Peace Through 'De-Occupation'

By Michael Tarazi

Wednesday, June 19, 2002; Page A21

After 35 years of Israeli occupation, most Palestinians roll their eyes at the mention of the phrase "interim agreement" -- and with good reason. Interim agreements are Israel's way of tossing the Palestinians a few bones, such as the right to design postage stamps or issue license plates -- while Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land and build more illegal Israeli colonies. In other words, interim agreements are Israel's way of prolonging its occupation of Palestinian territory, not ending it. This is why Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon keeps talking of a "long-term" interim agreement -- and why Palestinians will have none of it.

But despite the visceral Palestinian reaction, an interim agreement could work if it addressed Palestinian concerns over Israel's brutal and unyielding policy of colonizing the occupied territories. Since Israel's 1967 occupation, Israel has transferred, in flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva Convention, nearly 370,000 Israeli civilians into those territories to live in more than 130 illegal Israeli colonies.

The enterprise, which requires confiscating Palestinian land not only for colonies but also for related roads and infrastructure, has resulted in Israeli colonies' controlling nearly 42 percent of the West Bank. Since the 1993 Oslo accords, the number of settlers living in the occupied territories has nearly doubled. While the world has been distracted by violence in the region, the very causes of that violence have continued unabated. Sharon has constructed 34 new illegal colonies since taking power.

This is the single largest factor in undermining Palestinian confidence that Israel will ever abide by international law and withdraw to its 1967 borders -- a lack of trust that lies at the heart of the current wave of Palestinian resistance.

For that reason, an interim agreement could work only if it tangibly reversed Israel's occupation rather than allowing it to continue unabated -- that is, established a mechanism of "de-occupation."

The concept is simple: Create incentives for the settlers to move back to Israel. Many of the settlers living in the occupied territories live there not for ideological reasons but because it makes good financial sense. Every Israeli government, Likud or Labor, has maintained incentives to lure Israelis into the territories. Most settlers enjoy a wide array of benefits, including subsidized mortgages, a 7 percent reduction in income taxes and subsidized education. Given similar incentives for doing so, many would prefer to return to Israel.

De-occupation would require Israel not only to put a freeze on all its colonization activity, including the large loophole of "natural growth," but also to end the incentive package that transforms innocent Israelis into political pawns. But de-occupation goes a step further by requiring Israel to establish similar incentives to lure Israeli settlers back to Israel.

De-occupation's advantage would be that it would reverse occupation not through a forced and perhaps violent evacuation of Israelis but rather by allowing settlers to exercise their own choice. Most important, by addressing the existential threat that Israeli colonies pose to the Palestinians, successful de-occupation would inspire confidence among a justifiably skeptical Palestinian population.

But given that Israel has historically demonstrated that it is more interested in land than in peace, most Palestinians wonder what could possibly induce Israel to adopt such a mechanism. First, a stick: The United States would actually live up to its stated ideal of defending the rule of law and condition U.S. aid on Israel's implementation of such a mechanism.

Then, a carrot: Address Israel's own existential threat -- the Palestinian refugees who have not been able to return to Israel. For each settler who returned to Israel, a Palestinian refugee who wanted to return to the future Palestinian state would be admitted to the occupied territories. There is, of course, no moral equivalence between Palestinian refugees who have a legal right to return and Israeli settlers who are residing illegally in the territories. Thus a Palestinian refugee should never be forced to give up a right in order to induce Israel to correct its "wrongs." But if a refugee would have chosen to return to a Palestinian state anyway, and if choosing this option helps dispel Israelis' concerns about the existence of their country, why not allow that refugee to exercise his or her option sooner rather than later?

The ultimate benefit is that an interim agreement addressing the existential concerns of both sides has a greater chance of leading to a successful permanent status agreement. But if another "transitional" phase allows Israel to continue colonizing Palestinian territory, it will only repeat the mistakes of the Oslo process. And we have all seen how bloody those mistakes have become.

The writer, an American attorney, is a legal adviser to the negotiations affairs department of the Palestine Liberation Organization.