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A Shaky Ceasefire

TruthNews Commentary, June 15, 2001

The agreement that CIA director George Tenet brokered this week to end the violence in Israel resulted in a shaky ceasefire at best. Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat declared a ceasefire following threats of Israeli retaliation for the June 2 suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv disco that killed 20 Israelis. During this "ceasefire," Palestinians murdered a five-month-old Israeli baby boy by stoning him as he rode in his car with his parents. A Palestinian sniper murdered a Greek Orthodox monk outside Jerusalem as he drove home to his monastery. Numerous other Israelis were wounded by Palestinian shooting attacks. So, it's a small wonder that Israelis characterized Arafat's ceasefire as "we cease, they fire."

The Tenet agreement was intended to cement the ceasefire by implementing the Mitchell committee recommendations, which both sides agreed to. The Mitchell committee, chaired by former Democratic senator George Mitchell and with international representation including the president of Turkey and the Norwegian foreign minister (remember Oslo?) recommended three steps to bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table:

• END THE VIOLENCE. Implement an unconditional ceasefire and immediately resume security cooperation

• REBUILD CONFIDENCE. The PA should stop incitement, condemn terrorism, and make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorism and punish perpetrators. Israel should freeze all settlement activity, lift closures, transfer to the PA all tax revenues owed, and permit Palestinians who had been employed in Israel to return to their jobs

• RESUME NEGOTIATIONS. Both sides should reaffirm their commitment to signed agreements (Oslo and Wye) and implement them as the basis for resuming full and meaningful negotiations.

These are intended to be sequential steps. After ending the violence, confidence can be rebuilt. After rebuilding confidence, negotiations can be resumed. The Tenet agreement is a detailed plan for implementing the first step in the process, that of ending the violence. Thus both sides agreed to resume security cooperation, Israel agreed to not conduct attacks against the Palestinian Authority facilities, and the Palestinian Authority agreed to arrest terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza.

Sporadic attacks have continued against Israelis in spite of the latest ceasefire, and a Palestinian informer from Yasser Arafat's PLO murdered an Israeli army officer. If the situation continues, Palestinians are likely to say that they are continuing to kill Israelis because the Israelis continue to build settlements. The Palestinians claim that the settlements are a "form of violence" by the Israelis. However, if you examine the Mitchell committee recommendations, you'll see that ending the violence is the first step, and ending the settlement expansion is part of the second step, that of rebuilding confidence. Thus refusing to implement the first step until the second step is implemented is a subterfuge to avoid stopping the intifada.

Ending settlement activities will be a bitter pill for the Israelis to swallow, as all of the West Bank is part of the Biblical heartland of Israel and includes such Biblical sites as Hebron (tomb of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and David's first capitol), Shechem (tomb of Joseph), Shiloh, and Bethlehem. However, Israel has agreed to end settlement activities as part of the second step of rebuilding confidence. However, the second step will never be started until the first step is implemented, that of ending the violence.

The Palestinians have complained about how their people are being killed in the violence and have called for international intervention to stop the violence. If they really wanted the violence to end, they would stop initiating attacks against the Israelis. Instead, Arafat dragged his feet on even accepting the Mitchell committee recommendations, insisting that he could not accept a buffer zone between Israeli and Arab areas. It's clear that Arafat isn't concerned about Palestinians being killed but rather wants to their killing to continue so that he can continue to press for international intervention.