by Col (Res.) Dr. Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen
A basic question: Is there a Palestinian people?
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Aharon Barak, photo via Wikipedia
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,262, August 23, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The US administration
is reportedly considering the principle of autonomy for the Palestinians
as the political goal of the “Deal of the Century.” This framework was
initially introduced by Menachem Begin during the 1978 Camp David summit
and appeared in the signed accords. Though the idea was never brought
to fruition, it enabled the entrenchment of the mantra known as “the
legitimate rights of the Palestinian People” – a formula that owes much
to Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who served as Begin’s legal
advisor at Camp David.
The US administration is putting together plans
for a new Middle Eastern summit meeting on the occasion of the
inauguration of the political portion of Donald Trump’s “Deal of the
Century.” The proposed location is Camp David – a historically
appropriate choice, as it was the site of the hammering out of the first
peace treaty between Israel and a leading Arab state – Egypt – in 1978.
Early hints from the US team suggest that the
basic framework of the deal will reflect a revival of the idea of “full
autonomy” for the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In
July 2019, US ambassador to Israel David Friedman said, “We would like
that the Palestinians will enjoy an autonomy which they will control on
their own.”
This diplomatic idea might be hard pressed to find
favor with either the Palestinians or the many other international
players who profess themselves committed to a two-state solution as the
ultimate goal of any proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
The historic Camp David Accords (September 1978), which recently reached their 40th
anniversary, culminated in the March 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty
signed by Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat at the White House.
This event was described by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “one of
the most impressive diplomatic achievements of the 20th century – and
perhaps even the most impressive. This is no understatement.”
Less often remembered is the second achievement of
the Camp David summit, the “Framework for Peace in the Middle East,”
which called for full Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip within five years. Egypt’s documentation of that part of the
summit remained classified until very recently. Less than a year ago, in
September 2018, Cairo finally released newly declassified documents
from Camp David referencing the matter of Palestinian autonomy.
The autonomy plan never materialized, and later
attempts at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the 1993
Oslo Accords and the July 2000 Camp David summit, failed to produce a
viable solution. But the autonomy notion first floated in 1978
nevertheless made a momentous contribution to all subsequent Palestinian
negotiations with Israel. That contribution was the phrase “the
legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements”
– a disputed formula that was extremely hard for the Begin-led
right-wing government to digest.
The formula was subjected to harsh bargaining at
Camp David – so much so that President Jimmy Carter ended up authorizing
the legality of two different versions of the Palestinians’ “legitimate
rights.” Had he not done so, the accords would not have been signed.
The Israeli version of “the legitimate rights of
the Palestinian people and their just requirements” coincided with
Begin’s ideological standpoint, in that it denied any recognition of the
existence of a Palestinian People. In a separate letter sent to Begin
on September 17, 1978, Carter acknowledged that
you have informed me as follows: In each paragraph of the Agreed Framework Document the expressions “Palestinians” or “Palestinian People” are being and will be construed and understood by you as “Palestinian Arabs.”
Prior to the final phrasing of “legitimate
rights,” a tough debate within the Israeli delegation to Camp David
almost led to a premature and fruitless end to the summit. Begin
insisted on excluding any reference to the “Palestinian People” in the
agreement. At that point, Aharon Barak – the former Israeli attorney
general, invited by Begin to join the Israeli team at Camp David as
legal adviser – provided the “magic formula.”
According to political journalist and writer Naomi
Levitzky, who published a biography of Aharon Barak, it was he who
broke through Begin’s resistance to the phrase “legitimate rights of the
Palestinian People” by arguing, “Can there be any rights that are not
legitimate?”
