The Foreign Service Journal, June 2003

56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 3 in particular, needs to realize that it has much more to gain from peace than from backing Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Lebanese militia, and thereby consigning the entire Middle East to a perpetual state of conflict. Recent U.S. claims that Syria offered assistance to Saddam Hussein, as well as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s accu- sation that Damascus possesses chemical weapons, will only make this harder to achieve, however. The charges directed at Syria as the war in Iraq was winding down only served to irritate the Arab world. A Comprehensive Settlement Once enough trust has been established among the parties to resume a meaningful peace process, the negotiators will have to address three paramount issues: 1. The refugees and the right of return of Palestinians living in the diaspora; 2. The status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the capital of a future Palestinian state; and 3. The final borders of that Palestinian state. Let’s take these in reverse order. The final borders. In July 2000, when President Bill Clinton tried to negotiate a comprehensive Middle East peace deal during his final months in office, he said: “The chal- lenge for [then-]Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be to draw the contours of peace.” Unfortunately, they failed. Instead, the second intifada erupt- ed, and the region has been spiral- ing downhill into greater violence ever since. But eventually, the peace caravan will set off again. When it does, Israel must con- cede that the lands currently known as the “Palestinian Authority” — which will eventually mature into the state of Palestine — must ulti- mately consist of a contiguous zone, not the Swiss cheese-like Bantustan that exists now. The Palestinians must be given economically viable territory that they can live on in dig- nity. Toward that end, Israel will have to make some hard choices, includ- ing enforcing a freeze on settle- ments and dismantling some of them, as is consistent with the Mitchell Commission Report. In return, the Palestinian leader- ship must prove that it is prepared to bring about an end to terror and violence and set up new institutions. However, any Palestinian leader — be it Arafat or someone else — who cracks down on the extremists with- out gaining some sort of concession from the Israelis first, such as the freezing of settlements, would be seen by his own people as having sold out to the enemy, and would not last very long. The status of Jerusalem. If, as is likely, no accord can be reached on this perennially thorny issue in the short term, it should be left to be decided at a later date, after a greater level of trust has been estab- lished. The issue of Jerusalem can easily wait another five or 10 years, or even longer. Palestinian refugees. The most contentious issue, and the one that will ultimately make or break the peace process, is the fate of approx- imately six million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora. According to figures released by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, in its 2000 World Refugee Survey report, about a quarter of them live in Jordan (1,512,700), with the rest in Syria (374,000), Lebanon (370,000), Saudi Arabia (123,000), Iraq (90,000), Kuwait (35,000), the Gaza Strip (798,000) and the West Bank (569,700). Many of the refugees live in squalid camps, their lives, and those of their children and grandchildren, in limbo for decades. To address this reality will require a two-step approach involv- ing the Arab states where the refugees are currently encamped and the cooperation of the devel- oped world. As a first step, the Palestinian Authority would issue to all Palestinian refugees, wherever they are located, a “B-type” pass- port. That will solve the immediate problem in the sense that the refugees would become citizens of the new Palestinian state. However, they would not be granted the right to settle in Israel/Palestine, in recognition of the grim reality that Israel will almost certainly never allow those refugees living outside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to “return” to live in Palestine. Instead, they would receive finan- cial compensation and assistance in immigrating to countries such as Australia, Canada, the U.S. and some European nations. (There is a prece- dent for such a move, when Great Britain offered similar conditions to Asians who had been expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin Dada.) At some point in the future, visitation rights could be granted on an individual In the post-Saddam Hussein era, Arab leaders must stop muzzling their own peoples and denying them basic freedoms.