Hussein Agha is senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and co-author (with Ahmad Samih Khalidi) of A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine. He has been involved in Palestinian peace negotiations for three decades. We reprint here with permission from Fathom journal, an extract from an interview with Fathom editor Alan Johnson.
HA: Looking back, I have concluded that Oslo was more than anything else an attempt by Israel to resolve its security predicament by making the Palestinians responsible for Israel’s security in the territories and saving Israeli money allocated for basic services in these areas. That required giving up some already-Palestinian areas that they were not interested in keeping, like Gaza.
The idea was that instead of Israel being in the front line of containing Palestinian violence, it would be the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). It didn’t work out perfectly, but that was the idea.
I don’t think Rabin had clarity about a Palestinian state. He sometimes hinted it would be a state, sometimes less than a state, sometimes a very limited form of sovereign state – it was never clear. There were some Israelis around the Oslo process who really did want a Palestinian state, but I think for the majority of mainstream Israelis it was not about ending the conflict, but about defusing the violence that they feared the First Intifada would develop into and saving resources spent to upkeep Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza. Rabin’s concern was above all Israel’s security and not a historical resolution of the conflict. He was not averse to it, but only if Israel’s security was the focus. All other historical outstanding issues were of lesser importance to him. I believe the Palestinians entered Oslo with good intentions, hoping for an independent, sovereign state.
After the assassination of Rabin, Arafat felt that was no longer going to happen...
AJ: Reading your essays, a dominant theme is that the peace process was fixated on the “1967 file”, but no secure peace was possible without taking up the “1948 file”. This was Oslo’s basic design flaw, so to speak. You have written: “Oslo sought to trade 1967 against 1948 — that is, to obscure the historical roots of the conflict in return for a political settlement that offered a partial redress that focussed solely on post-1967 realities. Current circumstances have begun to undo this suppression. Oslo could not bypass history, and its limitations have only highlighted the difficulty of ignoring the deeper roots of the struggle over Palestine.”
What’s inside “the 1948 file” — much more than simply the right of return, if I understand you correctly — and why must a successful peace process find a way to open it up, in your view?
HA: Oslo pretends that 1948 never took place, but ask yourself what is the origin of this conflict? It was not 1967 or the absence of a Palestinian state. I was a school kid in Beirut before 1967 and everywhere you looked and everything you heard constantly reminded you of the conflict and the suffering of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians were present on the territory between 1948 and 1967 and they did not create a state. Their focus was on “liberation” and “return”. To try to find a solution that fantasises that these ’48 issues do not exist, well, it’s problematic at best, because it does not address the core of the conflict. Resolving “occupation” does not resolve “dispossession” and “dispersal”. Am I calling for the destruction of Israel? No! I am calling for recognising both historical and current realities and acknowledging the nature of the beast, rather than hiding behind one’s finger. That is the only way to reach a genuine peace and coexistence.
In every negotiation the Israelis say to the Palestinians, “Oh, we can’t go back to 1948!” Israel was willing to resolve the issues of 1967 and occupation on its own terms but didn’t want to touch the ghosts of 1948. It is something very difficult for Israelis to come to terms with. They want to delete the memories of what happened from Palestinian consciousness. It cannot be done. For, in a sense, that is what defines a unified Palestinian nation.
I have started to become attracted to something I have always not found relevant: a “truth and reconciliation” process… In all the negotiations I was involved in I argued that Israelis had their narratives and Palestinians had their narratives and we shouldn’t waste time disputing them. My thought was “let’s find out the arrangement that will make these two cherished narratives irrelevant to a solution.” I now think that approach does not work. You keep being pulled back into the original issues and so into narratives, identities, feelings, psychologies. The only way to deal with all that is not just through elite-level negotiations but through a more public process, perhaps a truth and reconciliation process….
I do not know yet how such a process can be put together or begin, whether it is a prerequisite for a settlement or a parallel process or something that can only take place after a peace agreement has been reached. In all cases, like reality, it’s going to be messy. By providing a “neat” model, Oslo distorted the untidy and chaotic reality. ...
The right seems to understand the issues better than the left. The original historical right, the Herut and its ilk, did not believe in separation. I remember a fascinating meeting I had with the late Eliyahu Ben-Elissar, a member of Irgun, a Likudnik who became Ambassador to Egypt, the US and France. This is what he told me: “I have no problem being in a state with you guys. As a matter of fact, Jabotinsky once said that Israel could have a Jewish president for one term, then an Arab president for another term. I know this is not possible in the current circumstances, but this is where we come from. The Israeli left are racists who look down on you and just want to separate from you by giving you territory. I want to fulfil my Jewishness but I do not want you to suffer because of it. For me, Hebron is much more important than Tel Aviv. For someone on the left, Tel Aviv is more important, and they are willing to give up on Hebron. They are not the true carriers of the flame of the Jewish people.”
