Little fanfare on pullout day By Khaled Amayreh At last, the Israeli army carried out the first stage of the Wye River agreement by handing over to the Palestinian Authority (PA) over 30 villages and hamlets around the city of Jenin, the West Bank's northernmost town. The 20 November redeployment was brief, almost symbolic, and involved little or no army movement of note in or around the vacated areas. Plainclothes PA security personnel had already been operating in these villages, presumably with tacit Israeli approval. The total area of the vacated areas is around 500 square kilometres, four-fifths of which is in Area A where the PA maintains full security and civilian control, while the remaining 100 square kilometres (around two per cent of Area C where Israel maintains full administrative and security authority) were relegated to Area B, which means the PA will exercise only civilian responsibilities while the Israelis will be responsible for security. With the latest redeployment in the Jenin area, the PA will now have under its full control 10 per cent of the West Bank. Moreover, when the second and third phases of the Wye Accords are carried out, the PA will be in full control of 18 per cent of the West Bank and have partial control over 28 per cent of the territory. A last-minute standoff preceded the actual handover when the Israeli army commander in the area unilaterally decided to keep some key roads under full Israeli control, allegedly to guarantee maximum security for Jewish settlers. However, the commander of the Palestinian police in the West Bank, Haj Ismail Jaber, protested the move and refused to cooperate with his Israeli counterpart, Maj. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, triggering a mini-crisis. Eventually, the hitch was resolved when the two decided to fly aboard an Israeli helicopter gunship to Hebron where Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was visiting. Not wanting to spoil the "good atmosphere", the chairman overruled Jaber, allowing the redeployment to start. The ratification of the Wye agreement by the Israeli government on 19 November was adopted only after the PA had issued a set of imprecise and vaguely-worded decrees aimed at "safeguarding national unity and protecting national interests". These included decrees on "anti-incitement", confiscation of illegal firearms and a ban on driving cars carrying Israeli license plates. The anti-incitement law, dubbed "the presidential decree for the protection of national unity and prevention of incitement", incriminates anyone practicing or calling for "incitement, racial discrimination, acts of violence, civil disobedience, insulting various religions, harming relations with brotherly and friendly countries and forming societies and organisations that incite people to violence..." The decree, announced in Hebron on 19 November by Arafat's adviser Al-Tayeb Abdul-Rahim, was mocked by many Palestinians, who argued that "it suited Israel more than us because racial and religious discrimination is unknown to us." However, most people, including the Islamist camp, didn't seem too concerned about the law's potential ramifications, convinced that it was meant first and foremost to meet Israeli dictates and to facilitate the evacuation of Israeli troops from Palestinian land. Besides the redeployment in the West Bank's northern parts, the implementation of the first phase of the Wye accords included the opening of Gaza Airport and the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners. The PA-controlled media celebrated Tuesday's opening of "Yasser Arafat's International Airport" as a "great victory", saying that it will be the Palestinians' main outlet to the outside world. Arafat himself received Arab delegations who arrived at the airport early Tuesday. The first plane to land at Gaza Airport came from Egypt, followed by flights from Morocco and Jordan. Spain and Austria also sent flights late Tuesday. But apart from the many Palestinian symbols in the airport, such as Arafat's ubiquitous portraits, Palestinian flags, carts bearing the words "Palestine National Airline", the Israeli army will exercise complete security control over the facility for three months, by the end of which the two sides will negotiate new arrangements. And Israel will continue to have the final say in deciding who can and who can't use the airport. Israeli roadblocks will be erected on all routes to the airport, and Palestinians deemed by the Israeli intelligence as "objectionable" or "security hazards" will not be allowed to proceed to the airport. Israeli occupation authorities keep tabs on blacklisted Palestinians who are barred from travelling abroad, ostensibly "for security reasons", but in reality as a form of punishment for their political views. The list includes political activists from all sorts of organisations, university professors, writers and journalists, in addition to college students, supporters of Islamist movements, prominent critics of the Oslo process and former prisoners. The PA did not particularly object to Israeli control of passenger movement to and from the airport, probably because Israel gave assurances that "only opposition figures would be turned back". If the airport agreement contained serious flaws, the prisoners release was scandalous. According to the PA, the Wye Accords stipulate the release of 750 Palestinian political activists and freedom fighters out of more than 3,000 held in Israeli jails. However, when the first 250 prisoners were released on 20 November, it became clear that most of them, 150 to be exact, were actually common criminals, including car thieves. Accusing the Israeli government of "deception and cheating". chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Ereikat said, "We didn't go to the Wye Plantation to negotiate the release of car thieves and common criminals." The Israeli government rejected the Palestinian interpretation of the Wye clauses on the release of prisoners, saying the Jewish state never promised to free "murderers and members of terrorist movements". The refusal by Israel to release political prisoners and former fighters infuriated many Palestinians, especially the prisoners themselves and their relatives, drawing strong condemnation of "the sloppy and unprofessional performance of PA negotiators at the Wye Plantation." Ali Al-Jarbawi, a Palestinian university professor and newspaper columnist, wrote in the Ramallah-based daily Al-Ayyam: "Why were they [the Palestinians] bamboozled again? Didn't it occur to them that they should insist on a detailed list of prisoners to be released?" Far from viewing it as a great achievement, most Palestinians view the redeployment of the Israeli army from between 10 to 13 per cent of the West Bank as the calm before the storm. This could explain the prevailing caution in people's reaction and the absence of public euphoria, so evident at the time of the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. The unabated expansion of settlements, the planned annexation by Israel of 10 per cent of the West Bank (the so-called Meri, or state land) along with Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon's provocative calls to settlers to grab as many hilltops as possible before Palestinians can get to them -- all suggest that although implementation has begun, the dispute is far from over.
