The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations

Sean F. McMahon, Sean F. McMahon

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135202033
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: History
• Thema: Middle Eastern History

Many observers have portrayed the Oslo Process as a milestone in the peacemaking process between Palestinians and Israelis. In this controversial and groundbreaking new work, McMahon challenges the interpretation of the Oslo Process as a breakthrough or new beginning in Palestinian-Israeli relations. He argues that the Oslo Process affected no discursive or non-discursive change and that the Oslo Process in fact institutionalized the analytics practices involved in Israeli and Palestinian relations. It should, McMahon concludes, be no surprise that the process ended with direct Palestinian-Israeli violence. This book will be crucial reading for scholars of Israeli and Palestinian relations as well as anyone who is interested in understanding what discursive change must occur for peace between Israel and Palestinians to be established and sustained.

1
Excavating the Oslo Process

On 13 September 1993, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOPOISGA). U.S. President Bill Clinton hosted the signing ceremony at the White House. The declaration was heralded as historic. Clinton called it “an extraordinary act in one of history’s defining dramas;”¹ Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called it a revolution in Palestinian-Israeli relations;² and Arafat explained that because of the declaration Palestinians and Israelis stood on the threshold to a new historic era.³ The international media shared the assessments of political figures in deeming the declaration a “Middle East breakthrough”⁴ and a “landmark peace accord.”⁵ Not to be outdone, pronouncements in scholarly literature characterized the declaration as “the mother of all breakthroughs”⁶ and as “one of the most momentous events in the twentieth-century of the Middle East.”⁷ The cumbersome title of Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements was soon replaced with the phrase, “Oslo Accord,”⁸ and the negotiations with the phrase, “Oslo Process”—in recognition that the negotiations began in Oslo, Norway.

In this foundational chapter, I briefly review the Oslo Process and introduce and define the dominant reading of the process. I also explain archaeological and genealogical method. In so doing, I explain phrases and concepts such as “analytics of truth” (the extra-textual rules governing knowledge production) and “unthought” (the unconscious, a priori conditions of thought).

THE OSLO PROCESS

This contested process began 20 January 1993 as a series of meetings between two Israeli academics and three PLO officials, including Ahmed Qurei in Oslo. After five months the Israeli delegation was upgraded to include the director-general of the Foreign Ministry. These meetings produced an exchange of letters between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat’s letter, signed Chairman of the PLO as opposed to President as he had signed documents since the 1988 Declaration of Palestinian Independence, of 9 September 1993 stated that:

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.⁹

In the letter, the PLO renounced the use of terrorism and other acts of violence.¹⁰ Rabin’s single-sentence response to Arafat’s letter announced that “in light of the PLO commitments included in your letter the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.”¹¹

These letters, in turn, precipitated the signing of the DOPOISGA on 13 September 1993. The DOPISGA was followed by the Cairo Agreement of 4 May 1994,¹² the Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities of 29 August 1994,¹³ the Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities of 27 August 1995, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip¹⁴ of 28 September 1995, the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron and its appended Note for the Record of 17 January 1997, the Wye River Memorandum of 23 October 1998, the Sharm El-Sheikh Memorandum on Implementation Timeline of Outstanding Commitments of Agreements Signed and the Resumption of Permanent Status Negotiations of 4 September 1999, the Trilateral Statement of 25 July 2000¹⁵, the remarks made by U.S. President Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak following the Sharm El-Sheikh Summit of 17 October 2000 and the Taba negotiations of January 2001.

Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements

Article I of the DOPOISGA states:

The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council (the “Council”) for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. It is understood that the interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and that the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.¹⁶

Furthermore, the DOPOISGA notes that the interim period would begin with Israel’s redeployment of military forces out of the Gaza Strip and Jericho area; outlines that issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, security arrangements, borders and relations and cooperation with neighbors would not be broached until permanent status negotiations; and commands that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) “establish a strong police force” while Israel retains responsibility for external security, settlements, military installations, Israelis and foreign relations.

Cairo Agreement, Early Empowerment Agreement and the Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities

The Cairo Agreement began the partitioning of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by transferring Jericho and parts of the Gaza Strip to the PNA and adumbrating that Israeli settlements and military installations in the Gaza Strip would remain under Israeli authority. Further, it emphasized that Israel had overriding responsibility for security. The Early Empowerment Agreement and its extensive annexes, inter alia, transfer powers, responsibilities and authority for education and culture, health, social welfare, tourism, direct taxation and value-added tax on local production from the Israeli military government to the PNA; allows the PNA to promulgate “secondary legislation” provided it is not opposed by Israel; and requires that the PNA assume financial responsibility for any acts or omissions that occurred during the Israeli military government’s occupation. The Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities consigns the authorities, powers and responsibilities for labor, commerce and industry, gas and petroleum, insurance, postal services, local government and agriculture from the Israeli military government to the PNA. This protocol explains that PNA jurisdiction does not apply to permanent status issues.

Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol and the Wye River and Sharm El-Sheikh Memorandums

Oslo II superseded the three previous agreements. Oslo II reaffirms that the PNA has no responsibility for foreign relations and that Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are excluded from the PNA’s authority; twice instructs the PNA that it must establish a strong police force responsible for internal security and public order (Israelis are excluded from this force’s purview); and partitions the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a more detailed manner by redeploying the Israeli military and assigning different power and responsibilities to Areas A, B and C (Area A being under Palestinian administrative and security control, Area B being under Palestinian administrative control and Israeli security control and Area C being under Israeli administrative and security control). The Hebron Protocol further partitions the West Bank and Gaza Strip by transferring responsibility for the town of Hebron, except for the settler enclave in the heart of the city, to Palestinian administrative control through a redeployment of Israeli forces. The Hebron Protocol also demands that the PNA fight terror and prevent violence by strengthening security cooperation with the Israeli military government and combating terrorist organizations and their infrastructure. The Wye River Memorandum furthered the partition of Israel/Palestine by transferring a total of 13 percent of Area C to Areas A and B (1 percent to Area A and 12 percent to Area B, 3 percent of the latter being designated a nature reserve). The Wye River Memorandum also attached a timeline for the implementation of a three-phase Israeli redeployment. The Sharm El-Sheikh Memorandum, like previous steps in the process, continued the partitioning of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by transferring different percentages of land between different areas. These transfers were phased according to a timeline for Israeli redeployments. This memorandum also set a timetable for the resumption of permanent status negotiations and the conclusion of a final agreement.

Trilateral Statement and President Clinton Remarks

The Trilateral Statement that concluded the Camp David negotiations of 2000 simply states that the two parties will endeavor to conclude an agreement on all permanent status issues as quickly as possible. President Clinton’s remarks following the Sharm El-Sheik Summit called for an end to the ongoing violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Two months after the issuing of the Trilateral Statement, the Oslo Process ground to a halt on 28 September 2000 with the start of the al-Aqsa intifada. The al-Aqsa intifada was significantly more brutal than the first intifada, and paradoxical for the dominant reading of the Oslo Process. Why were Palestinians and Israelis effectively at war after almost a decade of peace negotiations? Established truth appeared inconsistent with, and common opinion of the process was contradicted by, the images, public statements and political policies that characterized and followed from the direct violence.

THE DOMINANT READING OF THE OSLO PROCESS

The idea that the Oslo Process was a peace process and as such a peacemaking breakthrough in Palestinian-Israeli relations specifically and Arab-Israeli relations more generally became the dominant or hegemonic reading. In fact, as Nicholas Guyatt correctly notes, “Scepticism, let alone opposition to Oslo, has been condemned as a threat to peace. Peace and Oslo have become synonymous; to question the latter has implied the abandonment of the former.”¹⁷

That peace and Oslo were made synonymous should not be taken to mean that there was not skepticism toward, and even outright rejection of, the Oslo Process. In fact, there is an entire corpus of literature that rejects the idea that the DOPOISGA and the Oslo Process was a breakthrough. Not only does this literature see the DOPOISGA and the Oslo Process as a continuity of policies, it also rejects the idea that the Oslo Process was about peace. This corpus sees in the DOPOISGA and the Oslo Process the continuation of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a more economical and efficient form. Edward Said states unequivocally that the Oslo Process amounts to “[Israeli] occupation by other means.”¹⁸

In contrast, the dominant reading interprets the DOPOISGA and the Oslo Process as a peacemaking breakthrough. According to this reading the DOPOISGA was revolutionary because, inter alia, it provided Israel with security it could not obtain militarily; represented a historic territorial compromise between Jews and Palestinians; and changed intra-Palestinian relations, Palestinian-Israeli relations and Arab-Israeli relations. On the narrative level, mainstream analysts argued that the DOPOISGA reversed a century of mutual denial and rejection by both Jewish and Palestinian nationalisms. With regard to territory, the DOPOISGA is supposed to have replaced maximization with compromise and the acceptance of the long delayed partition of Palestine. Finally, on the level of state policy, the DOPOISGA has been un...