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November 27, 1998/ 8 Kislev 5759, Vol. 51, No. 10
Clinton keeps Wye implementation from becoming unglued
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
There is one person keeping the Wye agreement from falling apart - President Clinton. As implementation of the land-for-security agreement gets off to a belated start, the U.S. president's pivotal role in the process is growing increasingly clear.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat are no longer under the pressure of Clinton's immediate presence as they were during the intense days and nights of negotiations in Maryland that led up to the accord. But just the same, the two labor under the knowledge that Clinton is soon to arrive in the region for a visit of profound significance. By scheduling the visit at a key point in the implementation process, the president ensconced himself as the mediator and guarantor of the process.
When the accord was signed Oct. 23 at the White House, many commentators focused on the active role assigned in the agreement to the CIA. They felt that the usually secretive spy service was being given a highly public role and would become the arbiter of security disputes that were bound to arise once the redeployment got under way. While the CIA role is indeed significant, Clinton's ongoing role in the process is shaping up as the most significant American contribution to the accord's implementation.
Amid the high drama of a Likud government turning over land to Palestinian control last week - the first of three redeployments called for under the accord - the two sides were soon trading their usual charges and countercharges. In dispute were the release of prisoners, the building of bypass roads, the seizure of land, the opening of a safe-passage route between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and numerous other issues still unresolved or unimplemented. But the Palestinians, for all their anger and resentment, were being supremely careful not to risk a rupture. And the Israelis, too, were equally careful not to be a spoiler, despite the Netanyahu government's need to mollify the hard-core right.
The reason: Clinton's visit during the third week of December. The president is scheduled to land at the Arafat Airport in southern Gaza, in what is being seen as a dramatic act of encouragement for Palestinian national aspirations. After more than a year of delays, the two sides recently agreed to the airport's opening on Nov. 24 after Israeli security concerns were met. The decision to name the airport after the Palestinian leader was made earlier this year.
Clinton's speech next month to thousands of Palestinian representatives in Gaza - among them the members of the Palestine National Council - will furnish the occasion for revoking the Palestinian Covenant, as called for under the Wye accord. The assembled delegates will vote by acclamation to abrogate the clauses of the document, originally published in 1964, that call for the eradication of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. It will not be quite the formal revocation by the PNC itself that Israel had demanded. But, given Clinton's personal involvement, Jerusalem will have to swallow its reservations.
The same applies to all the arguments presented in the period leading up to the presidential visit. Barring a major act of terrorism that takes many Israeli lives, the weeks ahead hold out the prospect of much lip-biting, as the two sides repress some of the outbursts of anger that have become a routine part of their negotiations. Behind the verbal fights this week, there seemed to be a nod-and-wink understanding between the two sides that much of the rhetoric is designed for domestic political purposes.
The Palestinians and their close allies, the Arab parties in the Knesset, make no bones about their hope that Netanyahu can hold his government together for the duration of the 12-week implementation period. Their implicit message: If that requires throwing sops to the Israeli right - then, up to a point, so be it.
David Landau writes from Jerusalem.
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