Death as a Way of Life

Beware, Opportunity Ahead

September 1999

In a landslide victory over Netanyahu, Labor leader Ehud Barak won the May 18, 1999, Israeli general elections. The former army general vowed to renew the peace talks and declared that he was ready to negotiate land for peace. On September 4 of that same year, Barak and Arafat met in the Egyptian Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to sign the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum on Implementation Timeline of Outstanding Commitments of Agreements Signed and the Resumption of Permanent Status Negotiations. The issues agreed upon included the gradual transfer of areas to Palestinian control, security, and safe passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis and the Palestinians didn’t dance in the streets after this new agreement. The two nations are already well aware of the disparity between, on the one hand, the euphoria often characteristic of the formal language used in signing ceremonies and, on the other hand, the actual execution of the agreements. The latter is generally done without enthusiasm, in a petty and even resentful way.

The present agreement contains no dramatic change from the Wye Plantation agreement, achieved eleven months ago and much trumpeted in Washington.

But it would be a mistake to judge this agreement only on the basis of the apparent successes that one side or the other scored. The great achievement is that the peace process, which Benjamin Netanyahu suspended and slowed down as much as he could for nearly three years, is again back on track.

This agreement and the way it was achieved are in large part the agenda which Israel’s new prime minister, Ehud Barak, has presented to his people. When we examine it, we find a few very clear pieces of information. The first, and most important, is that Barak does, in fact, intend to lead Israel into a historic peace with the Palestinians. The second piece of information is that the price of this peace — handing territories over to the Palestinians — still looks nearly intolerable to Barak. He is not necessarily willing to pay it. The third piece of information arising from the way Barak conducted the negotiations is that, despite the great historic opportunity, both sides continue to treat each other with suspicion and animosity, as they became accustomed to doing during the Netanyahu period.

Barak most certainly has a bold and revolutionary vision of a new Middle East, and unlike previous Israeli leaders, he can carry it out without encountering too much opposition from the great majority of Israelis. Yet Barak suffers from the same infirmity as his predecessors. He lacks sensitivity to the problems of his partner — Arafat — and to the Palestinian people’s terrible distress and years of frustration.

Arafat, for his part, still seems to be having trouble believing that he is facing the best partner he can hope for under the present circumstances. He is haggling with Barak just as he did with Netanyahu, stubbornly holding his ground on small details. In doing so, he is contributing to the dissolution of the chance for a true, profound change in the relationship between the two peoples.

We now have an entire year ahead of us before reaching a final agreement. During this year the two sides will have to resolve the approximately 450 problems and disputes that now divide them. Is this possible? At first glance, it seems impossible. But perhaps we should see it differently. The conflict between the two peoples has almost run itself out. The majority in both nations are weary of war. The Israelis and Palestinians already know in their hearts, more or less, what dreams they will have to give up and what they will gain.

Only two things remain a riddle. We don’t know how much time will be lost until the solutions are found and how much blood will be spilt by then. Ehud Barak has, with the vision of a great leader — or with appalling naïveté—announced: Within a single year we will have a permanent status agreement.

The heart hopes that there is good sense behind this move of his, in definitively cutting the tangled Gordian knot between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But that same heart is well acquainted with the two peoples who are party to this conflict. It knows their suspicious, cynical character, their self-destructive tendencies, and the fear that has become second nature to them — the fear of believing that there is hope for another kind of life in the Middle East.

Despite this, I allow myself to celebrate today — because, despite all the doubts, and the sorrow at all the gratuitous insults they have hurled at each other, it’s clear to me today, more than it ever has been, that the hundred-year-old conflict between them has been heading in the right direction these last few years. The process of accommodation has survived repeated blows from both sides, and this may be evidence that, inside the armor that all of us in this region have become accustomed to living in, a hunger for life still has us in its grasp. We still remember what it is really worth taking a risk for.