Late Monday night, Condi Rice managed to wrest the Sharon government’s agreement to an arrangement whereby the Palestinians get to control one tiny portion of Gaza’s physical interface with the outside world. This is one aspect of the land border between Palestinian Gaza and Egypt. (You’ll note that Israel is not contiguous to that border.)
Israel still gets to control the passage of all goods transiting between Gaza and Egypt. They will be diverted to a special point where the lands of the three territories all come together, where their passage will be controlled by Israel. Regarding people, however, under the new agreement they will pass through the Rafah crossing point on the Egypt-Gaza border where on the Palestinian side they will be processed by Palestinian border-control officers, but under monitoring from an EU presence.
Will Palestinians from all around the world flock to Gaza in the weeks ahead? Will Gazans stream outside to visit places they could not until recently dream of visiting?
One first thing to understand is that every single family in Gaza has many family members living elsewhere. Conditions in Gaza under 38 years of Israeli occupation have been so harsh that many young people have had to emigrate to make any kind of a living at all. They went to Egypt (sometimes), to Gulf countries (much more in the 1970s and 1980s than recently), to Jordan, Europe, the Americas… all around the world. The new prospects for families to hold reunion gatherings must be heady indeed.
Israel still, apparently, wants to maintain a blacklist of Palestinians whom it wants banned from Gaza. We’ll have to see how that works out. I am sure that there are still extensive Israeli intel networks operating, even if only clandestinely, throughout the Strip.
Condi Rice’s “spin-meisters” have tried to present her winning of Israel’s agreement on the Rafah crossing as a big and significant political achievement. It’s no such thing. It’s one single tiny item on the enormous list of tasks that remain in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking… And it has come ways too late to win much “goodwill” for the Israelis from the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from Gaza, remember, more than two months ago, and has been hanging on and hanging on with its demands over the Rafah crossing and the other crossings.
Meanwhile, there are now just two months left till the Palestinian elections. Pres. Mahmoud Abbas has sadly little time between now and then to show his people that his administration is dedicated to meeting their basic needs… For all the past two months he has been left hanging in the air by the Israelis and made to look impotent and useless.
11 thoughts on “Modestly good news on Gaza”
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Israel still gets to control the passage of all goods transiting between Gaza and Egypt.
No, it doesn’t. Under the text of the agreement, outgoing goods will transit through Rafah, and only incoming goods will be routed through Kerem Shalom. It isn’t all the PA asked for, but it will at least clear the way for Gazan producers to export goods to Egypt, and potentially to ship them abroad via the al-Arish seaport.
I think you’re also minimizing the deal in a few other ways. For one thing, the agreement does not give Israel the final say over entry of persons to Gaza – depending on the situation, either the PA or the European mediators will have final authority to resolve disputes. Also, the MOU covers not only traffic through Rafah but agricultural exports through Karni, West Bank-Gaza transit and construction of a seaport. I agree that an “enormous list of tasks… remain in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking,” but yesterday’s agreement resolves more of them than you portray.
BTW, I wouldn’t say that this deal was “wrested” from the Sharon government by Rice. Most of the measures outlined in the MOU were agreed to in principle by Israel prior to the withdrawal. As always, the devil proved to be in the details, and the Israelis weren’t the only ones quibbling. That’s why facilitation comes in handy – to twist the parties’ arms and get them to go that final step. I only wish the United States would do so more often.
Jonathan, thanks for the clarifications there, and the link to the text, which i hadn’t had time to put in. I did realize that the MOU covers more than the Egypt-Gaza border… In all these cases we’ll have to see how implementation works out in practice. (The seaport is slated to take a long, long time before opening.)
In all those other areas you mention, though, the provisions in the latest MOU were not actually new– they had also been agreed upon in the 1993 Oslo Accords. And we can see how the Govt of Israel just overturned them at will when it chose to, in that earlier epoch.
The Rafah agreement, in contrast, is unprecedented, since under Oslo Israel still retained control over all transit points between the OPTs and the outside world. The presence of the EU monitors gives some small assurance to the Palestinians that the Israelis won’t just march in and seize control of the Rafah crossing whenever they choose to… Maybe about as much assurance as the presence of Norwegian and Irish peacekeepers gave the people of South Lebanon against the repeated encroachments of the IDF there, 1978-2000? (That is, almost none.)
