Having proven unable to lead the Palestinians towards their national aspirations, the Palestinian political establishment should dissolve and open the way for an international trusteeship, writes Samir Ghattas It is no coincidence that the call to internationalise the Palestinian cause gained such momentum since Hamas's seizure of power in Gaza in mid-June. The military operation by means of which Hamas sought to settle its longstanding power struggle with Fatah ended up severing the West Bank from Gaza and precipitated an international furore leaving Hamas, itself, more isolated than ever in its Gaza confines. Nor is it surprising to find considerable diversity in the forces that have recently coalesced behind the banner of internationalisation. Because of disparities in opinion and confusion in general it is best to pause to examine the positions of three major camps on this matter. On the Palestinian/Arab front, we have President Mahmoud Abbas's appeal, on 25 June, for an international force to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza and to oversee early elections that he decreed in accordance with the mandate given to him for this purpose by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Central Committee. If the appeal was initially a form of posturing, because Abbas did not have the power, or perhaps the desire, to bring the recalcitrant situation in Gaza to heel under the Palestinian Authority (PA), PLO Executive Committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo soon added some substance. On 1 July, he proposed that the international force should consist of several Arab and Islamic countries, notably Turkey, Indonesia and Qatar, operating under the flag of the UN. Hamas immediately rejected the idea and declared that it would regard the entrance of an international force into Gaza as an invading army. The latest official collective Arab drive for internationalisation began much earlier and at a much broader level. In its extraordinary session of 20 September 2006, the Arab League Ministerial Council resolved to turn the entire Arab-Israeli conflict over to the UN Security Council. In its subsequent emergency session of 12 November 2006, the Saudi foreign affairs minister stated, "it is now of the utmost urgency that an international conference attended by all concerned parties be held in order to end the horrific massacres of the Palestinian people and to safeguard their legitimate rights." He also called for "the deployment of an international observation force from the UN to monitor the protection of the Palestinian people." With the beginning of the New Year, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa reiterated this call for an international conference. Speaking in Madrid on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Madrid Conference, he said, "if, in the course of 2007, there is no progress in the peace process, the Arab League will appeal to the UN, on behalf of all Arab countries, to assume responsibility for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict." More recently, on 29 July, he stated, "it has long been an Arab desire to hold an international peace conference on the Middle East. We have voiced this demand to the International Quartet in Sharm El-Sheikh and the UN Security Council." The secretary-general took that occasion to stress the difference between this demand and the proposal announced by President George Bush on 16 July. He added, however: "what is important at this juncture is to work to reconcile the Arab and international positions on this matter." At the level of the international community, in the post- Oslo phase, the trend towards internationalising a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was first expressed in the "roadmap" plan, at least to a certain level. According to some, the International Quartet, which sponsored the roadmap plan, subscribed to an international plan that presumed it possible to reach a comprehensive settlement to the conflict by 2005. They further cited a provision in that plan that explicitly calls for a "first" international conference that would found a Palestinian state with temporary borders, leading to international recognition of that entity and, possibly, at second stage, UN membership. The plan also provided that the Quartet would sponsor a second international conference to conclude a treaty that would establish a sovereign democratic Palestinian state living alongside Israel in peace and security within permanent and internationally recognised boundaries. One of the foremost factors to obstruct the implementation of this plan was Washington's determination to commandeer it and its excessive partiality in applying it, both of which tendencies inherently conflict with the spirit of internationalisation that the roadmap had been originally founded upon. In fact, it was undoubtedly for this reason that other parties in the Quartet adopted other positions. On 28 January 2006, Sergei Karaganov, who heads Russia's Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, proposed that the G8 be given an international mandate over the Palestinian territories for several years. In the autumn of 2006, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi aired a joint Italian, Spanish and French initiative calling for the deployment of international forces along the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza's border with Egypt. However, more germane to recent events is the initiative adopted by 10 European Mediterranean countries. Following a meeting in Slovenia on 3 July, they sent an open letter to Tony Blair, the Quartet's new envoy to the Middle East, asking him to consider the idea of a "robust" international force to maintain order in the Palestinian territories and to enforce compliance with a necessary ceasefire. The letter went on to note, "the risks are, of course, high, but this force can be viable and secure if we comply with two conditions: it must operate alongside a peace plan without taking its place and be based on an