Military

DATE=10/24/00

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=BROKEN PEACE PROCESS (Part-2)

NUMBER=5-47223

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The fighting continues in the West Bank and Gaza as peace talks are suspended, and Israel appears on the verge of forming a more hawkish coalition government. In the second of two-reports, V-O-A's Ed Warner examines some observations about the impasse and options for restoring the peace process.

TEXT: Analysts say it will be hard to re-open Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, because both sides thought they had gone about as far as they could.

David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says Israelis believe they made a generous offer at Camp David, one that led to political trouble for Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

/// SCHENKER ACT ///

They feel that the response from Yasser Arafat was basically the same position that was put forward in 1993, which is no compromise on territory, no compromise on Jerusalem, no compromise on this and that. I think they see themselves as having gone a long way, and they do not perceive that the Palestinians have moved anywhere in terms of negotiations, and that now, as they have in the past, they (Palestinians) are going to resort back to a military option.

/// END ACT ///

That is not the view of Allegra Pacheco, an Israeli lawyer who has worked in the West Bank. She says that increasing Palestinian frustration with the peace process made a breakdown inevitable.

/// PACHECO ACT ///

These seven-years have really been really an extension of the Israeli occupation. The Oslo peace process was basically subcontracting out certain administrative authorities to the Palestinian Authority, and the Israelis keeping the most important aspects of control in their hands. All the elements of the Israeli occupation continued, and the Palestinian Authority ended up doing the day-to-day dirty work.

/// END ACT ///

Allegra Pacheco notes a normal state could hardly emerge from the tangle of restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank. During the peace process, Israeli roads and settlements have continued to expand, further confining Palestinians.

Anthony Sullivan of the University of Michigan says complicating the peace process are certain political realities. He says the Arab governments cannot lend suitable weight to the peace process because they are not democracies, do not rest on public support, and are understandably wary of their own people.

In the United States, says Mr. Sullivan, Israeli support is too strong and unyielding to promote compromise. There are those who anticipate and would even welcome a clash between Islam and the West.

/// SULLIVAN ACT ///

Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, there has been a tendency in certain circles, in the United States in particular, to rally to the idea that Islam is the new enemy of the west. Events of the last few days are likely to be seized upon by those who would like to promote this idea of a coming conflict between what they would call - Islamic barbarism - on the one hand and - the enlightened and secular West - on the other.

/// END ACT ///

Not so fast, cautions Steve Yetiv of Old Dominion University. Recent events have been tragic, he says, but let us not exaggerate them, as the world's media tend to do. Images are powerful, but they do not tell the whole story:

/// YETIV ACT ///

The Palestinian-Israeli crisis is part, in my view, of the ongoing peace process. The famous Prussian historian and soldier Karl von Clausewitz said that war is simply the continuation of diplomacy by other means. What we are seeing on the ground is in some profound ways the continuation of diplomacy through violence on both sides.

/// END ACT ///

The violence has set back the peace process, says Professor Yetiv, but can also advance it once the participants see where the fighting leads - a dead end. There is no other course but to continue talks between peoples that are destined to live with each other, come what may. (SIGNED)

NEB/EW/RAE