As of January 2 negotiations were proceeding behind the scenes, but the focus of politics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was fixed once again on the brutal Israeli occupation and the Palestinian resistance.

Time is now running short for the current Israeli and U.S. governments, who seek to impose an agreement on the Palestinians and bring to an end the unrest in the occupied territories. U.S. president William Clinton, who has played an active part in the preliminary negotiations, will hand over the presidency to Republican George W. Bush on January 20. Bush has indicated support for the attempt to conclude an agreement.

Barak faces a prime ministerial election himself on February 6. In the leadup to that vote, voices from the right of Israeli politics have grown more strident, underlining divisions among the Zionist ruling class.

A series of points put forward by Clinton near the end of December have formed the basis for the attempts to restart negotiations.

The U.S. president has proposed a patchwork solution to disputes over territory in East Jerusalem, which lies in the West Bank and which the Israeli military seized from Jordan in the 1967 "six-day" war. Arab neighborhoods would purportedly be under Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish neighborhoods under Israeli sovereignty, while the Palestinian Authority, the elected body headed by Arafat that exercises limited jurisdiction over a part of the occupied territories, would have control over the Muslim holy site Dome of the Rock and partial control of the Temple Mount.

This would leave the great majority of Jerusalem in Tel Aviv's hands. Clinton has reportedly promised Barak that he will push for international recognition of the city as Israel's capital and will himself lay the cornerstone for a new U.S. embassy there later in January.

The U.S. president also proposed that the Palestinian Authority be banned from keeping any heavy weapons. The Israeli military would be permitted to maintain troops in the Jordan Valley adjacent to the West Bank for six years, and beyond that would retain the right to send forces in the event of a threat judged by Tel Aviv to be "immediate." Israeli troops would also join an international force along the Jordan River to monitor border crossings into the Palestinian state.

Clinton's proposals include the rejection of the demand by Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to their family homes and properties in Israel. Instead they will be offered the right to return to the cobbled-together Palestinian state. The territory covered by the latter would be increased to 95 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv would annex clusters of Zionist settlements on 5 percent of West Bank territory in exchange for a corresponding area in the Negev desert, near Gaza.

According to a summary published in the Israeli on-line edition of the Jerusalem Report, "The parties [would] agree that, with the signing of the accord, their conflict is over, and that all Palestinian claims against Israel will be waived after all the provisions are implemented within three to six years."  
 
Palestinian leaders withhold approval
While Barak said he accepted the proposals as a basis for negotiation, spokespeople for Yasir Arafat withheld approval and called for clarification on a number of points. The team of Palestinian negotiators spelled out their reservations in a paper released on January 1, one day before meetings between Clinton and Arafat.

"The United States proposal seems to respond to Israeli demands while neglecting the basic Palestinian need: a viable state," reads the document. In particular, write the Palestinian representatives, Washington's rejection of the right of return to Israel "reflects a wholesale adoption of the Israeli position."

"Palestinians should be given the option to choose where they wish to settle, including return to the homes from which they were driven," explains the paper, adding that "recognition of [this] right...is a prerequisite for the closure of the conflict."

The proposals to annex clusters of Zionist settlements in the West Bank would give Tel Aviv control of "large swaths of land, rendering the Palestinian state unviable and lacking direct access to international borders.... The use of settlement blocs as the guiding principle subordinates Palestinian interests in the contiguity of their state, and control over their natural resources, to Israeli interests. In addition, the Palestinian side needs to know exactly which settlements Israel intends to annex," states the document.

The negotiators say that under Clinton's proposals territory in the West Bank under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction would be cut three ways by highways that would be off limits to citizens of the new state.

The paper also rejects Clinton's proposals for Jerusalem, explaining that in relation to the religious sites it implies Tel Aviv's sovereignty. Arab neighborhoods in the rest of the city would be isolated from each other under the proposals, it says, emphasizing that any basis for negotiation "must guarantee the contiguity of Palestinian areas within the city, as well as the contiguity of Jerusalem with the rest of Palestine."

In the January 2 talks between Clinton and Arafat, the U.S. president pressed the Palestinian leader to accept the proposed negotiating terms. Hani al-Hassan, an adviser to Arafat, reported that Clinton "got very angry" when the Palestinians outlined their reservations, and "threatened to blame Arafat for the breakdown in talks."

