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The “Camp Wye” Accords
By Harvey Sicherman
Harvey Sicherman, Ph.D., is president of the Foreign Policy ResearchInstitute and a former aide to three US secretaries of state.He is author of Palestinian Autonomy, Self-Government, and Peace. — Ed.
On October 23, 1998, after nine days of strenuous summitry at the Wye plantation in Maryland, President Clinton extracteda memorandum of agreement from Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasir Arafat.He did so through the method made famous two decades earlier,when Jimmy Carter’s tireless shuttle between Anwar Sadat and MenachemBegin produced the Camp David Accords. But what may be dubbedthe “Camp Wye Accords” is still at best an interim step. The mostimportant outcome of the memorandum may therefore be the transformationof the American role, as both sides prepare for negotiations onfinal status.
To understand this, three questions must be answered.
The Way to Wye
Those who read the “Wye River Memorandum” will find familiar ground,for it revisits subjects negotiated at Oslo in August 1993, OsloII in September 1995, and the Hebron Accord of January 1997. Throughoutthis process there seemed an inverse ratio between confidenceand diplomacy; the less confidence, the more diplomacy requiredto achieve yet another affirmation by the parties of a partnershipthat existed only on paper. It was clear even before Rabin’s murderin 1995 that most Israelis had come to doubt Arafat’s commitmentto combat terrorism, while the Palestinians saw little improvementin their lives, except an Authority bursting with police and bureaucrats.Thus, as friction and fear increased, the parties appeared tolose their way in what Israeli diplomat Uri Savir called “theabyss between cooperation and conflict.”
The leaders did not help. Both Netanyahu, Oslo’s opponent electedto “fix the peace,” and Arafat, forever alternating between peaceand jihad, found political benefit in tension. Yet neither was preparedto jettison Oslo when the alternative was war.
A bout of dangerous violence in Jerusalem in September 1996 broughtheavy American intervention into a process that until then hadbeen largely conducted directly by the Israelis and the Palestinians.This led to Hebron in January 1997, with its side letter fromSecretary of State Christopher outlining mutual expectations ofreciprocity.
Instead, there followed Israel’s Har Homa building project andArafat’s rejection of Israel’s first redeployment as “peanuts”(three redeployments were specified in Oslo II, but not theirsize). Arafat abandoned security cooperation and encouraged violence.Netanyahu replied with economic sanctions and a threat to actdirectly against targets in the Authority areas. An alarmed U.S.Secretary of State Albright then demanded that the parties resumeserious cooperation or stew in their own juices. Finally, on October8, 1997, Arafat and Netanyahu met to lower tension, but not muchmore.
Washington agreed with Israel’s contention that Arafat had failedthe security test but also accepted the Palestinian argument thatfurther Israeli redeployments were essential (the PA ruled 98percent of the Palestinian population, but fully controlled onlythree percent of the territory). The US therefore rejected Netanyahu’sargument that Oslo should be abandoned for an immediate negotiationon final status. In January 1998, peace process coordinator DennisRoss presented US ideas for reviving Oslo through mutual “confidence-buildingmeasures”: meaningful Israeli withdrawals from at least 13 percentof the land and Palestinian security action, linked so that bothsides would move together. This was the proposal eventually negotiatedat Wye, but not before the “partners” spent ten months in a boutof evasion.
Arafat won the initial round by going limp into the arms of theAmericans after resuming limited security cooperation under theauspices of the CIA. The U.S., already anxious about a stalematethat was impeding its attempt to tighten the screws on Iraq, thenfocused on Israel. Netanyahu’s rough political experience withhis coalition on Hebron and his equivocation toward Oslo—a “badagreement” that he would “honor” nonetheless—made him most reluctantto yield territory, especially if the new map would isolate someof the smaller Israeli settlements. There then ensued “the showdownthat was ... and wasn’t” (Peacefacts, May 1998) as Washington issued the Israeli leader ultimatum afterultimatum, emissary after emissary, rethinking after rethinking,all of which collapsed in mid-May when it became clear that Clintonwould not confront Netanyahu on behalf of Arafat. Mrs. Albrightthereupon advised the Palestinian leader to contact Netanyahudirectly.
This is not what the Rais expected. He had accepted the U.S. plan“in principle,” expected the minimum 13 percent, and observedthe developing American-Israeli battle with an adroit silence.But the PA was broke, its legislature in rebellion over corruption,and Hamas once more growing in popularity.
Twice before Arafat had chosen violence to get Netanyahu’s attention,but his relations with Washington now precluded that tactic. Instead,Arafat chose the threat of violence to come: a unilateral declarationof statehood on May 4, 1999, when the five-year Oslo autonomyagreement expired, if no agreement was reached on final status.
Arafat had often spoken of such statehood, and in theory “Filastin”already existed by Arafat’s own proclamation in November 1988.A decade later, however, this seemed less illusory. On May 6,at the height of U.S.-Israeli tensions, Hillary Clinton said publiclythat “it will be in the long-term interest of the Middle Eastfor Palestine to be a state,” and no one believed White Houseprotestations that this was a private, irrelevant opinion. DespiteU.S. opposition, the UN General Assembly voted on July 7 to upgradethe PLO’s observer status to “Palestine,” a non-voting categorythat nonetheless recognized the PA’s control of territory, a precursorto statehood.
