By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed There is no doubt that the driving force of the Wye Plantation talks, and their main beneficiary, was Bill Clinton. By skillfully steering the often tough negotiations to a successful conclusion, the US president proved himself still capable of solving the most intractable international problems and, hence, of running the affairs of state competently despite the claims of his enemies and the fears of his friends that the Monicagate scandal has left a lame duck president at the helm of the most powerful state in the world. Clinton's tour de force comes just days before the mid-term Congress elections, scheduled for 4 November, whose outcome will be decisive in determining his political future. The question now is whether the Wye Plantation Accord can swing the outcome in Clinton's favour, thus foiling his enemies' efforts to dislodge him from power. There are signs that this might well be the case. The timing of the decision to hold the Wye Plantation summit is obviously no coincidence. In the final analysis, the decision was motivated less by the desire to revive the long-stalled Arab-Israeli negotiations than it was by considerations of domestic American politics, an inner contradiction that can, in the long term, adversely affect the course of the negotiations. Hence the wisdom of Cairo's decision to maintain a certain distance from this latest chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. For, contrary to what is being said, the Wye Plantation summit cannot be compared to the Camp David summit. Of course, there are points of similarity between the two events: in both cases, the talks were held at isolated locations far from the eyes of the world and the media; in both cases, the talks continued without interruption until an agreement had been hammered out. But there the similarities end. President Jimmy Carter, who presided over the Camp David summit, was not pursuing a personal agenda having nothing to do with the subject-mater of the negotiations. The process he sponsored was therefore not exposed to the time-bombs inbuilt in a process determined by an undeclared agenda serving the interests of its sponsor before those of the parties to the negotiations themselves. Indeed, the undeclared agenda of the talks at Wye Plantation imbued them with a specificity all their own. This was perhaps most obvious in the blackmailing tactics Netanyahu used to wring every last concession he could from Clinton, even on issues having nothing to do with the matter at hand. Well aware that the American president desperately needed a victory at Wye Plantation to shore up his precarious position, at the last moment Netanyahu refused to sign the accord unless Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was released from the US jail he has been held in since 1986. Had Egypt participated in the negotiations, it is certain that Netanyahu would have insisted that Cairo hand over Israeli spy Azzam Azzam. In the context of the strange dynamics of the talks, Arafat chose to align himself unconditionally with the US position, regardless of whether or not it responded to Palestinian interests, in the hope that this would deepen the rift between the American and Israeli sides. Thus he accepted the American proposal for a redeployment of Israeli forces in no more than 13 percent of Palestinian territory, and even the designation of 3 percent within the 13 percent as a natural preserve under shared control. Marred as they were by Clinton's undeclared agenda, Netanyahu's blackmailing tactics and Arafat's concessions, the talks at Wye Plantation have resulted in an accord that is shrouded in uncertainty. Implementation, which is not scheduled to begin until weeks after the results of the mid-term elections of Congress are out, will certainly not enjoy the priority accorded by Clinton to the signing of the agreement. Moreover, there are precedents of Netanyahu not implementing the agreements he signs, most notably the Hebron agreement. Finally, the appointment of ultra-hawk Ariel Sharon, known to oppose the very idea of any Israeli pullback, as Israel's foreign minister, that is, the man in charge of implementation, is a foretaste of things to come. It is far from certain that Sharon's appointment was, as Netanyahu alleges, to neutralise the Israeli far-right by involving it in the agreements; it is just as likely to be a ploy by which Netanyahu will implement the same hard-line policies while attributing them to others in order to avoid open clashes with the American administration. before signing the agreement, Arafat could still threaten to unilaterally declare the creation of a Palestinian state after the 4 May deadline. Under the terms of the agreement, he is prohibited from making any such declaration. Theoretically, both parties to an agreement should be equally constrained when it comes to taking unilateral steps outside the framework of the agreement. However, Netanyahu is not observing that condition and continues to push forward with his settlement policy in violation of the agreement, including the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem. For Netanyahu, the tradeoff is no longer land-for-peace, but land-for-security, thus reducing 'peace' to Israel's security requirements. In practical terms, all parties opposed to Netanyahu's reading of what Israel's security should entail are branded terrorists. And because terrorist acts are undertaken by parties that operate secretly and outside the law, it is always possible to manipulate agents provocateurs in the aim of intimidating opponents and, when necessary, to accuse the other party of having violated the peace process. To allay Netanyahu's fears, the United States devised a plan whereby the CIA would act as mediator between the security forces of Israel and those of the Palestinian authority. This convinced Netanyahu not to carry out his threat to withdraw from the talks one day before their successful conclusion, especially when he received assurances from the CIA that the Palestinian police had not in any way slackened their efforts to liquidate Palestinian terrorism. However, given the American administration's need to woo the Jewish vote, is there any guarantee that when the time comes to implement the Wye Plantation accord the CIA's intervention will prove to be as even-handed as it was during the talks? Such defects do not arise fortuitously; they are the product of the very structure of the Wye Plantation talks, which Clinton planned as a rescue mechanism for his own political survival rather than for ensuring the genuine resumption of the Middle East peace process.