It was fascinating to hear that. Lots of people told me later that he just said it to impress me. I don’t know, but it was intriguing. What he clearly understood was that the Palestinians, like the Jews, can never “give up” on the whole of Palestine. People on the left, by contrast, say “Yes, the Palestinians have reconciled themselves with the 22 per cent.”
There may be something worth engaging on between the Israeli right and the Palestinians. I am trying to find out exactly what. This is important because Israeli society has shifted to the right and to engage it one has to be sensitive to the new sensibilities. I know that the current climate is not conducive to that and the right feels triumphant and believes that their total victory is at hand. But once they realise that that is not the case and costly chaos and dear uncertainty are around the corner; maybe there will be a possibility to consider some positive consequences of their ideological roots. I am not sufficiently naïve not to recognise that although some of the right, sometimes, talk about “equal rights”, a la President Reuven Rivlin, they will not compromise on the need for the state to remain in Jewish hands.
It is unfortunate that the awareness of the centrality of the 1948 issues is often used by the right-wing in Israel to highlight the impossibility of reaching an agreement…. By contrast, the left’s approach is to deny our feelings. You see, the Palestinians feel an attachment to the whole land. Whether you’re a two statist or a one statist, or whatever, the attachment is still there… The eternal challenge remains whether there are ways to reconcile both peoples’ attachment to the totality of the land through a mutually acceptable peaceful arrangement. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not calling for a one state solution. It is much more complicated. I can even foresee how a two-state solution could be a more appropriate route to this objective.
AJ: Of course a major part of the ’48 file is the question of ‘the right of return’. You have discussed this with nuance. On the one hand you have said it is a right, therefore the demand is principled. On the other hand, you point out it has been a difficult issue to deal with in terms of a “two states for two peoples” solution… can you talk about what you think the best approach is?
HA: In the past ten years I have tried to avoid, sometimes successfully, a discussion of rights. I don’t want you to recognise my rights; don’t expect me to recognise your rights. Let’s leave rights aside and try to solve the problems. A consideration of rights inevitably leads to complex philosophical, historical and legal deliberations that are not always conclusively settled.
Although of utmost importance, such debates do not always lead to workable realistic outcomes; let’s put those aside and let’s talk about a problem we have, which is how to pragmatically address the plight of the refugees. Second, there are certain things that can’t be ignored. If a person has documentation that a property is theirs, and meanwhile nothing has legally negated that deed, but that plot has gone to someone else, then that issue has to be resolved on a legal basis. There should be recourse to a neutral body to which the first person can say, ‘This is my land, these are the deeds.’ Yes, the other person will then say, ‘That was many years ago. I am there now.’ OK, so now we have a legal dispute between two parties over a property that has to be settled by an acceptable and legal authority. Private property is an essential pillar of modern society and ought to be protected. Third, if you agree on two states, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, then any resolution of the refugee issue, of the right of return, has to be consistent with the existence of these two states. So you cannot have Jews in a Palestine overwhelmingly taking over a Palestinian state, just as you cannot have Arabs or Palestinians doing the same in Israel.
We do not know how demographics and laws will change in 50 years and who will be the majority and where, but for the time being, if you accept two states for two peoples, it should be the guiding principle. Fourth, in the two states case, the refugee must be offered alternatives. One possibility is some form of psychological restitution and material compensation. But to feel comfortable with the idea of reparation you need a public recognition that a wrong was committed in the first place…
The second thing is that the person must have the freedom to choose; it should not be decided on his behalf and shoved down his throat. Rather than be treated as the wretched of the wretches, the refugee should feel himself / herself to be a positive contributor to humanity. His forgiveness and generosity of spirit in agreeing not to summon the past for the sake of peace and a better future should be publicly commended and highly valued. I think such an approach will reassure the refugee of a humanity he/she has been denied and encourage him/her to be more flexible in response to concrete material proposals. This has not happened before. If you resolve the refugee problem in a manner that is agreeable, albeit grudgingly, to the refugees; you would be extracting the poison of 1948 and going far in truly ending the conflict. Right now we are not dealing with this issue. Until we do, talk of “end of conflict” is bogus. Many are totally focused on the text of an agreement….
Of course, signing a document could help facilitate an end of conflict. There are many steps that after the signing would be much more possible than before the signing. But, if one only relies on the agreement to end the conflict; sadly, he or she will be disappointed. An agreement does not end the conflict, but could be the first step in a long and often painful course to achieve that goal.
• Abridged and reprinted from Fathom magazine.
