“Arafat is taking a risk,” said Menachem “Chemi” Shalev, who is the diplomatic analyst for Ma’ariv, one of Israel’s three largest newspapers, as well as a commentator for CNN.
This calculated pause may prove to be Arafat’s “greatest mistake,” however, if outside forces suddenly launch new terror attacks, Shalev said last week before a Hebron deal appeared imminent.
Israeli officials already delayed the Hebron pullback for months, following a series of suicide bombings in Israel earlier this year and the election of the Likud-led government in May. This fall, negotiations resumed.
“As far as I know, the agreement on Hebron has been finished,” said Shalev, who was visiting San Francisco last week as part of an Anti-Defamation League lecture tour.
Analysts have suggested that Arafat had been waiting for U.S. elections to pass and for support from Europeans and other Arab states to grow.
But a number of scenarios could delay or essentially bury the agreement if Arafat now waits too long to sign it, Shalev said.
Islamic fundamentalists could re-emerge with new suicide bombings. Or the “most fanatic” Jews in Hebron or nearby Kiryat Arba could try to pre-empt the signing through violent attacks or bombings, he said.
Netanyahu has reaffirmed his commitment to the Oslo Accords and knows he must carry out the Hebron pullback, Shalev said, but the most radical Jewish settlers “don’t care about the niceties of international agreements.”
The son of Israeli diplomats, the 43-year-old Jerusalemite developed his knowledge of regional politics beyond the pale of the newsroom.
He served in the Israel Defense Force for eight years, as general manager of a computer-based publishing firm and as chief information officer for the Israeli Consulate in New York. In the mid-1980s, he switched to journalism. He joined the Jerusalem Post’s reporting staff as a political and diplomatic correspondent, then resigned after the Labor-leaning paper became pro-Likud. He then joined the Hebrew daily Davar as a diplomatic reporter and analyst.
Shalev, who has covered the peace process and foreign relations, said he “wholeheartedly” supports the Labor Party-initiated Oslo Accords.
“Oslo was — could still be — the greatest thing that could happen to the state of Israel.”
If and when the Hebron redeployment finally takes place, two other Oslo issues will immediately come to the fore — a further redeployment from the West Bank and the final-status talks.
At this point, Shalev prefers not to analyze the final-status negotiations — the last leg of the Oslo Accords in which the issues of Jerusalem’s status, Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements and permanent borders are on the table.
That’s because Shalev does not hold out much hope for their success. “I don’t think they’ll get anywhere,” he said.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators for the final-status talks met one time before Israeli elections in May. Nothing has happened since then.
Because final-status negotiations are so tenuous, Shalev said, he sees the further redeployment of Israeli troops in the West Bank as the more pressing issue for now.
Palestinians now control less than 10 percent of the West Bank’s land. According to the Oslo Accords, Israeli troops were scheduled to begin further pullbacks in September.
Under the Labor-led government, Shalev said, Arafat considered the option of not pushing for these further redeployments because a degree of trust and understanding existed between the negotiators.
“But Arafat will not trade horses with Netanyahu,” Shalev said.
Shalev compared Oslo to a prenuptial agreement. When the marriage is going smoothly, no one pays attention to the details. When the relationship goes sour, the fine print suddenly becomes crucial.
Some on the right argue that Israel’s former government overlooked too many breaches of the fine print. But Shalev asserts that each side has been responsible for 50 to 60 violations of the agreements.
“It’s not clear to me that the Palestinian violations are worse than the Israeli violations,” he said.
Further redeployment of Israeli troops from the West Bank will be problematic because the Oslo Accords exempt the pullback from certain areas, including military posts.
Netanyahu will assert that this language translates into a very limited pullback, Shalev said, while Arafat will claim that it means Israeli troops must leave nearly all of the West Bank.
Shalev did not predict how further redeployments will take shape. But beyond that, he will not discount the potential collapse of the Oslo Accords — and the possibility that an Israeli-Palestinian war could erupt.
“I think it is realistic,” he said.