MIDDLE EAST
Peace conference
MONEY or poker game?
MACHINE
ON OCTOBER 30, there opened with great fanfare the Madrid "peace conference" intended to explore ways and means for a solution of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, after more than half a century of fruitless efforts. George Bush and James Baker can heave a sigh of relief: getting this conference off the can heave a cich of rolaf, nottina thie nonfaronna fl tha ground has been a big gamble for the American administration, but also a political imperative in the wake of the Gulf War.
The "New Arab Order" — one of the pillars of the "New
World Order" which the great architects of Washington, that modern Olympus, are trying to construct - is unimaginable without the establishment of a Pax Americana in the Middle
East. But, as a famous verse from Arab poetry puts it: "the winds do not blow as the ships wish them".
The world's leader writers have not been lacking in perspicacity: with pleasing unanimity they have pointed out that the hardest part is yet to come. Might not the Madrid conference turn out to be nothing more than the biggest press conference in the history of the world, as the French daily
Liberation wrote? In any case, for the Israeli government of
Yitzhak Shamir this is all a bluff.
SALAH JABER
6!*?
VORKS BEFORE! ALVAYS ZIS
OUT OF ORDER ponement of the American guarantee at the end of the 120 days.
To this end, Shamir will probably choose to be flexible on the question of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, and to stick to the Camp David agreements on the Palestinian question, that is, the administrative autonomy of the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza for a transition period of five years. The aim of this, of course, is to play for time.
Finally, for the Arab partners, the plot thickens, since there are several of them. Two really count: Syria and the PLO. Arafat has been reconciled with Syrian leader Hafez el-Assad. These seasoned players have decided to make an alliance at this stage: both know from experience that the Israeli government's first and most simple tactic will be to play the one against the other. Fragile unity of Syria and PLO
They are sticking together today,
SALAN JABER T HE reason why the Zionist right finally agreed to attend the conference is well known. Six months ago, we foresaw that "the Bush administration will do its best to surmount Israeli obstruction by putting economic pressure on the Zionist regime" and reckoned that it had good grounds for hoping to get its way. Bush has indeed been able to get the process started, to the great displeasure of Shamir and his acolytes in the most rightwing cabinet in the history of Israel. To this end, the US president has used the issue of Washington's guarantee without which the Zionist state could not get the $10bn loan that it desperately needs — or, to be precise, the White House persuaded Congress to postpone granting this guarantee for four months.
That is to say, these four months are the period fixed by the Bush administration for the "unblocking" of the process of Israeli-Arab settlement. During these 120 days the issue of the guarantee will remain hanging over the head of Shamir like the Sword of Damocles; if he should behave in a way that appears unacceptable to American interests, the US administration would have a powerful argument at its command to ask Congress to attach explicit political conditions to the granting of the guarantee.
Here are the stakes for Bush-Baker in the poker game being played out between Washington, Jerusalem and its Arab partners: it is a matter of extracting real "concessions" from the Shamir government before the end of the time limit. That is to say "concessions" such as the freezing of new settlements in the Occupied Territories and the acceptance in principle of a withdrawal from some part of these, which would allow the conference to go ahead rather than sputtering to a probable halt.
Inversely, Shamir's aim is to give away nothing essential while giving the impression of being ready to do so. In other words, to find a way of making it look as if the Arabs are responsible for any eventual failure, and to do this in a way that is sufficiently convincing to rule out any possibility of a new posttogeiner today, although their track record in such matters allows a certain scepticism as to the solidity of this alliance. Shamir's insistence on bilateral negotiations is a gamble on the break-up of the Syrian-PLO front.
In any case, the Zionist right has arrived at the conference with its eyes fixed on the short term - four months. For this period it will have to play a tight game. If it gets its way over Bush - that is if it gets its hands on the $10bn from Congress without giving anything substantial in return - the future of the conference, assuming it has got that far, will be decisively compromised. The United States will have nothing else to do than continue to oversee the modus vivendi between its Arab and Israeli allies in much more difficult conditions.
Actually, the whole game is rotten. Shamir goes to the conference not in search of a peace that he does not really believe in - since he does not want to pay the price for it — but to get the $10bn. But where is the imperative need for this trifling sum, some S2,500 per Israeli inhabitant, which will result in an external 1. See International Viewpoint, no. 206, May 13, 1991. 3 2. Ibid.
MIDDLE EAST public debt unequalled in the world? This is the key question, and it reveals the extent to which some of the cards are marked in this tricky game. These $10bn are needed to absorb the million Soviet Jews that Israel is hoping to take in by next year or the year after. That is to say, an increase of nearly a third in the Jewish population of Israel, at a time when the Zionist state has already been complaining that it lacks "essential space".
The Soviet immigration is the windfall that the most militant Zionists have been hoping for for a long time. It will considerably reinforce the expansionism inherent in the Zionist project, increasing the numbers both of potential colonists and soldiers. Thus nothing could be more natural than that, far from a freeze, a further surge in the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Territories should accompany this new immigration. If the process will have been halted for four months, it will certainly take off again with renewed energy afterwards - with the support of the American billions.
Billions of dollars for new settlements
To sum up, Shamir is going to the conference to get the money he intends to use to carry through his rampant annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. He is going to this "peace conference" with the aim of reinforcing a process that implies permanent war. From this point of view the demonstrations of the Israeli right? do not upset him at all. They can even be useful for him insofar as they counter-balance American pressures and prevent the camp of the Zionist "doves" from occupying the streets.
This last consideration is very important. The parliamentary regime in Israel allows Washington to hope that its pressures will find effective mouthpieces in Israel, and even contribute to a change in the majority and the government so as to allow the Madrid process to go forward. It is therefore a combination of all these elements that will determine the future of the peace conference and of the regional Pax Americana.
If we grant that Washington's objectives are very hard to achieve, then it follows that in the best case, the eventual outcome of the Madrid conference will have as much in common with self-determination for the Palestinian people as a bantustan does with an independent state.