inter-Palestinian agreement." However, since Washington continues to dominate the handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its position will probably continue to prevail. On 16 July, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the declaration of his unfulfilled "vision" of two states living in peace side by side, Bush unveiled a proposal for an international conference to be held in autumn. Within a day the equivocation began. In his press briefing of 17 July, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference. It's not... What it is, is a gathering of people who are interested. You're going to have parties in the region; you're also going to have Prime Minister Blair as the Quartet representative. They are going to be sharing ideas, trying to figure out how to move forward." But even that same day, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the secretary of state intended to host the conference in the US. Blair, for his part, announced several days later that the conference would be a "regional" one, in which connection he stressed, "the regional conference this autumn will have real substance. It will not merely be a meeting of leaders with a lot of speeches, handshaking and photo-ops." There is another American position, an unofficial one, but extremely important nonetheless. It has been, perhaps, best expressed by Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and currently director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. As early as May 2003, he published a lengthy article in Foreign Affairs, harshly criticising what he described as the Bush administration's "roadmap to nowhere" and suggesting as an alternative the notion of an international trusteeship for Palestine. Indyk continues to stick by his concept after recent events in Gaza, with the added condition that under any such arrangement the trustees would have to strengthen the PA's economic and security governance. Naturally, no overview of the internationalisation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be complete without taking into account the Israeli perspective. Every one of Israel's 31 governments, from Ben Gurion's temporary government in 1948 to the Olmert government today, has rejected the principle of internationalisation out of hand. One cannot but help, here, to note the paradox, since Israel itself owes its very existence to international processes, from the British mandate, which paved the way for a homeland for Jews in Palestine, to UN Resolution 181 of 1947, officially establishing the state of Israel. As consistent as Israel has been in its rejection of internationalisation, there have nonetheless been some slight shifts in position that were more in the nature of subtle shades of the same colour. For example, after considerable pressure, the Netanyahu government accepted a token international observer force in Hebron with a very restricted remit. More recently, however, the Israeli opposition and various trends in public opinion have been steadily eating away at the official line. An important indication of this trend occurred on 1 April 2002 when former left-wing Meretz Party leader Yossi Serid asserted the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was to place the Palestinian territories under an American mandate. Following in his footsteps, Zahava Galon, current Meretz leader in the Knesset, proposed transferring the territories to a form of trusteeship, entrusted to a multitask multinational force, in accordance with a UN mandate, for a period of three years, ending with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But even on the right there has been some change. On 10 December 2006, Olmert declared that he was ready to discuss the Italian proposal for an international force in Gaza. He was adamant, however, that the mission of this force should be restricted to forestalling terrorist activities coming from Gaza. Subsequently, in the Herzliya Conference of 25 January 2007, Kadima member of Knesset Shlomo Breznitz, a close associate of Olmert, presented a plan to hand over Palestinian territories to an internationally mandated force modelled along the lines of UNIFIL in Lebanon and the international force that operated in Bosnia, the mission of which would be to restore and sustain security preparatory to the establishment of a Palestinian state. More recently, in May 2007, the Israeli government discussed a plan to station an international force on the Philadelphi Corridor with the purpose of forestalling arms smuggling from the Sinai to Gaza. Significantly, however, on 3 July, Israeli Army Radio quoted Israeli Interior Minister Avi Dichter, who supported Egypt's rejection of any international force along its borders. "Egypt is capable of preventing the smuggling of arms over its borders into Gaza," he said, adding, "the deployment of [international] forces [would] obstruct Israeli operations in the area." From the above-mentioned disparities and, indeed, contradictions among the camps that have, to varying degrees and in different ways, climbed aboard the call for internationalisation it is obvious that there is more to the question than meets the eye. I believe that any discussion of the subject must bear in mind several important considerations. First, the Palestinian question has its roots in international mechanisms. The British mandate over Palestine was the product of the League of Nations. The establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and, subsequently, the establishment of a Jewish state on a part of that mandated territory were the results of international agreements and resolutions. At least in part because of the attrition on the portion of territory designated for a Palestinian state under the 1947 partition resolution, it is not stretching things too far to suggest that the fate of the Palestinian question is still contingent upon further international agreement. Second, it should be acknowledged that the Palestinians, especially when compared to the Zionist movement, were and perhaps still