How Wye Failed the Palestinians

The Interim Agreement signed Oct. 23 at the Wye Plantation represents a crystallization of the asymmetries of the rights of Palestinians and Israeli Jews in the Middle East. The Wye Memorandum secures permanent Israeli control of at least 60 percent of the West Bank and limited Palestinian autonomy of at most 40 percent in the undefined future. Its stipulations regarding Israeli security severely undercut the human rights of native Palestinian inhabitants. Most fundamentally, like the Oslo Accords, it does not take into account essential components of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Wye Memorandum cannot be understood except in the context of the Oslo Accords which preceded it. The Accords were to be the actualization of the "land for peace" model which many thought would culminate in a Palestinian state. But in fact, the Accords set the framework for a very limited Palestinian autonomy, delegating to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) the dirty job of monitoring the activities of Palestinians and suppressing Palestinian struggle for true self-determination and human rights. Worst, the Accords gave the P.A. very little ability to improve the life conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza regarding such essential issues as employment, commerce, travel and property rights.

The Oslo Accords, coupled with the Wye Memorandum, give the Palestinian Authority some of the trappings of a state, such as the right to issue stamps and the right to have a television station but denies the P.A. important rights of a state, including control over land and water, the right to make decisions about immigration and even the ability to create a healthy democratic atmosphere.

Furthermore, the Memorandum stipulates that the CIA shall be closely involved with the P.A. in implementing security measures, thus ensuring for the United States an imperial outpost in the West Bank and Gaza at the expense of any real Palestinian sovereignty. Finally, the Oslo Accords and the Wye Agreement virtually ensure that refugees, Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem and Palestinians living inside the Jewish state will remain dispossessed.

The Wye Memorandum itself poses serious threats to the fundamental human rights of the Palestinians of the area, specifically the right to free speech and association, the right to a fair trial and the right not to be tortured. The Memorandum's disproportionate emphasis on the Palestinian Authority's "security obligations" to the state of Israel relegates Palestinian rights to an afterthought. In a place where Palestinian homes are still summarily demolished and their land casually expropriated if a household member is even suspected to be linked to an act of violence, the lack of an explicit mention of the human rights of Palestinians is a blatant omission.

The Memorandum requires that the Palestinian side pursues a policy of "zero tolerance for terror and violence" and "take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities," thereby subordinating the human rights of Palestinians in the name of Israel's arguably overstated security imperative. Indeed, Human Rights Watch has found that since the signing of the Memorandum two weeks ago, there have been widespread instances of torture of Palestinians during interrogations as well as unfair trials.

Like the Oslo Accords before it, the Wye Memorandum delays discussion of such pressing issues as the status of Jerusalem and the settlements. Last Monday, Israel began to expand the settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron, a West Bank Palestinian city with a small presence of Israeli Jews. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also given the go-ahead on an extremely controversial Jewish settlement in Ras Al-Amoud in the heart of Arab East Jerusalem. Over the past 10 years, the Israeli government has implemented settlement plans that have drastically altered the population of East Jerusalem, which was in 1967 entirely Palestinian and is now mainly Israeli Jewish.

Just last spring, a further annexation of settlements and Arab villages of the West Bank into the territory of Jerusalem buttressed this effort to Judaicize Jerusalem. This plan secured that East Jerusalem would never leave Israeli hands. Last week, Foreign Minister Arial Sharon was reported in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot to advocate a 20-year incubation before the final status agreements. This must be an ominous sign to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who watch settlements and the infrastructure that supports them encroach upon and divide the rolling hills they have known all of their lives.

While the Oslo Accords designated that 90 percent of the West Bank would eventually be under Palestinian control, this number has shrunk to 40 percent under the Wye Memorandum. How much more will it shrink before the final status is decided?

It is also crucial to consider the conspicuous lack of accommodation of Palestinian refugees (64 percent of the total Palestinian population) or Palestinians living in Israel in both the Oslo Accords and the Wye Memorandum. Many Palestinians living in other places in the Arab world are still living as refugees in camps, deprived of citizenship and its benefits, often disproportionately impoverished. In Lebanon, where Palestinians have not been incorporated into the state because their large numbers are seen as a threat to the delicate balance of religious groups, Palestinians from the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp, which holds 350,000 Palestinians, have protested the Wye Memorandum.

Inside Israel, Palestinians, who make up approximately 15 percent of Israeli citizens, are systematically discriminated against with regard to education, employment and property rights. The Fourth Geneva Convention on Human Rights stipulates that "any entity which claims to rule a region should give equal rights to all persons within the region regardless of religion or race." Israel, having adopted this Convention, must act in accordance with it.

For its destructive implications regarding human rights, for the scant amount of land it transfers to the Palestinian Authority and for its failure to tackle central issues such as refugees, the Wye Memorandum is an inadequate and even dangerous agreement. As the growing resistance to Arafat from within the Palestinian Authority shows, an unjust peace simply will not be stable. We can only hope that after this peace process crumbles, as it almost inevitably will, a new one will begin that truly recognizes the needs and rights of all parties involved. Waqaas S. Fahmawi '99 is a government concentrator in Kirkland House. Amahl A. Bishara '98 graduated from Adams House last spring.