Also, it’s true that nearly all of the Rafah agreement had been agreed in outline a long time ago, so Rice had only a tiny final bit of arm-twisting to do. To me, that makes the whole episode even more shocking. Why on earth did Sharon have to leave Abu Mazen hanging in the wind so long?
but under monitoring from an EU presence
Can be trusted? is there any biased in this presence?
We had many cases in the past those presences between Arab/Israeli are in fact in favour of Israeli in many cases as in South Lebanon and other places.
Mahmoud Abbas has sadly little time between now and then to show his people that his administration is dedicated to meeting their basic needs…
Its not entirely his call Helena, it’s the Israeli interference and drama they created to him by continually bombed and ridded Gaza after the withdraw from Gaza that made Abbas out of the original picture in fact Israeli stripped Abbas from his credibility by their actions in Gaza and so on.
Isralis did same things every time there is hope for peace, I have no doubt with myself there is no real peace loving from Israeli in the region whatsoever, they survive on the troubles they crated all the time in ME.
In all these cases we’ll have to see how implementation works out in practice.
Obviously. The first tests will be meeting the target date for opening the Rafah crossing and getting the Gaza harvest smoothly through Karni. If both happen with no more than minor glitches, the prospects look good. If not, then it’s back to square one.
I’m actually somewhat optimistic about the prospects – the United States and EU have too much invested in the deal to allow it to fail, and the EU facilitators will soon be on-site full time to iron out disputes. Quick dispute resolution is absolutely key in making these deals work, because the disputes (and the “temporary suspensions” caused by the disputes) are always what kills them.
The seaport is slated to take a long, long time before opening.
The seaport needs to be built before it can be used. This will take years, although the construction will begin providing jobs in Gaza very soon. In the meantime, I suspect that al-Arish, which is about 50 miles from Rafah and is currently undergoing an upgrade of its port facilities, will get a big boost. With Rafah open for outgoing goods, the Egyptian export route will be more hassle-free than the Israeli route through Ashdod, and the traffic through al-Arish could end up helping both the Palestinian and Sinai economies. The long-term goal is of course a Palestinian seaport, but transit through Rafah and al-Arish doesn’t seem too bad for now.
Maybe about as much assurance as the presence of Norwegian and Irish peacekeepers gave the people of South Lebanon against the repeated encroachments of the IDF there, 1978-2000?
As I’ve argued before, neither Israeli politics nor the IDF’s strategic thinking are the same now as they were then. For one thing, very few Israelis have any desire to re-enter the quagmires of Lebanon and Gaza, and the domestic political pressure against such adventures is greater than in 1978. For another, the Rafah agreement bears the seal of the United States, and Israel would not casually breach a deal brokered by its primary diplomatic patron. I’d say that the situation in Rafah will be more akin to the Lebanese border now – i.e., occasional provocations on both sides but very little likelihood of precipitate action.
To me, that makes the whole episode even more shocking. Why on earth did Sharon have to leave Abu Mazen hanging in the wind so long?
I don’t think it’s a matter of “leaving Abu Mazen hanging in the wind.” The Israeli and PA negotiating teams have been in fairly continuous contact over the border issues since the pullout (albeit with occasional interruptions after a suicide bombing or IDF provocation) and made incremental progress throughout that time.
The key word here is “incremental” – you know as well as I do how easily negotiations can get bogged down in seemingly minor details or in intra-party jurisdictional disputes. For the last week or two, the issue separating the Israelis and Palestinians amounted to whether Israel would get the Rafah security video via live feed or 24-hour delay. What Rice did was break the deadlock by suggesting a third alternative – that the live feed would transmit to an EU-controlled communication center, and that the Palestinians would also get a commitment on Gaza-West Bank transit. That seems like an obvious solution in retrospect but might not have been so to the negotiatiors who were locking horns – sometimes it takes a neutral party to step back and develop a creative solution.
And as I said, the Israelis weren’t the only ones who made demands or changed their position during the negotiations. There were issues of Palestinian sovereignty and pride as well as Israeli security, as indeed there should have been. In any event, I don’t think that this deal should be greeted with recriminations about “what took so long” – the important thing is that the negotiations worked, the border issues were resolved amicably and Gaza isn’t going to be a big prison.
