(MINNEAPOLIS) – After two decades of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, it is widely believed that the two-state solution is all but dead. Israel’s new opposition leader, and former military chief, Shaul Mofaz, who recently won the leadership of the centrist Kadima Party, told Israeli Radio, “The threat of us losing the Jewish majority and Israel becoming a bi-national state is the biggest threat to Israel, and time is working against us.”
After considerable prodding by the Egyptians, the only country at the time to have signed a peace agreement with Israel, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), announced in Cairo, on November 7, 1985, that he was renouncing terrorism. This became known as the Cairo Declaration and the first indication of a possible peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. Even though the conflict between the two sides did not abate, Arafat’s declaration marked the beginning of what would become a very long negotiating process.
Since the creation of Israel in1948, the plight of the Palestinians has been marked by one defeat after another. But it was not always at the hands of the Israelis. In 1970 a war broke out between Palestinian fighters and the Jordanian army after the Palestinians tried to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan. Thousands of Palestinian fighters and civilians were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless due to the conflict, known as “Black September.” In the end, Arafat’s PLO and other Palestinian factions involved in the fighting were expelled from the country.
Under the auspices of the Arab League the Palestinians were resettled in camps within Lebanon. From there, they not only continued their attacks on Israel, but also found themselves under attack by Lebanese opposed to their presence in the country. The fighting between the two sides escalated until Lebanon dissolved into civil war
On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces mounted a massive cross-border offensive into Southern Lebanon to rout out Palestinian fighters who were using the territory to launch attacks against the Jewish State. After defeating the Palestinians in the south, the fighters took refuge in the Lebanese capital Beirut. Instead of entering the city, the Israeli army halted their offensive on the outskirts in order to let the Arab League and other members of the international community intervene diplomatically. In the end the Israelis allowed the Palestinian fighters free passage out of Lebanon on ships, in return that they settle elsewhere and not come back to Lebanon.
Under the evacuation plan, the Palestinians were first sent to Cyprus where they were dispersed to countries throughout the region, including Jordan, North and South Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Greece and Tunisia. The PLO leadership, along with some 1,000 fighters, settled in Borj Cedria, near the Tunisian capital Tunis.
Even though the PLO was allowed to formally set up its organization in Tunisia, it did not come without a price. One of the biggest blows to the PLO occurred in October 1985, after a Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis while they were on their pleasure boat in Cyprus. In retaliation, Israeli fighter jets, with the aid of refueling tanker planes, flew across the Mediterranean to Tunisia and dropped multiple bombs on the PLO headquarters, killing 60 Palestinians and injuring scores of others.
Three years later during the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising), Palestinian guerrillas nearly breached Israel’s top-secret nuclear weapons installation in the Negev desert. This assault, combined with the Intifada, left Israeli officials embarrassed and the public, in general, infuriated. In retaliation, Israeli commandos mounted an ambitious operation to assassinate the PLO’s second-in-command and the Intifada mastermind, Khalil al Wazir “Abu Jihad.”
On the night of April 16, 1988, Israeli commandos using rubber dinghies launched from a warship, landed on the beach below the picturesque Tunisian village of Sidi Bou Said, just outside the capital Tunis. From there, they linked up with other Israeli agents posing as Lebanese tourists on fake passports and entered the home of Abu Jihad, killing him, his driver and a Tunisian guard posted outside in a hail of bullets. His wife and children who witnessed the attack were left unhurt. During the assault, another team flew a converted Boeing 707 over international airspaces and used sophisticated electronic devises to jam all telephones and communications in and around Sidi Bou Said so nobody could sound the alarm. Once the assault was over, all the Israelis left by sea.
In 1989, a year after Abu Jihad’s assassination, I arrived in Tunisia to take up my new post and by chance rented a small place in Sidi Bou Said, just up the hill from where the Israelis carried out their brazen attack. The main purpose for my assignment was to cover the initial talks between American diplomats, who were mediating on behalf of the Israelis, and representatives from the PLO.
