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US and Israeli failure to respond meaningfully
to PLO moderation resulted in the PLO's opposition to the US-led
attack on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. The PLO did not endorse
Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, but it saw Saddam Hussein's challenge
to the US and the Gulf oil-exporting states as a way to alter
the regional status quo and focus attention on the question
of Palestine. After the war, the PLO was diplomatically isolated.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cut off financial support they had
been providing, bringing the PLO to the brink of crisis.
After the Gulf War, the US sought to stabilize
its position in the Middle East by promoting a resolution of
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite their turn against the PLO,
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were anxious to resolve the Arab-Israeli
conflict and remove the potential for regional instability it
created. The administration of President Bush felt obliged to
its Arab allies, and pressed a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir to open negotiations with the Palestinians and
the Arab states at a multilateral conference convened in Madrid,
Spain, in October 1991. Shamir's conditions, which the US accepted,
were that the PLO be excluded from the talks and that the Palestinian
desires for independence and statehood not be directly addressed.
In subsequent negotiating sessions held in Washington,
DC, Palestinians were represented by a delegation from the occupied
territories. Participants in this delegation were subject to
Israeli approval, and residents of East Jerusalem were barred
on the grounds that the city is part of Israel. Although the
PLO was formally excluded from these talks, its leaders regularly
consulted with and advised the Palestinian delegation. Although
Israeli and Palestinian delegations met many times, little progress
was achieved. Prime Minister Shamir announced after he left office
that his strategy was to drag out the Washington negotiations
for ten years, by which time the annexation of the West Bank
would be an accomplished fact.
A new Israeli Labor Party government led by Yitzhak
Rabin assumed office in June 1992 and promised rapid conclusion
of an Israel-Palestinian agreement. Instead, the Washington negotiations
became stalemated after December 1992, when Israel expelled over
400 Palestinian residents of the occupied territories who were
accused (but not tried or convicted) of being radical Islamist
activists. Human rights conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip deteriorated dramatically after Rabin assumed office. This
undermined the legitimacy of the Palestinian delegation to the
Washington talks and prompted the resignation of several delegates.
Lack of progress in the Washington talks and deterioration
of the economic and human rights conditions in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip accelerated the growth of a radical Islamist
challenge to the PLO. Violent attacks against Israeli targets
by HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Islamic Jihad further
exacerbated tensions. Ironically, before the intifada, Israeli
authorities had enabled the development of Islamist organizations
as a way to divide Palestinians in the occupied territories.
But as the popularity of Islamists grew and challenged the moderation
of the PLO, they came to regret their policy of encouraging political
Islam as an alternative to the PLO's secular nationalism. Eventually,
Yitzhak Rabin came to believe that HAMAS, Jihad and the broader
Islamic movements of which they were a part posed more of a threat
to Israel than the PLO. |
