The mutations of Mitchell

The PLO initially called the Mitchell report a "sensible and coherent foundation for resolving the current crisis." But no longer, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem
David Zinder joins Palestinian protesters in Chicago on Tuesday as the former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed supporters in the city
(photo: AP)
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's endorsement on Monday of the Mitchell Report's recommendations for ending eight months of violence in the occupied territories was "welcomed" by the Palestinian leadership. "The Americans have brought Ariel Sharon kicking and screaming back to the negotiating table, " commented one PLO negotiator.
A more accurate description would be that Mitchell, together with the quantum leap in Israel's assaults on Palestinians over the last week, has brought the Bush administration kicking and screaming back to a conflict with which it does not want to deal and for which it holds Yasser Arafat primarily responsible. The revenge may be seen in the peculiar construction the US has put on the "timing and sequence" of Mitchell's recommendations.
For most Palestinians the Mitchell Report was hardly a "balanced" document to start with. It maintained a studied agnosticism to the Palestinians' cardinal demand for an international force to provide protection for Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories and to Egypt's and Jordan's insistence that future political negotiations be time-tabled and resume from where they ended in Taba last January.
It also contained a baffling ambiguity over such blatantly illegal Israeli policies as the extra-judicial killings of Palestinian activists as well as the attempt to kill Jibril Rajoub, head of the West Bank Preventive Security Force, whose house in Ramallah was struck by three Israeli tank shells on Sunday. But the Mitchell report did, in the words of the PLO's official response to it, point to a clear "connection between Israeli-Palestinian violence and Israel's 'settlement construction activity.'"
Except, apparently, it did not. In their respective press conferences on Monday, both Mitchell and Powell made clear the first step to be implemented by the "two parties" must be an "immediate and unconditional cessation of violence," with "no link" to subsequent "confidence building measures."
These include Mitchell's call that Israel "freezes all settlement construction, including the 'natural growth' of existing settlements," which Palestinians had made a condition for accepting the Mitchell "package" as a whole.
Powell went further, admitting that it would be "difficult for the Israelis" to accept the absolute freeze Mitchell called for. He also said the whole issue of a freeze is anyway a "confidence building measure that can only be addressed by the parties themselves." In other words, the freeze is to be negotiated, not implemented.
Given such sophistry, it was hardly surprising that Ariel Sharon, who had originally described Israel's acceptance of the Mitchell committee as "a historic mistake," now found he could accept all its recommendations "in principle." He also did his bit for implementing an "immediate and unconditional cessation of violence" on Tuesday by ordering his army to "cease all initiated pre-emptive operations against Palestinians except in cases of genuine danger to human life."
The call is meaningless as there has barely been a case throughout the Intifada where an Israeli "initiated action," or atrocity, has not been justified as a response to "genuine danger to human life." For example, the army took over five Palestinian-controlled areas in Gaza on Tuesday "in response" to mortar attacks on Jewish settlements and bombarded the West Bank village of Beit Jala "in response" to Palestinian fire on the settlement of Gilo.
Still, Sharon's Lebanon-style "unilateral cease-fire" neatly stole the high ground from the Palestinians, and "I would be pleased to hear a similar statement" from Yasser Arafat, commented US President George W Bush.
As for settlements, "we are not talking about a freeze," said Sharon on Tuesday. But "there is no need to expropriate land for the purpose of settlement construction. The settlements were established on state lands and there is enough land there."
This is true. But it is so only because according to Israel's own, legally spurious definition over half the West Bank belongs to the "state" since there were no privately registered deeds to it prior to 1967. As Israel's Peace Now movement points out, Israel's consistent claim throughout the occupation has been that it is not expropriating Palestinian land but rather "evicting Palestinians from lands over which they have no recognised rights." Needless to say, the bulk of the 6,000 settlement units currently under construction as well as the 15 new settlement outposts established since the Israeli elections are on "state land."
Faced with the Mitchell initiative unravelling before their eyes Palestinian negotiators reacted in panic, simultaneously accusing Powell of "giving a green light to settlement building" and Sharon of choosing only those of the report's recommendations "which suit him." Arafat sped off to France yesterday and will go to Russia next week in a diplomatic effort to keep hold of a report that, in Palestinian eyes, is rapidly becoming unrecognisable.
He is unlikely to get much joy. On Monday, European Union Foreign Policy representative Javier Solana said that, for Europe too, there must be an "immediate and unconditional cessation of hostilities" prior to any resumption of "constructive negotiations leading to peace."
But there is unlikely to be a cessation of hostilities. And this is because the Palestinian Intifada is not an "orchestra with Arafat the conductor and the various Palestinian organisations his instruments," as expressed by Israel's Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. It is largely a reactive, disorganised resistance of a people against an occupation whose present manifestation is one of siege, territorial devastation and, at times, premeditated murder.
The Mitchell report does nothing to alter those realities. It is unlikely to do anything to end the resistance or, to use the report's parlance, Palestinian "violence and terror."
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