Barak’s influence can be heard in Begin’s words
when he elaborated on the Israeli-accepted parameters in a closed-door
session of the Foreign and Defense Committee of the Knesset on September
26, 1978:
When you read the document as it was accepted, you will witness the fundamental changes inserted vis-à-vis the Egyptian document and the American document. Our concession was that we, for the first time, adopted UNSC Resolution 242 inclusive of all its parts. We agreed that wherever the term “Palestinian People” appears, in our written version it’s “Palestinian Arabs”; wherever it’s written the “West Bank,” in our version it’s “Judea and Samaria.” We have agreed to write “Legitimate Rights,” though I thought the adjective is unnecessary. Is there any right that is not legitimate? … It was agreed that they use the term “Palestinian People” and we say “Palestine Peoples.” I have wondered why we need the meaning of this; but if someone claims that it has a meaning, we will say that it’s not legal.
Barak considered the term “legitimate rights”
sufficiently ambiguous that Israel could live with it. According to
Levitzky, Barak used such logic to persuade Begin that by conceding the
Sinai Peninsula, he would be conserving entire Land of Israel. Barak’s
philosophy of ambiguity was the key to the concluding of the peace
treaty with Egypt. Years later, his formulation from Camp David would
yield the Oslo Accords.
Barak himself, during the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Camp David Accords in Washington in 2003, admitted:
We used ambiguity. Ambiguity was the word. It was, I think, a constructive ambiguity, because there were many things that we couldn’t reach an agreement on. So we drafted these on a high level of abstraction. When we couldn’t meet on a low level of abstraction, we went higher and higher and higher until we came to such level of abstraction that allowed us to agree. But – and here is an important point – we realized the ambiguities. It’s not the situation where I had an ambiguity, they had an ambiguity, and everyone was throwing around these old ambiguities. We were honest with each other. They understood that we understood what their ambiguities were, and vice versa. So it was the use of ambiguity with the understanding that every side has his or her ambiguities and what are they and how it will be used. It’s a very interesting question, I think, that should be studied professionally about the use of ambiguity in international negotiations.
Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, then legal adviser for
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, viewed Begin as a verbal statesman who
quite deliberately used the phrase “Palestinian Arabs” rather than
“Palestinians.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, then US National Security Adviser
to President Carter, referred to Begin (on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Accords) as a “semanticist” and made a similar point:
…[Begin] did not say full autonomy for the Palestinians, because he didn’t believe they were Palestinians. He used the term Palestinian Arabs. That’s a very important distinction. He always emphasized that, because he didn’t accept Palestinian nationalism. Secondly, when he spoke of full autonomy for the Palestinians, he made it clear, at least in private conversations, that it was full autonomy for the people, but not for the people on the land. He had a very subtle distinction here in mind, that it’s autonomy for the people in the sense that they would have self-governing instrumentalities or authorities, but it would not involve self-government over land. And that was again, a very deliberate semantic distinction, designed to preclude the idea of a homeland for the Palestinians.
Brzezinski’s prognosis appears to reflect Begin’s
thinking at the above-noted Knesset hearing on September 26, 1978, and
it informs our understanding of the Israeli version of the Camp David
Accords. At Camp David, Israel did not recognize the “legitimate rights
of the Palestinian People” but “the legitimate right of the Palestinian
peoples.”
The Egyptian version was unequivocal:
The solution from the negotiations must also recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian People and their just requirements. (In Arabic transliteration: Wayajib an ya’tarif al-hal al-natij an al-mufawadat bil-huquq al-mshrua’a li-sha’b al-falastini.)
This formula had been agreed to by Carter and
Sadat during the “Aswan Summit” (January 4, 1978). The consistency of
Sadat’s standpoint was manifested in a letter he sent to Carter on
September 17, 1978, in which he stated that
to ensure the implementation of the provisions related to the West Bank and Gaza and in order to safeguard the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, Egypt will be prepared to assume the Arab role emanating from these provisions, following consultations with Jordan and the representatives of the Palestinian people.
