On the eve of the 1967 war, Abu Akram, a Palestinian, arranged with a truck driver to move his furniture and then toured his neighbors' homes in Hadath Beirut to bid them farewell. He then gave them his address in Haifa so they can visit him after the liberation, and so he can show them some hospitality and return theirs. (Several days after the defeat, in the shop of Abu Samir -another Palestinian-, Abu Akram fell from his chair and died of grief). The war was followed by the Three No's which were soon dropped, and since then, we have been wearing the clothes of the Peace Process, which are translucent and always change according to fashion, just like those on the catwalks of Milan and Paris. However, the origin remains much the same, in one form or another, as iterated by the excellent U.S diplomat Willian Quandt in a book that bears its name in mid-1975. The historical background can be summed up as follows: the British diplomat sir Mark Sykes and the French diplomat Georges Picot signed in May 1916 a secret agreement to divide out countries following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Then on 2/11/1917, the Balfour Declaration was issued in the form of a letter sent by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour to Baron Rothschild, in which His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, on the condition that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Since the Americans were newcomers to the business of colonialism, President Wilson, in the summer of 1919, sent a committee of two men that bore their names, the King-Crane Commission, to survey local public opinion in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Anatolia and Armenia. The Arabs said that they do not want a Jewish state in their midst. However, the British and the French had already divided the region behind the Americans' backs, and the British had even sold a part of Palestine to the Zionist Movement. I skip forward to the Peace Process, starting with Camp David, where Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin agreed on the basics of a peace treaty sponsored by Jimmy Carter. In 1981, we received the first American peace broker who was Philip Habib, and his task was to prevent a Syrian-Israeli confrontation after Syria installed surface to air missiles in Lebanon. After 30 years of countless peace brokers, especially American ones, I even think that Sen. John Kerry purchased a flat in Damascus to continue his mediation efforts, and the cause is also missiles. However, this time the missiles belong to Hezbollah, which arrive in Lebanon through Syria (I wonder if there are transit fees on these missiles?) In 1982, the first Lebanon war erupted, and then the second in 2006. We are now awaiting the third, the fourth and even the fortieth. The same year witnessed the Fez Initiative, during the Arab Summit, wherein the concept of ‘Land for Peace' was recognized, and which is the basis of UNSC Resolution 242 on 22/11/1967 (and the ensuing debate of withdrawing from the territories or some territories) and also UNSC Resolution 338 on 22/10/1973. The first intifada then began in December 1987 in Gaza and spread to the West Bank, and then stopped with the Madrid Conference in November 1991. We then witnessed the second intifada which started on 29/9/2000, and the desecration of the Holy Mosque by the butcher Ariel Sharon. This intifada has supposedly stopped without any announcement, because there is talk now about a third intifada. The name of Camp David then resurged on 9/13/1993, after 15 years of the agreement between Egypt and Israel, when Shimon Peres and Abu Mazen, in the presence of Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton, and three thousand personalities, signed a peace plan on the same table that Egypt and Israel signed theirs on. The following year, specifically on 4/5/1994, Rabin and Arafat signed a deal which brought about the phrases ‘Gaza First' and ‘Jericho First', and it seems that they were first and last, until further notice. Then there was an ‘interim agreement' signed by Rabin and Arafat in Washington on 28/9/1995. But then hardly two months later, Rabin was assassinated. We also heard about the agreement of Wye River or the Wye River Memorandum in 1998. Camp David resurged again in 2000, but there was a failure to reach an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, prompting Bill Clinton to issue the so-called Clinton Parameters in December 2000, i.e. a month only before he left the White House, and before the arrival of the genius peacemaker George Bush Jr., or the son, or the kid. Following the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, peace efforts intensified in parallel with the wars of the Bush administrations. The Crown Prince (at the time) Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz threatened Bush, causing the latter to announce that the two-state solution is a U.S policy. The UN Security Council then passed a resolution to that effect on 12/3/2002, and two weeks later, the Arab Summit in Beirut endorsed Prince Abdullah's plan which then became the Arab Peace Plan. In 2003, there was the Road Map, and in 2007, the Annapolis Conference, and between them, the Quartet and its representative Tony Blair. At present, there is Senator George Mitchell, and people might have forgotten that he chaired the fact finding mission that presented its report in Sharm el-Sheikh on 12/9/2002. Mitchell, like Philip Habib before him, has Lebanese roots. Today, we have the ‘proximity talks' which may become direct negotiations. But the question is what will the upcoming year and then 2020 and 2090 bring us? The clothes of the Peace Process will still be there, clothes that do not exist as in the Emperor's New Clothes fairy tale. However, the spectators are all naked, and there is nothing to cover them except yet another fashion craze in yet another new season. [email protected]