Israeli indignation notwithstanding, further delay in reachingan agreement on another interim step had simply ceased to be inanyone’s interests. Quiet progress was made between the negotiatingteams in June and July. During these summer months, Netanyahualso prepared to deal with the “second vote” problem: a deal withArafat would easily pass the Knesset with opposition Labour support,but the second vote of no confidence might bring down the governmentwith its bare one-vote majority. When the Knesset in August supporteda first reading of a bill to schedule the next election, the PrimeMinister knew that he would probably have to face the voters soonerrather than later.
Finally, the various stars were in alignment. As intensive negotiationsbegan at Wye on October 14th, Netanyahu sprang a surprise: hisappointment of the controversial General Ariel Sharon, a leadingopponent of Oslo, as his foreign minister. A military hero butalso the much-criticized architect of Israel’s Lebanese war in1982, Sharon had promoted Jewish settlements throughout the WestBank. He and Netanyahu, one-time political allies, had exchangedhard and very quotable words. Still, Sharon wanted a criticalrole in final status talks, and his becoming foreign ministereliminated the Prime Minister’s most serious internal opponent.
What’S New and What’S Not
The “Wye River Memorandum” ploughs and reploughs familiar ground.
Israeli demands for Palestinian action on security issues areembodied in a specific timetable of actions that should imprisonwanted terrorists in PA jails; reduce the rolls of PA police from40,000 to the Oslo-authorized 30,000; act against the Hamas “infrastructure”;collect unauthorized weapons; and take other measures specifiedin a secret U.S.-brokered security plan. The Israelis will alsoget at last the public spectacle of a mass Palestinian gatheringto renounce the Palestinian Charter’s anti-Israel provisions,presided over by President Clinton.
In return, the Israelis redeploy from 13 percent of their exclusivelycontrolled territory. Three percent is to become a “nature preserve”on which no new building is allowed, thereby preventing Palestinianobstruction of Israeli security requirements. All in all, thePalestinians will have control or mixed control over 40 percentof the West Bank. Israel will relocate several military basesand construct access routes to newly isolated settlements.
Finally, the Palestinians obtain long-sought rights to operatean airport and safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank. Bothsides also expect fresh financial assistance, said to be at the$500 million level. Economic cooperation committees are also tobe revived.
Wye breaks fresh ground primarily through the mechanism for carryingout the reciprocal obligations. A five-stage timeline attachedto the Memorandum indicates that Israeli redeployments over twelveweeks are to occur only as the Palestinians fulfill their securitypledges, as certified by various U.S.-chaired committees. Bothsides will also commence “accelerated” final status negotiations.The “witness”—President Clinton—thus also becomes the judge ofIsraeli and Palestinian performance.
Wye, then, draws a series of red lines on Israeli-Palestinianreality—exactly what behavior is expected and when, a great ambitiongiven that very few of the Oslo deadlines have ever been met.This mechanism is also the last chance to reclaim Oslo’s promisethat both Israelis and Palestinians will gain from cooperativeeffort. And the United States has become a “superpartner,” bothparticipant and judge of their efforts.
The Americanization of Oslo
The summit at Wye, like other summits, pitted contending egos(not only policies) against each other. The drama was largelysupplied by Netanyahu (the threatened walk-out and last-minutequarrel over the Pollard spy case); pathos (the visibly ailingKing Hussein); and high theater (the signing ceremony). When itwas over, Clinton had created a new reality. He had passed theArab-Israeli political virility test through his willingness tocommit his prestige and personal effort. “He never stops,” saidNetanyahu.
In doing so, Clinton also visibly altered the U.S. role. So preeminentis the U.S. in the Wye memorandum, especially in the supervisorycommittees, that the agreement sometimes appears less an Israeli-Palestinianartifact than a U.S. deal with each of them alone. This change,reflected in the CIA’s newly public duties as both monitor andfacilitator, moves Washington onto tricky ground. The U.S. hasdone best when it reduced the risks to two leaders who were convincedof each other’s desire to make a deal. It has done worst whenit substituted its own promises for those the parties would notmake to each other.
From 1993 until the Jerusalem tunnel crisis of 1996, Oslo hadbeen conceived, birthed, and nurtured primarily by Israel andthe Palestinians, with U.S. assistance. More recently, the UnitedStates has taken over the central role as the parties lost faithin each other. As happened on the way to Wye, the U.S. will haveto be careful that it does not simply collapse the negotiationsaltogether by bullying one party, then disappointing the other.Israel, in particular, has reason to fear this pattern, but Arafatcould also become a victim of excessive expectations.
In that sense, the other crucial move at Wye, especially for finalstatus talks, may be the appointment of Ariel Sharon. A hardenedsurvivor of Israeli right-wing politics and a respected militaryman, the burly general has developed his own contacts with thePalestinians. An opponent of Oslo but also a realist, Sharon maywell determine whether Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy can be revivedand with it, a reduced burden for the United States.