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International Business Negotiations CD normally $169.95, 1106 pages, special pricing $99.95, ISBN 978-1-60442-369-3 - A comparison of Cross-Cultural Issues and Successful Approaches, 3rd Edition, James R. Silkenat, Jeffrey M. Aresty, Jacqueline Klosek, Editors. ABA Section of International Law
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 |    INFORMATION BRIEF
Number 60
10 January 2001
Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine / 2425-35 Virginia Avenue, NW /
Washington, DC 20037 / Tel: 202.338.1290 / Fax: 202.333.7742 /
http://www.palestinecenter.org
All Process and No Substance:
U.S. Policymaking on Palestine
Kathleen Christison
Overview: The hallmark of Clinton administration policy toward the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process has been its singular emphasis on the
process, with a hands-off approach to substantive issues. With rare
exceptions, policy during the last eight years has been marked by a
reluctance to put forth U.S. positions, and a concerted effort to undermine
and erode the body of United Nations resolutions that give international
legitimacy to Palestinian national claims.
The U.S. pretense of neutrality purports to allow the parties to
engage without outside interference that might prejudice negotiations. Yet
the actual effect has been to give Israel, the far stronger party holding
all the territory under negotiation, a free hand to do what it deems
necessary for its own interests. Meanwhile, the U.S. looks the other way,
while simultaneously undercutting the authority of any party that seeks to
legitimize the Palestinian position. Because policy is designed with an
Israeli focus and an emphasis on the process rather than on the substance of
negotiations, policymakers do not truly understand Palestinian concerns.
President Bill Clinton boasts that he enjoys closer ties with
Palestinians than any previous president. He received Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat 13 times in the White House, has
been sequestered for extended negotiating sessions with Palestinians, and
may even be able, as he often notes, to draw a map of the West Bank in his
sleep. Yet he is discovering as his term ends that he still does not have a
clear understanding of Palestinian concerns, or, indeed, a solid
comprehension of the very issues involved in negotiations.
The Dennis Ross Approach: Responsibility rests largely with Special Middle
East Coordinator Dennis Ross, the architect of U.S. policy in the region.
Two features have marked his policymaking: adoption of the Israeli
perspective in negotiations, and over-reliance on process. On the first
point, Ross and the members of his negotiating team acknowledge having an
emotional commitment to Israel and have said they cannot distinguish between
their personal and professional involvement with it. On the second point,
Ross has a long record of advocating a process-focused strategy. In 1988,
he helped draft a key policy report notable because of its strong advocacy
of non-involvement.
Ross's approach since then has arguably created a mindset within the
policymaking community that prevents a precise understanding of the issues.
When the primary emphasis is on process, there is no need to know, and
therefore little effort to learn, points of substance. Substance is, in
fact, obscured by the desire to further the process. It comes to be
regarded as an obstacle to process. This has been evident in Clinton's
haste to conclude an agreement before his term ends; he is focusing more on
concluding the process than on the principal points of dispute.
The End Result: As a result of the singular concentration on process, the
Clinton team has failed to understand what the continuing occupation has
meant for Palestinians. It has been unable to comprehend what Palestinians
want out of negotiations and where the process has fallen short. This means
that the U.S. allows Israel to proceed with unimpeded settlement
construction because this is the "neutral," hands-off approach. When the
Palestinians insist that settlement construction stop because Palestinian
land is being confiscated and the viability of the future Palestinian state
infringed, the U.S. blames them for obstructing the peace process.
Because of its false neutrality, the Clinton administration
redefined UN resolutions previously regarded by the United States as the
bedrock of the peace process. The premise of UN Security Council Resolution
(UNSCR) 242 is that the Occupied Territories are Arab, and that Israel must
withdraw, retaining at most small stretches of land to straighten borders.
Yet Ross's fundamental assumption has been precisely the opposite. His
viewpoint is that the West Bank and Gaza are Israeli or, at best, disputed
territories over which the Palestinians must bargain.
The thought process that perceives Palestinian adherence to
substance as an obstacle has been clearly evident in the administration's
reaction to the breakdown of the Camp David summit in July and the outbreak
of the intifada. Clinton lamented at a mid-November press conference that
it was an "unbelievable irony" that violence erupted when the two sides had
just engaged in "the first serious discussion" of final status issues.
Clinton's statement indicates a belief that mere engagement in process
should be enough to reach agreement. He disregards the fact that difficult
substantive issues require extensive preliminary discussion. Moreover, he
seems unconcerned that the groundwork for addressing final status issues
should have been laid years ago when they were set aside as the acknowledged
core concerns. His unrealistic expectation that an immediate solution was
possible after years of denying these issues has the effect of automatically
consigning the Palestinians' elemental demands to the status of an obstacle.
Overlooking the Palestinian Viewpoint: The administration's neglect of
substance completely obscured smoldering Palestinian grievances from U.S.
perceptions. Administration sources have lamented to the press since the
start of the intifada that they "have trouble really understanding" Arafat,
and did not grasp the depth of Palestinian frustrations before they erupted
into violence. This is startling given Clinton's intimate involvement in the
peace process, as well as the obvious temper of the Palestinian "street."
The Clinton team's arguments that the parties are "so close" indicate a
failure to acknowledge the significant substantive gap that remains, and to
recognize the intifada as a substantive protest.
Because of this failure to understand the intifada, policymakers
dismiss the uprising as nothing but unfathomable violence. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright recently suggested that precisely because the
parties "came so close" at Camp David, "extremists" and "the enemies of
peace then decide that they don't want to follow through." She thereby
dismissed the intifada, and the grievances behind it, as illegitimate.
Despite the many contacts with Palestinians over the last decade,
the U.S. continues to follow Israel's lead in negotiations. The United
States allows Israel to set the pace and the agenda, without equal regard
for Palestinian demands for a different pace and a different agenda. Thus,
although Palestinians were ready to deal with final status issues years ago,
they had to wait until Israel was ready. Similarly, the U.S. treats Israeli
security as the principal focus of negotiations, but Palestinian security is
not addressed.
Shallow Negotiations: Before Clinton, the withdrawal provisions of UNSCR
242 had always been the U.S. starting point for negotiations. Clinton's
policymakers have instead accepted Israel's starting point, put forth in
negatives: no withdrawal to the 1967 lines, no division or ceding of East
Jerusalem, no dismantling of settlements, no concessions on refugees. Then,
when Israel inched away from these maximum positions at Camp David, the
Clinton team gave the "concessions" undue significance simply because they
constituted movement-i.e., they furthered the process-regardless of their
actual significance. Because the administration studiously refuses to take
a substantive position itself, it judges progress according to mere movement
(usually Israel's movement away from its maximum or Palestinian movement
toward it) rather than by any objective standard of reasonableness or
equity.
Before Palestinians were "allowed" into negotiations, Israeli and
U.S. nitpicking over the mechanics was a way to avoid dealing with the
Palestinians. When the Madrid Conference was opened to Palestinian
participation, however, and the Oslo Accords recognized Palestinian
existence, process was formalized and the U.S. should have moved on to
substance. No such transition ever occurred, and given the current tenor of
political discourse in the United States, none seems likely in the near
future.
Kathleen Christison is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their
Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (University of California Press, 1999).
The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to
the author and to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. This
Information Brief does not necessarily reflect the views of CPAP or The
Jerusalem Fund.
"Eyewitness Accounts of the Recent Violence in Palestine" a luncheon
briefing with Michael Brown and Jamie Terral will be held on Thursday,
January 11th from 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. at the Center for Policy Analysis on
Palestine. RSVP to (202) 338-1325 by 5 p.m. today.

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