Global Policy Forum

By Peter Goodspeed

Freelance Mideast peace plan ignites powerful passions.

Is it a sideshow or salvation? The Geneva Accord professes to be a comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East, hammered out over three years of secret negotiations by Israeli opposition politicians and some retired Palestinian Cabinet ministers. Unveiled on Monday, it was greeted with great fanfare by the international community at a ceremony in Switzerland headlined by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who declared, "It is unlikely that we shall ever see a better foundation for peace."

Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, endorsed the proposal via a video link. Fifty-eight more former presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and world leaders, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, released a statement expressing their "strong support" for the accord. Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Jack Straw, his British counterpart, wrote to the plan's top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators praising their efforts.

But back home, the peacemakers are being treated as traitors. They have been threatened with death, burned in effigy, spat at, snubbed and ridiculed in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, said he "totally rejected" the Geneva Accord, adding it would "amount to suicide" for Israel. Raanan Gissin, his spokesman, more colourfully described the accord as "a Swiss golden calf," a false idol that would be worshiped by leftists while it destroys Israel. Two hundred and fifty rabbis, members of Pikuah Nefesh (Preservation of Life), said Israelis who signed the accord should be considered traitors who deserve to be "cast out from human society and brought to trial."

Israeli officials seethed with anger yesterday when U.S. diplomats announced Mr. Powell will meet the accord's chief authors, Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister, and Yasir Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian information minister, in Washington tomorrow. "I think that he is not being useful to the peace process," said Ehud Olmert, the Deputy Prime Minister. "This is an incorrect step by a senior representative of the American administration."

In the Palestinian territories, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a terrorist group allied to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, denounced delegates who negotiated the Geneva Accord as "collaborators with Israel." Shots were fired at Mr. Rabbo's home in Ramallah. When Palestinian delegates tried to leave Gaza to attend the ceremony in Geneva, they were jostled and spat on by angry crowds. Two former Cabinet ministers who planned to endorse the accord decided to stay home for their own safety. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinian leaders are calling on Mr. Arafat to reject the peace plan "publicly and clearly."

Typically, Mr. Arafat has refused to commit himself to anything, settling instead for sending a message that called the Geneva Accord "a brave initiative that opens the door to hope." But up to 1,000 of his supporters paraded through the streets of Gaza denouncing the accord and branding its authors "cowards and collaborators with the Americans and Zionists."

Reactions to the Geneva peace plan are severe simply because it goes right to the heart of the Middle East conflict. Whereas the floundering U.S.-led "road map" vaguely calls for the creation of a Palestinian state without any specified borders or details, the Geneva Accord is a precise 50-page document that maps out definitive boundaries and outlines a timetable for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from most of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Geneva Accord proposes:

· Creation of a wholly independent Palestinian state occupying all of Gaza and about 98% of the West Bank.
· The division of Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem incorporated into the Palestinian state.
· Palestinian sovereignty over the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's walled Old City, while Israel controls parts of the Western Wall, which runs alongside the compound.
· Israeli incorporation of about 25% of existing Israeli settlements on the West Bank, leaving the remaining 75% inside the Palestinian state.
· Abandonment of most Palestinians' claims of any right to return to Israel. About 3.5 million Palestinians who lost land to the Israelis will receive some compensation.
· Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and the end of violence against it.
· Setting up of a multinational peacekeeping force to oversee implementation of the peace plan;
· Finally, the accord would be regarded as a final and permanent peace settlement, resolving all existing UN resolutions.

On the face of it, the proposal seems too good to be true. The fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem and its holy sites were the main obstacles that prevented the adoption of previous peace plans at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and several months later in talks at the Egyptian resort of Taba. That failure led directly to the latest Palestinian revolt and the deaths of more than 3,000 people in three years of unrelenting violence. Still, for some, the Geneva Accord offers a glimmer of hope in a time of war. For others, its little more than surrender and an invitation to return to the failed Oslo peace process.

Mr. Beilin has little or no credibility among many Israelis, simply because he was the chief initiator of Oslo. They note angrily that more Israelis have died in terrorist attacks in the 10 years since Mr. Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli prime minister, signed the Oslo peace agreement in 1993 than in any decade in Israel's history. Others accuse Mr. Beilin, who lost his Knesset seat in the last election, of engaging in subversive freelance diplomacy that undermines Israel's position in negotiations with the Palestinians.

For many Palestinian refugees, who have been dispossessed for decades, the accord dismisses all their claims to a "right of return" to what is now Israel. They say that ignores their suffering and removes all hope of regaining what they lost.

The accord remains anathema to many on both sides. But while 300 Israelis and Palestinian civilians have done what their current leaders have not been capable of doing, their work is no substitute for a real peace process. The United States and the European powers may try to use the Geneva Accord to prod Israel and the Palestinians to resume work on their own "road map." But it remains to be seen if the accord is more than a distraction from reality or a genuine contribution to resolving the Middle East's turmoil.

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