are structurally ill equipped to further their cause. This applies both to how they handled their drive towards independence internally and how they read changes in the political climate and international balances of power. Testimony to the latter, in particular, resides in a continuous record of injudicious choices, stretching from the Palestinian mufti's alliance with Germany in World War II, through Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, to Khaled Meshal's alliance with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in current developments that may culminate in a war against Iran. Third, Yasser Arafat, himself, moved to internationalise the Palestinian question. After considerable wavering, on 27 July 1969 during a visit to Addis Ababa, he backed a Palestinian-based initiative calling for a solution modelled on the international mandate for Namibia. However, the appeal remained essentially a propaganda gambit and was never developed into a workable strategy. Fourth, sending in international forces solely for the purposes of fulfilling security-related tasks cannot be regarded as a level of internationalisation commensurate with the complexity and intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Such a force must be contextualised within a diplomatic project that aims to end the occupation and establish a sovereign Palestinian state. Fifth, Israel is certain to go along with Bush's call for an "international" conference this autumn. Its agreement has less to do with its special relationship with Washington than with the fact that the initiative falls considerably short of a truly international framework that has the power to furnish the necessary enforcement mechanisms, in accordance with the UN Charter, that were tried and successfully tested in such cases as Namibia and Kosovo. Sixth, the European initiative, as embodied in the letter from Slovenia, by contrast, is a very positive and constructive position, since its call for a robust force for Palestine is predicated on a comprehensive peace plan. This initiative could gain considerable impetus if more concentrated efforts were made to rally Arab support behind it. Such a drive would be useful to offset what appears to be the high likelihood of an attempt to cast the forthcoming "regional meeting" as the "first international conference" stipulated by the roadmap and to formulate a provisional Palestinian state as conceptually modified by the dictates of current balances of power. It would be a pity for the Palestinians and the Arabs to concentrate solely on the partial or selective formula for internationalisation proposed by Bush. Whether it is international or regional, or a conference or a "meeting", may seem important in the short-run, but such questions miss an essential point: little good will come of such a scheme if it is not international in the full and comprehensive sense, as understood by the community of nations bound by the UN Charter, and if it is not linked to a clear and specific plan executed under UN auspices in accordance with the provisions of UN instruments. The only available solution that meets these conditions is the international trusteeship system that took the place of the international mandate system that contributed to the creation of the state of Israel, as well as the creation of many Arab states in their current geographical boundaries. Of course, such are the sensitivities that the mere mention of "mandate" and the like arouses, in this region in particular, that it is important to stress that a mandate or trusteeship need not necessarily be forced on a people; quite to the contrary. Under the current system, a people under occupation can, by their own volition, ask for their territory to be placed under a trusteeship and to actively participate in setting the conditions that should apply to such a trusteeship. A UN trusteeship for Palestine would create a board of trustees and last for two to three years, during which period international forces operating under UN auspices would supervise a phased withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces and assume control over vacated areas. It would also create an international fund for the purpose of equipping Palestinian society for self-governance by the time the trusteeship ends, which would be signalled by the declaration of an independent sovereign Palestinian state, the call for democratic general elections, and the formation of new governing institutions. There is no reason why such a system should be regarded as offensive to the Palestinian people or demeaning to their national pride and dignity. Any claims to the contrary are either based on ignorance of the trusteeship system or emanate from parties with a vested interest in prolonging the current situation and reproducing the types of schemes that have proven such a dismal failure and that seem expressly designed to perpetuate the subjugation of the Palestinian people. Since history has regretfully demonstrated that Palestinian factions and their leaderships are unqualified to lead the Palestinian people towards the realisation of their aspirations for national liberation and an independent democratic state, clearly the best option is for the PA to take the initiative to dissolve itself within the framework of a national appeal to fully internationalise the Palestinian cause and to work to secure the best possible conditions for a trusteeship such as that described above. It should further be stressed, here, that in advance of any such move the Palestinians and Arabs must agree upon a goal. If that goal is the same as that which motivated the Zionist movement before 1948, which was to establish an independent democratic state on a portion of mandate Palestine, then the most realistic and viable avenue towards that end is to push for an international trusteeship system. If there is any hope of rescuing the Palestinian cause from the cycle that has brought disaster upon disaster then surely this resides in the call for "full internationalisation, now!"