Not satisfied with the Cairo Declaration alone, the Americans wanted more, before they were willing to lend their support to Palestinian peace overtures. On December 13, 1988 Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat, speaking before the United Nations in Geneva, pledged to end all violence and to recognize the State of Israel.
The front man for the U.S. negotiating team was the seasoned diplomat and Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr. Pelletreau had had numerous diplomatic postings throughout the region, and during the “Black September” uprisings in Jordan was even abducted off the streets of Amman by the radical Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Pelletreau was taken to a hotel and held with other hostages until he was able to escape.
Even though Arafat’s peace declaration was enough to get the Americans on board, it did little to appease other Palestinian factions. Radical Palestinian factions, many of whom were based in Syria, scorned the peace overtures as well as intellectuals and moderates, including the scholar and Columbia University professor Edward Said. The first such meeting between the Americans and the Palestinians took place under tight security at a guest palace in the Tunis suburb of Carthage a few days after Arafat’s historic speech in Geneva.
The Tunisians not only had to contend with the Palestinians and all their unsettling baggage, but ever since Egypt got suspend from the Arab League in 1979 for signing a peace treaty with Israel, the Tunisians had to also contend with the Arab League moving their headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. In a matter of a few years, Tunis went from being an obscure capital in the Maghreb to being the center of the Arab world. Journalists, diplomats, spies and their likes converged on Tunis. As one would expect, this put a lot of strain on the Tunisian security services, particularly in the wake of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets.
I didn’t realize it then, but I moved to Tunisia at one of the most exciting times in the country’s history. Only years later did I learn that half the people who I associated with weren’t actually who they said they were.
Initially the talks between the two sides were quite formal and held in venues that were open to the press. However, with time the meetings became more clandestine.
On one occasion the news agency that I worked for got tipped off about a meeting between Pelletreau and Arafat. Arafat was not willing to meet anyone less than a foreign minister, so if the rumor was in fact true, it would have been a scoop of sorts. Not wanting to rouse suspicion I told the taxi to drop me off around the corner. As I approached the address on foot, two Tunisian policemen accosted me and before I could even begin to explain what I was doing, and they whisked me away to the nearest police station. During my incarceration I was interrogated for hours and not allowed to contact anyone, not even my office.
There were two distinct sides to Tunisia back then; there was the one the tourist board wanted the outside world to see, and then there was the everyday side of Tunisia, which the average person was forced to endure. The tourist board’s Tunisia showed splendid beachfront hotels, pristine turquoise waters, picturesque and traditional marketplaces filled with friendly smiling people. The other side of Tunisia was a police state controlled by a paranoid autocrat, who had just come to power in a bloodless coup after deposing Habib Bourguiba, who many considered to be the “father of the Nation.” Instead of carrying out much-needed political reforms, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali went in the other direction, consolidating power in similar fashion to what Hafez Al Assad did in Syria. In the end, the only difference between Ben Ali’s Tunisia and Hafez al Assad’s Syria was that Tunisia marketed itself as a tourist destination.
Living and working as a journalist in Tunisia was not an easy task. From the beginning, the Tunisian authorities refused to give me a residence visa and permanent press accreditation. Every time I wanted to cover an event, I was required to get a temporary press pass. Tunisia was suddenly thrust into the international spotlight and instead of trying to accommodate, they did the complete opposite.
It was almost impossible to travel by car to any of the suburbs around Tunis at night without getting stopped at a police roadblock. Conversations at dinner parties usually would end with a debate on what was the best route to take back home in order to avoid the roadblocks. It almost seemed like the police manning checkpoints were given very simple instructions: trust no one and incarcerate anyone you don’t trust.
The PLO-U.S. dialogue eventually succeeded in laying the groundwork for the Madrid Summit and the eventual Oslo accords.
Whether a two state solution will ever come to fruition is anyone’s guess. I for one don’t believe it is viable seeing as how the last 20 years of negotiations have gone. My only suggestion, for both Palestinians and Israelis, is to return back to the negotiating table and this time focus on creating a viable “bi-national” state where both Palestinians and Israelis can live with equal rights and equal representation in a shared government. This should not be seen as a threat but an answer to a conflict that has continued since 1948.