The Israelis have a lifelong history of making agreements and then finding or creating excuses not to implement them. The U.S. also has a history of letting Israel get away with it.
On “progress” in Gaza:
— Apparently, Rice’s role is purely simulated by Sharon.
— This move does not really mean much.
— There is little doubt that Hamas will use any opportunity for its ends.
“Conditions in Gaza under 38 years of Israeli occupation have been so harsh that many young people have had to emigrate to make any kind of a living at all.”
As was discussed a few weeks back, this is clearly wrong.
“I have no doubt with myself there is no real peace loving from Israeli in the region whatsoever”
David Brooks, just back from a trip to Israel, has an interesting op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times on the post-Intifada II mood of disengagement in Israel from their dysfunctional neighbors…Brooks doesn’t believe that it is a good thing or likely to last but he just may capture the present mood in Israel.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/opinion/17brooks.html&OQ=nQ3DTopQ252fOpinionQ252fEditorialsQ2520andQ2520OpQ252dEdQ252fOpQ252dEdQ252fColumnists&OP=5cad4b44Q2F9qc.9Q25NC55Q259FHHk9YY9Y(95oQ2A_Q2A5_9Y(.C551N8Q27Q25gw
Joshua– I’m afraid I must have missed that earlier discussion… However, I’m interested that you feel able to contest my statement there. What is your evenidence? My main evidence for what i wrote is my acquaintance with many Gazans– a very high proportion of whom have signiciant proportions of their siblings who have been forced to go abroad for work or study (and then, v. frequently, lose their Israeli-issued “permits” to return.) Also, the general socioeconomic data from Gaza for 3 decades, indicating high levels of unemployment and de-development there.
Do you know many Gazans? Tell me about their thankfully intact families. I’d love to hear some good news.
You may have missed the discussion because you deleted my posts.
I pointed out that far from the “harsh conditions” in Gaza, economic and other quality of life indicators increased since 1967. JES provided you with several statistics from Professor Efraim Karsh that backed the fact up.
As I recall, you said that you didn’t have to provide statistics, apparently because you wrote a book 20 years ago and that this proves that your assertions are backed by scholarship.
That’s not to say that occupation is pleasant. And maybe some Gazans left because they felt that they wanted more independence or a better life somewhere else. However, to the extent that the actual numbers dropped, they tended to do so during the intifadas. Because life tended to get much harsher in Gaza when Israelis were concerned that the person crossing the border was not bringing in products to market, or going to his/her job in neighboring Israel, but instead carrying a bomb to murder as many Israelis as possible. It also eliminated the ability of settlers to purchase goods from Palestinians in Gaza, and instead enforced the separation between the two communities.
A real pity, if you ask me. But I agree that the agreement on border crossings is modest good news.
Stop pretending you care about the Gazans but that they got what they deserved.
So when my redneck ancestors were crowding the Comanches or Cheyenne onto reservations on whatever worst land was available, weren’t nice Christian folks in Boston and New York explaining that this would tame the redskins of their inferior, non-capitalist, violent culture? That they would be better off in 1905 than 1867, rampant alcoholism aside? That it’s a shame about the epidemics and executions but that’s what those people deserve for their ignorant resistance to our superior way of life? Once we ruined them in every way we knew how, was it fun to point at them at the Buffalo Bill Show and claim that they had always been subhuman? This is the same crime. If the Arabs weren’t better at violence (and reproduction) than Native Americans, fat white idiots just like us would be living on their bones from Algeria to Baghdad in subdivisions just like the West Bank’s, living off their oil, as if Arabs had never existed. We all know it, we know it’s the same crime, we know we got away with ours and the French didn’t and the Israelis might not but it’s a white man’s right to try. The Quakers are right that it’s evil but it won’t end until one race has lied and murdered its way to eradicating every damn one else. When the Chinese have taken over the world, maybe they’ll crowd a million of our descendants into a bombed-out ghetto surrounded with barbed wire so that they can show their kids the price of refusing to assimilate into a superior culture.
Sorry I failed to put this in terms that would cast me as an anti-Semite. I’m just sick of white people.