With Clinton Exit, Hopes For Mideast Peace Fade

by Eric S. Margolis

The only man who may save Barak from defeat is none other than his strange bedfellow, PLO chief Yasser Arafat. If Arafat agrees to the latest peace deal being pressed upon him by partners Clinton and Barak, then, by this weird symbiosis, Barak will probably win re-election.

Even so, total U.S. support for Israel may wane. For the past eight years, Israel has exercised unprecedented influence over the Clinton Administration, virtually directing U.S. Mideast policy. Unlike the Clinton team, which was top heavy with supporters of Israel, the incoming Bush Administration has few in evidence. Nor is Bush beholden, as Clinton was, to pro-Israel financial contributors. To the contrary, Bush's father, President George Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, tried to put pressure on Israel to halt building settlements. As a result, the pro-Israel media accused them of being anti-semites.

The defeat of Al Gore, who had been financed and cultivated for decades by Israel's U.S. supporters, is being viewed as a blow to Israeli influence in Washington.

Arafat now faces a deep dilemma. If he does not make a deal with Barak, then Sharon, who is hated and feared by Arabs as the potential Milosevic of the Mideast, could win. Sharon says he will encourage more Jewish settlements and crush the current "intifada." Many Arabs suspect Sharon favors Serb-style ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. Sharon has long insisted that Jordan should become the Palestinian homeland.

Arafat does not want to deal with Sharon. So what to do? The deal he is being offered by the U.S.-Israeli tag team is the best to date: 95 percent of the Occupied Territories; maybe a slice of East Jerusalem, including the all-important Haram al-Sharif mosque (though Barak now denies it); fixed borders. Whether the Palestinian state will be a series of blobs surrounded by Israeli territory and Jewish-only roads remains uncertain. Israel will retail troops on the Jordan River for three years. Palestine will be demilitarized and may have no borders with the outside world.

But the thorniest question, as this column has written for years, is the 4 million Palestinian refugees (plus 400,000 forgotten Syrian refugees from Israeli-occupied Golan). The Palestinian Diaspora, the world's largest number of refugees, will not be allowed the right of return to their lost homes in what is now Israel, according to Clinton's plan. Though driven from their land in 1947-48 and in 1967, the original refugees and their offspring will remain in squalid camps, apparently without any substantial compensation or hope for the future.

Arafat, one suspects, longs to make a deal with Barak. They badly need one another. But Arafat cannot enforce any lasting peace that leaves four million Palestinians stranded. He dares not, for risk of his own skin. So he bobs and weaves, "conditionally accepting" Clinton's plan, waiting for a miracle to solve this impasse.

This core problem appears insoluble. Though international law and the UN call for the refugees to be returned home, there seems no possible way Israel would ever settle even a quarter of them, though it did find room for a million Russians, many of whom were not even Jews. Four million Palestinians added to Israel's current one million Arabs would make Israel a predominantly Arab state. Israel would never permit such racial dilution. If it did happen, an Israeli friend says, "I'd be a Jewish Palestinian!"

Barak did offer to allow back a small number of Palestinian refugees under the guise of "family reunification." This was to take heat off Arafat. No one will be fooled by this ploy. The number of Arab refugees allowed to return to the new Palestinian mini-state may also be limited by the U.S. and Israel.

If the 11th - hour deal did go through, which is unlikely, Israel would still be left in the catbird seat. It would retain control of much militarily strategic land and water resources. The resistive Palestinians would be surrounded by Israeli roads and security forces, and policed by PLO units. The big Israeli settlements would remain. Palestine would become a military protectorate and economic dependency of Israel.

PM Barak has threatened that if the current deal fails, he will go ahead with plans to erect high walls around all Palestinian areas, as he says "totally separating Israeli's" from the Arabs. This uncomfortably recalls both the walled-in Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe, and South Africa's "apartheid," or "separation policy." Hopefully, it's pre-election rhetoric.

Even if Arafat is strongarmed into a shaky peace deal designed to salvage Clinton's besmirched reputation, his people will reject any pact that forecloses their right of return. The Arab states also rejected Clinton's deal last week. King Solomon, not Bill Clinton, seems the only person who can solve this impossible problem.