issues through a secret exchange of letters between Arafat and Rabin—essentially a backchannel within the backchannel—in order to break the Oslo deadlock..

With hostilities flaring in southern Lebanon, Christopher was scheduled to visit the region in early August 1993 in an attempt to revive the Washington talks and initiate an indirect dialogue between Rabin and Syrian President Hafez Assad, on the theory that the negotiations between the low-level delegations in Washington were doomed without parallel contacts between senior officials.¹⁴ Though Christopher’s trip for the most part reflected his frustration at the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington, U.S. and Israeli officials also saw it as an opportunity to re-ignite the stalled Oslo talks by reinforcing PLO fears of being excluded from a separate Israeli-Syrian deal.

To ensure that Arafat felt the heat, Ross suggested that Christopher return to Damascus after visiting Jerusalem, thereby creating the appearance of so-called “shuttle diplomacy” and thus of movement on the Israel-Syria track. Peres even wrote a letter to Holst that he hoped would be shared with the Palestinians, saying that if the negotiations were not completed, “the vacuum may be filled by opposing forces, or with other initiatives, including the possibility of desired progress between Israel and Syria. Secretary Christopher is at this very moment visiting our region.”¹⁵

Arafat apparently got the message or at least realized the need to keep the United States engaged until (and prepare the local Palestinians for) the outcome of the Oslo process. In a meeting with Mubarak prior to Christopher’s arrival in Cairo, he promised to have the local Palestinians who comprised the delegation to the Washington talks give the secretary of state a counterproposal to previous U.S. compromise language during a meeting in Jerusalem. Mubarak passed this information on to Christopher.

Arafat’s proposal, which according to Ashrawi included a vague reference to initiating Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho but did not mention the PLO or other issues the local Palestinians felt were vital, was the final straw in a long list of grievances they had against the chairma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword, Robert B. Satloff
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• I The Unforeseen Peace Process
• II Drafting the Declaration of Principles
• III Upgrading the Oslo Talks
• IV Brinkmanship
• V The Israeli Political Environment
• VI International and Regional Changes
• VII Rabin’s Personal Road to Oslo
• VIII The Lessons of Oslo
• Epilogue
• Appendix I: Security Council Resolution 242
• Appendix II: The Camp David Accords
• Appendix II: The Reagan Peage Initiative
• Appendix IV: Reagan’s Talking Points
• Appendix V: The London Agreement
• Appendix VI: The Shultz Initiative
• Appendix VII: Israeli Government Peace Initiative
• Appendix VIII: U.S.-Soviet Letter of Invitation to the Madrid Peace Conference
• Appendix IX: Israeli Labor Party Platform
• Appendix X: U.S. Proposal for Israeli-Palestinian Statement
• Appendix XI: Rabin’s Letter to Arafat Recognizing the Plo
• Appendix XII: Arafat’s Letter to Rabin Recognizing Israel’s Right to Exist in Peace
• Appendix XIII: Arafat’s Letter to Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst on the Intifada
• Appendix XIV: The Israel-Plo Declaration of Principles
• Appendix XV: Excerpts from Speeches at the Secret Oslo Signing Ceremony
• Appendix XVI: Rabin’s Speech at the Dop Signing Ceremony
• Appendix XVII: Arafat’s Speech at the Dop Signing Ceremony
• Appendix XVIII: Clinton’s Speech at Dop Signing Ceremony
• Appendix XIX: Peres’ Letter to Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst on the Status of Jerusalem
• Appendix XX: Senior Israeli Officials who Report Directly to Rabin
• Chronology
• About the Book and Author