jpr
/ policy paper
No. 4 1997
The Netanyahu government and the Israeli-Arab
peace process:
the first half-year
'The Hebron agreement represented acknowledgement
by Netanyahu of the realities of the Israeli-Arab peace-making process as
well as of the pressures of American power. It rescued Israel, at least for
the time being, from a deteriorating international position.'
Joseph Alpher
Summary
The agreement on redeployment from Hebron and further
areas of the West Bank reached on 15 January 1997 represented acknowledgment by
Israel's new prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, of the realities of the
Israeli-Arab peace-making process as well as of the pressures of American power.
It rescued Israel, at least for the time being, from a deteriorating
international position.
While Netanyahu brought with him to office a new set of ideological concepts and
attitudes towards the peace process, he also encountered major changes in the
international and regional strategic environment-the forces that had created a
congenial backdrop for the success of the Madrid and Oslo processes were showing
signs of strain.
Netanyahu took office without a coherent strategy for peace and brought with him
preoccupations with ideology and hasbara-public diplomacy-that worked to
the detriment of articulating and conducting clear policies. Yet the past year
or so has witnessed a dramatic evolution of attitudes on the Israeli right, led
by Netanyahu himself, towards the fundamental components of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Following the Hebron agreement, Netanyahu is likely to offer the Palestinians a
vision of final status that leaves in Israel's hands large parts of the
Jerusalem corridor and Jerusalem's suburbs, much of Western Samaria, the Jordan
Valley and the Qatif Bloc in Gaza, and acknowledges the emergence of a highly
constrained Palestinian state in the mountain highland cities of the West Bank
and their surroundings and in most of the Gaza Strip. He is likely to argue that
all the areas to which Israel is laying claim under interim and final status are
'military locations'. These Israeli positions are unacceptable to the PLO but
could at least constitute a basis for the commencement of negotiations on final
status.
Meanwhile, Hebron itself seems likely to serve as a flashpoint for Israeli-Arab
tension in the Palestinian sphere, paralleled by southern Lebanon in the
Israeli-Syrian sphere.
Netanyahu's coalition, as presently constituted, may be unable to sustain
further movement in the peace process-either towards the Palestinians or towards
the Syrians.
The Hebron agreement has shown that some 75 per cent of Israel's citizens are
prepared to support a prime minister who accepts far-reaching territorial
compromise and a highly contrained Palestinian state in return for peace and
security. Were this state of affairs to come about, the great divide over the
fate of the 'Land of Israel' that has characterized Israeli politics since 1967
would be radically narrowed. The Israeli right can deliver this public better
than the left-if it has a clear peace strategy and the political will.
Introduction
This paper examines the performance of the Netanyahu
government during its first half-year in office with regard to the peace process
and suggests possible ramifications and scenarios for strategic developments in
the near future. The time frame for this analysis ends in mid-January, some
seven months after the government took office.
Report author
Joseph Alpher is Director of the
Israel/Middle East Office of the American Jewish Committee. Until 1995 he was
Director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. In
1994 he edited the Jaffee Center's study series Final Status Issues:
Israel-Palestinians and wrote Study No. 3, 'Settlements and borders', in which
he proposes a final status map. His most recent publication is 'Israel: the
challenges of peace', Foreign Policy, Winter 1995-6. From 1994 to 1996 he co-ordinated
a back-channel of meetings between West Bank settlers and the PLO.
This paper is an updated and expanded
version of a lecture by the author sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Policy
Research in London on 4 November 1996.
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