The Palestinian assertion of the right of the refugees to return has proved a particularly controversial point. In an earlier statement, the cabinet of the Palestinian Authority stated that "the Palestinian leadership confirms its commitment to the full right of refugees to return to their lands and homes in accordance with Resolution 194," a resolution passed in the United Nations in 1948 in the wake of terrorist campaigns by Zionist armed units and the first Arab-Israeli war, which forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee into neighboring territories.

Today there are more than 3.7 million Palestinian refugees officially registered with the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Many more Palestinians who were dispersed by the Zionist violence are no longer registered as refugees.

On January 1 Israel Katz, a Likud Party representative in the Knesset, or parliament, introduced a bill designed to ban any mass Palestinian immigration. If passed, the legislation would require the approval of at least 61 of the 120 members in the Knesset for any concessions by Barak on this issue. "The bill will make clear to Yasir Arafat that the right of return of Palestinian refugees is not a negotiable issue in peace talks," said Katz.

Barak himself has stated that "the government under my authority will not accept any agreement in any form that will recognize the right of return, period."  
 
Divisions among Israeli rulers
The prime minister's initial approval of Clinton's terms came under fire from the chief of the Israeli army, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, who told the prime minister's fractured coalition cabinet that he opposed any division of Jerusalem and the proposed eventual withdrawal from the Jordan Valley.

Parties and organizations to the right of Likud spoke strongly against the proposals, including the Shas party and a spokesperson for the Zionist "Women in Green" organization, who accused Barak of "treason against the people of Israel."

Barak's opponent in the contest for the prime ministership, Ariel Sharon of the Likud Party, has been more restrained in his criticism. The Likud has alternated leadership of the country with Barak's Labor Party through much of the country's 50-year history. While attacking the prime minister for accepting Clinton's terms, he stated on December 27 that "Barak is not a traitor."

Sharon is a clear favorite to win the February 6 election. He says he will form a "broad-based government of national unity," according to the Ha'aretz daily newspaper.

The Labor prime minister is working overtime to try to heap the blame on the Palestinian leadership for the lack of motion in the talks. He stated on December 31 that if the Palestinian leadership does not accept the terms for negotiation, "Israel will take a time-out and prepare for unilateral separation.

"We must part from the Palestinians," he continued. "It is one of our highest priorities to do so in an agreement, but we will have to prepare to do so without an agreement if it becomes clear that the Palestinians are not interested." The January 2 Wall Street Journal reported that "Israel has started building a 45-mile fence between its territory and the West Bank."

Clinton has buttonholed Arafat to try to persuade him to begin negotiations on the proposed terms, and has also enlisted the help of the heads of government in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But the chorus of voices advocating rejection has been louder, including not only political opponents of Arafat like the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Holy War organizations but also his own organization, Fatah.  
 
Israeli siege, 'pinpoint' killings
The Israeli armed forces have maintained their siege of the West Bank and Gaza and their strategy of "pinpoint" killings, to use Ha'aretz's term. Palestinians in the West Bank town of Tul Karm reported seeing special Israeli forces assassinate Thabet Thabet, director general of the Palestinian health ministry and a veteran activist in Fatah on December 31. Thabet was reportedly hit 14 times in the chest from a distance of about 200 meters (219 yards) as he was backing his car out of his driveway. That day, Israeli soldiers also killed two Palestinian policemen in Tul Karm.

Barak commented during a visit to the Beit El army base in the West Bank that the military "has the right to operate against those who operate against us."

Two other Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy, died on January 1. Zionist settlers fired on a crowd in Hebron, killing a 22-year-old man, and blocked the entrances of several Palestinian towns, vowing to "take back the roads."

The settlers, who function with the backing of the Israeli military, were enraged by the killing of a leader of the Kahane Chai organization, Binyamin Kahane, and his wife on December 31. The rightist outfit took its name from Kahane's father, Meir Kahane, who customarily referred to Palestinians as "dogs" and called for their expulsion from "greater" Israel.

As of January 1 the death toll in the unrest that has dominated politics in the Middle East since the end of September stood at more than 350, the vast majority of them Palestinian victims of Tel Aviv's brutality.
 
 
Related article:
Israel out of occupied territories  
 
 
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