Filling Holes in Oslo Accords
Prime Minister Netanyahu called the Oslo Accords “Swiss cheese,” and said the Wye Plantation agreement filled some of the holes. OK. But in between Oslo and Wye we have already had the Israel-Palestinian Interim Accord, Oslo II and the Hebron Accord with its American adjunct “The Note for the Record” — all designed to fill the holes in the cheese. In each of those carefully worded agreements, the Israelis provided new concrete inducements to “encourage” the Palestinians to keep the promises they originally made at Oslo.
Prime Minister Netanyahu called the Oslo Accords “Swiss cheese,” and said the Wye Plantation agreement filled some of the holes. OK. But in between Oslo and Wye we have already had the Israel-Palestinian Interim Accord, Oslo II and the Hebron Accord with its American adjunct “The Note for the Record” — all designed to fill the holes in the cheese. In each of those carefully worded agreements, the Israelis provided new concrete inducements to “encourage” the Palestinians to keep the promises they originally made at Oslo. The Israelis have now given 40% of the land; 97% of the population; powers of police, education and taxation; and a variety of security-related points (no inspection of Arafat’s airplane when he lands in Gaza and no inspection of Palestinians traveling along the safe-passageway between Gaza and the West Bank are two of the new ones). The Palestinians have promised yet again to change their Covenant, modify the size and composition of their police force, stop the incitement to violence and destroy the terrorist infrastructure — no more than they promised in 1993.
If the Palestinians actually do it this time, fine. But we remember the sighs of relief after the Hebron Accord in January 1997. THIS TIME, the pundits and the politicians said, the Palestinians would REALLY meet their obligations. And, quite importantly, they said that if the Palestinians failed to fulfill the bargain, NO ONE would blame Israel for digging in its heels. The Israeli withdrawal from Hebron was completed in 72 hours; the Palestinians are at 21 months and counting, but the Israelis were nevertheless pressured into ceding 13% MORE land at Wye for the same old promises. And a PA police force reduced from 40,000 to 24,000 can easily be enlarged again, while land moved from Area B to Area A is lost.
So the Americans thought a new formula might help, and at Wye a troublesome element was added — the CIA. By inserting America’s intelligence agency into a formal role as security adjudicator, at least two new problems arise:
1. The CIA’s job is to gather and assess intelligence information. That’s all. They are supposed to pass information along to the political authorities who make political policy for the United States — the Defense Department, the President, the Congress. But the CIA doesn’t even do that limited job all that well — this is the same CIA, after all, that was surprised by the Indian nuclear explosion in May and said of the three-stage North Korean ballistic missile shot over the Japanese mainland in August, “We didn’t know they could do a third stage!”
The Wye mission is blatantly political. It makes the CIA a partner to Israel and the PA, inescapably subject to the politics of the relations between a foreign government and a foreign entity, and relations between both of them and the United States. Morris Amitay, a longtime Washington hand and Vice Chairman of JINSA noted, “It is fair to assume the CIA will get the same kind of political guidance this Administration gave the UNSCOM inspectors in Iraq, to wit, avoid finding violations in order to avoid having to do something about them.” This agreement asks of the CIA what should not be asked of it.
2. Three-way arbitration on whether the Palestinians are keeping their end of the bargain means that Israel is looking at “majority rules” on the single issue that is the heart and soul of sovereign responsibility. The only acceptable arbiter of Israeli security should be the Israeli government. If the Israelis are not satisfied that the Palestinians are implementing a serious program against terrorism, and the Palestinians insist they are doing their best, the CIA will find itself picking sides where, in fact, only Israel’s opinion should count.
A third, perhaps marginal problem is that rather than encouraging cooperation between two sides that should, ultimately, find it in their interest to cooperate directly, the CIA will likely end up like the Multinational Force of Observors (MFO) in the Sinai. After nearly 20 years, Israel and Egypt want it – rather than each other – to be responsible for maintaining peace in Sinai. It is true that the Israelis agreed at Wye to help put the CIA in this ultimately untenable position. Mr. Netanyahu said it was an American initiative which he accepted and we have to suspect that acceptance came at the end of one of those marathon negotiating sessions. It is a bad idea,and we are pleased that Sen. Shelby, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has decided to hold hearings to address the issue.
But, of course, there is one way to make the whole thing work — all we need is for the Palestinians actually to do what they have said they would do since September 1993. If they do, then the CIA will be able to do relatively little damage, Prime Minister Netanyahu will have truly made enormous strides in bringing a secure peace to Israel and the Wye Agreement will go down in history — halevai, as they say. But for now we would strongly caution against a premature acceptance of rhetoric in place of concrete accomplishments.