In a 1982 CIA memo on “US-Israeli differences over
the Camp David peace process,” a leading Middle East analyst revisited
the limits of the Israeli position:
Prime Minister Begin asserts that the Camp David Accords rule out the emergence of a Palestinian state. In Begin’s view the agreements “guarantee that under no condition” can a Palestinian state be created. In practice, Begin effectively rules out any exercise of Palestinian self-determination except one that continues Israel’s permanent position in the West Bank… Begin’s view is that the Self-Governing Authority should be a solely administrative authority regulating the affairs of the Arab inhabitants and leaving control of the territory and all key security issues with Israel. In sum, autonomy is for people not territory and therefore does not prejudice Israel’s territorial claims to the West Bank.
The Israeli standpoint on the “legitimate rights”
issue was not retained as a binding guideline for the negotiation teams
that followed the Camp David Accords. In fact, the Israeli position
eroded very quickly. Israeli diplomacy allowed it to be superseded by
the “popular” interpretation of the phrase “the legitimate rights of the
Palestinian People,” an interpretation that is now generally believed
to have derived directly from the terms agreed to at Camp David.
In 1988, the Israeli delegate to the Third Committee of the General Assembly stated that
Israel believed that true negotiated peace with all its neighbors was feasible, and that within the framework a solution could be found to the problems and aspirations of the Palestinians. Israel had committed itself, as a signatory to the Camp David Accords, to seek and obtain a resolution to the Palestinian problem in all its aspects and had recognized the legitimate rights of the Palestinians (emphasis added).
Begin’s formula was completely abandoned in the
wording of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government
Arrangements (DOP) signed on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993.
The DOP’s preamble set the precedent of drawing a clear equivalency
between Israel and the PLO, as follows:
The Government of the State of Israel and the PLO team (in the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference) (the “Palestinian Delegation”), representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process (emphasis added).
The gravity of the choice to ignore the Israeli
government’s ideological standpoint as expressed at Camp David in
September 1978 deserves special attention, as do the ramifications of
Justice Barak’s testimony on the issue of the “legitimate rights of the
Palestinian People.” As Levitzky made clear, to Barak, the phrase
“legitimate rights” referred to the Palestinian People, not to Begin’s
formulation of “Palestinian peoples.” Barak himself recognized that the
enshrining of the phrase “legitimate rights of the Palestinian People”
was the Palestinians’ greatest achievement at Camp David, regardless of
the fact that it did not correspond to the official text of the
agreement.
Barak hailed the tactic of ambiguity as a kind of
magic wand to unlock the negotiations. To the Palestinians, ambiguity
worked to their advantage, as the language they preferred – with its
emphasis on “legitimate rights” – was indigestible to Israel on its
face.
The Palestinian columnist and independent researcher Ramona Wadi wrote in Middle East Monitor on June 20, 2019:
What constitutes Palestinian legitimate endorsement? The PA has endorsed many narratives which are detrimental to the Palestinian cause, including its concessionary attitude regarding the right of return and its fluctuating interpretations of historic Palestine, of which Jerusalem is a part.
A Hamas official statement issued on July 11, 2018
rejected the US plan for the Palestinian cause on the grounds that
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” violates “the Palestinian People’s
legitimate rights.” The statement added that “all indications show that
the deal violates our legitimate rights, mainly the right of return,
liberating our land and establishing our independent state with al-Quds
as its capital.”
Attention should be paid to a newly published book entitled Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo by
Dr. Seth Anziska (2018), in which the author emphasized that Camp David
called for an autonomous self-governing authority in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip and recognized the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian
people” but did not address the Palestinian right of
self-determination. Anziska highlighted the role of Begin, who, besides
wanting continuing the building of Jewish communities in the
territories, opposed the idea of Palestinian statehood and proposed
limited Arab autonomy. He described the peace agreement signed by Sadat
and Begin as a paradox in which peace between Israel and Egypt stymied
Palestinian aspirations.
The new US initiative to revive the concept of
autonomy for the Palestinians rather than support the formula of
self-determination could be an additional indication of the Trump
administration’s distrust of the current Palestinian leadership. Should
the autonomy principle become the political framework for a future
settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it could drain all
meaning from the phrase “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian
People.”
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/legitimate-rights-palestinian-people/
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