Nobody called it the “Ophira Conference”. Not even the papers of the extreme right. Whotoday even remembers the name Ophira, which was given to Sharm-al-Sheikh during the Israelioccupation, as a first step to its annexation?
Who wants to remember the famous saying of Moshe Dayan that “Sharm-al-Sheikh is moreimportant than peace”? A few years later, the same Dayan took part in the peace negotiationswith Egypt and gave Sharm-al-Sheikh back. But in the meantime, some 2500 young Israelis andwho knows how many thousands of Egyptians paid with their lives for that statement in the YomKippur war.
While the conference went on, I could not clear my head of a song that was haunting me:“Sharm-al-Sheikh, we have come back again…” It was sung with gusto in the days of the stupideuphoria after the Six-Day war. It reminded people at the time that we had already conqueredthe place during the 1956 Sinai war but were compelled by the Eisenhower-Bulganin ultimatumto withdraw. So here we were again.
I was there in 1956. A beautiful gulf (“Sharm-al-Sheikh means “the bay of the old man”), afew small houses and a distinctive mosque. Before our army withdrew, a few months later, itblew up the mosque in a fit of pique.
Now, 22 years after leaving Ophira for the last time (nobody sang then “Sharm-al-Sheikh,we have left you again…”) all of us are treating the place as an Egyptian resort, as Egyptian asCairo and Alexandria. The past has been erased. The occupation has been wiped from ourcollective memory.
That is the first optimistic lesson from the conference. One can withdraw. One can put anend to occupation. One can even forget that it ever took place.
The spirits of two people who were not there hovered over the proceedings.
One of them was George W. Bush. Neither he nor any other American sat at the large roundtable. But all the four who were sitting there knew that they are completely dependent on him.Husni Mubarak relies on the two billion dollars he gets every year from the United States,under the auspices of a Congress dominated by the pro-Israeli lobby. King Abdallah of Jordangets much less, but his regime, too, depends on US support.
Ariel Sharon is the Siamese twin of Bush and cannot move without him. It is barelyconceivable that he would do anything, big or small, that would upset Bush. Abu-Mazen, for hispart, is playing va banque in the hope that Bush will help the Palestinians to cast off theoccupation and establish their state.
So why did the Americans not come to Sharm? Because they are not ready to risk taking part ina process that might fail. They will come when success is assured. And today it is not.
The second absentee was Yasser Arafat.
The conference would not have taken place without his mysterious death. It deprivedSharon of the pretext to put peace in “formalin”, as described by Dov Weissglas, his closestadvisor, who sat next to him throughout the conference. No Arafat, no pretext. Israelipropaganda, which worked so hard to portray Arafat as a devil, will have to toil hard to do thesame to Abu Mazen.
Abu Mazen succeeded in slipping the name of Arafat into his speech, but only in an indirectway. But he – like every Palestinian – knows that it was the 45 years of Arafat’s work that laidthe foundations on which Abu Mazen is now building his new strategy. Without the firstintifada there would have been no Oslo , and without the second intifada there would have beenno Sharm-al-Sheikh conference. Only the violent Palestinian resistance, which the Israeliarmy has not been able to put down, has brought Sharon to the round table.
The Israeli army knows by now that it cannot stamp out the insurgency by military means.The Palestinians have recovered their self-respect, much like the Egyptians after YomKippur. Many of them also believe that in his second term of office, Bush will imposewithdrawal on Israel .
Incidentally, the demonization of Arafat has by no means stopped after his death. On thecontrary, it goes on with great fervor. The Left and the Right in Israel , in heart-warmingunity, declare in almost every article and TV talk-show that Arafat was the great obstacle topeace. Not the occupation. Not the settlements. Not the policy of Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon.Only Arafat. Fact: Arafat died and hopla – there is a conference.
The game played by Condoleezza Rice was especially amusing. She visited the Mukata’ah,where every stone shouts the name of Arafat. She did not lay a wreath on his grave – a minimalgesture of courtesy that would have won the hearts of the Palestinians. However, as adiplomatic compromise, she agreed to have her handshake with Abu Mazen photographed underthe picture of Arafat.
Arafat smiled his canny smile. He surely understood.
So what was achieved at this conference?
Easier to say what was not.
The Oslo agreement failed because it did not spell out the final aim which was to beachieved after the tortuous interim stages. Arafat and Abu Mazen had a clear objective: aPalestinian State in all of the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its capital, areturn to the Green Line border (with minimal adjustments), dismantling the settlements anda practical solution to the refugee problem. The Israelis did not have the courage to definethis inevitable solution, and many still dreamed about a Greater Israel .
That was a recipe for failure. And the very next day the quarrelling about every singleparagraph began.
At Sharm-al-Sheikh the resolution of the conflict was not mentioned at all. Abu Mazensucceeded in slipping in some words, but Sharon did not react. This omission is verysignificant. It must be emphasized: Sharon did not utter a single word that does not conformwith his plan of annexing 58% of the West Bank and enclosing the Palestinians in small enclavesin the rest of the territories.
The same goes for the timetable. In Oslo dates were indeed fixed, but the Israeli party hadno intention of keeping to them. “There are no sacred dates,” Yitzhaq Rabin famously declaredafter signing the timetable.
That was a fatal mistake. Quite literally – it killed Rabin. The postponement of thesolution allowed the opponents of peace the time to regain their strength, to regroup andmount the counter-attack that culminated in the assassination of Rabin. In vain did we quoteto Rabin the dictum of Lloyd-George: “You cannot cross an abyss in two jumps. ”
Abu Mazen said at Sharm-al-Sheikh that this is the first step on a long road. A long road is adangerous road. All along it the saboteurs of peace, Israelis and Palestinians, are lurking.
Moreover, one of the basic conditions for a real peace process – and perhaps the mostimportant one – is the truthful representation of reality. If one listened to all thespeeches, one could get the impression that the root problem is “Palestinian terrorism”, andthat if this stops, everything will be alright. In the following sequence: (a) ThePalestinians end their “violence”, (b) Israel stops military actions, (c) securitycooperation is established and (d) G*d and/or Allah will take care of the rest.
Pessimists will say: Nothing came from of the conference. The cease-fire is fragile. Inthe best case, Sharon will fulfil his promise of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip anddismantling a few settlements. Then the trouble will start anew.
Optimists will say: This is a good beginning. The cessation of “Palestinian terrorism”will create a new atmosphere in Israel . The dismantling of the first settlements will create acrucial confrontation. The settlers and the nationalist-messianic Right will be defeated.People will realize that life can be different. The dynamics of the process will carry Sharonalong and he will not be able to stop it, even if he wants to.
Who is right?