#timeline #History

Autonomy as State Prevention: The Palestinian Question after Camp David, 1979–1982

Key takeaways

content: "@anziskaAutonomyStatePrevention2017" -file:@anziskaAutonomyStatePrevention2017

Reading notes

• Autonomy had long been used as a technique of foreign indirect control across the British Empire, from the Princely States of India to West Africa under High Commissioner Frederick Lugard

• Despite their significance, the autonomy talks are largely absent from historical accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.18 Among the leading studies, the Israeli historian Benny Morris dismisses autonomy as a “nonstarter,” while other scholars downplay or ignore the negotiations in the wake of Camp David.19 Dominant narratives of the peace process instead trace the beginning of a serious engagement with the Palestinian question to the Madrid and Oslo negotiation of the 1990s.

• Autonomy, as a political, diplomatic, and conceptual instrument of transformative occupation, became the ground upon which Israel cemented indefinite control over the Occupied Territories without any expiry date or formal annexation. During the talks, American and Egyptian officials adopted an Israeli version of limited autonomy as a solution to the Palestinian question. This approach stressed the concept of individual rights for “Arab inhabitants” of the Occupied Territories while precluding territorial control or the possibility of statehood.23 In proffering autonomy as an alternative to self-rule, Israeli diplomats sought to mitigate criticism of the occupation while simultaneously extending Israeli state sovereignty beyond the 1967 borders.

• Autonomist thinking, as the historian Dimitry Shumsky emphasizes, has a rich precedent in Jewish history, as a vehicle for a cohesive minority group to organize itself culturally and politically, albeit with limited sovereignty.

• In late December 1977, having reconsidered his blanket opposition in 1967, Begin presented his version of an autonomy plan for the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Israeli Knesset. Begin’s plan was nonterritorial, proposing autonomy through the election of administrative councils by “Arab inhabitants” of the territories.

• The PLO had reason to worry about the meaning of Camp David. Some months later, President Carter would publicly declare, “We’ve never espoused an independent Palestinian state. I think that would be a destabilizing factor there.”39 Carter’s legal counsel, Robert Lipshutz, questioned Sadat and other Arab leaders’ insistence on the inviolability of Palestinian statehood.

• In this U.S.-Israeli consensus on preventing Palestinian statehood, autonomy played a key conceptual and diplomatic role, establishing a flexible basis for transformative occupation that systematically dislocated territory from population. Diachronically it would defer Palestinian political rights, while synchronically it would suffocate the discursive life of sovereignty claims. Along these lines, while negotiating the final details of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in March 1979, Begin expanded on the implications of autonomy in discussions with President Carter. “We must be sure that no Palestinian state will emerge from the autonomy,” Begin implored. “Had we thought that out of autonomy a Palestinian state would arise we would never have suggested it. We will not accept a Palestinian state . . . We are speaking of autonomy, not sovereignty, not a state.

• The Likud government’s response to the Palestinian struggle for selfdetermination had been to launch a dramatically successful effort to settle Jews in the territories captured in 1967. Equating the settlers with Palestinian Arabs in Israel, Sharon asked Carter how he could prevent Jews from settling beyond the 1967 borders, given the number of Palestinian Arabs within Israel itself. “Altogether in this part of the world, I don’t see any possibility whatsoever to draw any geographical line which can divide between Jewish population and Arab population, because we live here together.” Such logic of equivalence between settlers and the Palestinian citizens of Israel suggested a retroactive justification of population exchange and the simultaneous denial of an interstate occupation beyond the 1967 borders.

• Neither did Sharon shy away from his boastful prediction of one million Jewish settlers in the territories: Believe me, Mr. President, when I use this figure of one million, saying that in 20–30 years I hope that one million Jews will live there, Mr. President, I can assure you, they will live there. There’s nothing to do about it. They will live there and if we said that we believe that in Jerusalem, what we call the Greater Jerusalem, it is a crucial problem for us, to have one million Jews, they will live there, and they will live in what we call the area of Gush Etzion, in Tekoah, in Maaleh Edomim. They will live there. There is nothing to do about it. We were very careful to settle Jews, and that is what we are doing now

• Egypt believed that any Self-Governing Authority established in the Occupied Territories should have legislative, executive, and judicial powers, while the Israeli position was limited to budgetary and regulatory powers. The Israelis also insisted on inserting language that emphasized autonomy was only for the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza “and not to territory.”

• Arafat was equally dismissive of autonomy, which he called “a farce,” instead suggesting an alternative path. “If there is a clear platform for serious, comprehensive peace negotiations,” Arafat remarked to U.S. officials, “we will of course take part.” In Arafat’s view, that platform should include three major points. 1) Human rights for the Palestinians; 2) The principle of the right of return for the Palestinians; 3) The right of the Palestinians to have our own state

• During a meeting in Cairo in January 1980, the Egyptian and Israeli delegations presented Linowitz with varying models of autonomy to break the deadlock over the permissible degree of Palestinian self-rule. Israel’s model was entirely functional—the establishment of what was called a “Self Governing Authority (Administrative Council)” for Palestinians to deal with shared issues, while residual sovereignty remained with Israel. This functionalism reflected a persistent employment of autonomy as a political and discursive tool to diminish the possibility of sovereignty. Egypt’s autonomy model, however, was based on the mode of civil administration used by the Israeli military government and was intended to provide Palestinians with actual power for self-rule, in the form of exclusive authority over land and inhabitants. Conceptually, the Egyptian model was akin to a mandate for the development of an eventual independent state after an interim waiting period

• Linowitz selected the Israeli model as the basis for continuing negotiations, and the Egyptians reluctantly agreed.69 Secret documents reveal prior meetings between the United States and Israeli delegations to prepare and adopt the Israeli position paper, with U.S. ambassador James Leonard telling Israeli representatives “We will ask you, and even suggest to you, some formulations in conformity with what you gave to us.”70 Egypt’s acquiescence reflected Sadat’s underlying personal trust in the United States’ ability to extract concessions from Israel during the course of the negotiations.

• Linowitz assessed the prospects of their success in a new administration. He told Carter that much had been achieved in the successive rounds of negotiations, aside from five core issues: “1) Source of power; 2) Water and land rights; 3) Jewish settlements; 4) Security; and 5) East Jerusalem.

• During his final meeting with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ephraim Evron, the outgoing president lamented the state of affairs. “I don’t see how they [Israel] can continue as an occupying power depriving the Palestinians of basic human rights, and I don’t see how they can absorb three million more Arabs into Israel without letting the Jews become a minority in their own country. Begin showed courage in giving up the Sinai. He did it to keep the West Bank.”

• Looking back on autonomy from the contemporary vantage point of a fractured Palestinian polity, we can more clearly discern how the historical absence and active prevention of sovereignty endures as a primary obstacle to Palestinian self determination. The failure of the peace process underscores the devastating twin impact of, on the one hand, prolonged political disenfranchisement through the development of flexible political concepts, such as autonomy, that marginalize sovereignty claims and, on the other hand, the physical encroachment of settlements on the ground, which blur political boundaries via a mechanism of “de facto annexation.”95 Autonomy’s purchase helps explain how and why Palestinian statelessness was perpetuated in the wake of Camp David, and may go some distance in explaining why meaningful Palestinian statehood remains elusive today.