Sunday, October 03, 2010

A Matter of "Inhabitants"

In the 1978 Camp David Accords, you'll find this section:

A. West Bank and Gaza

1. Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the representatives of the Palestinian people should participate in negotiations on the resolution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects. To achieve that objective, negotiations relating to the West Bank and Gaza should proceed in three stages:

1. Egypt and Israel agree that, in order to ensure a peaceful and orderly transfer of authority, and taking into account the security concerns of all the parties, there should be transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza for a period not exceeding five years. In order to provide full autonomy to the inhabitants, under these arrangements the Israeli military government and its civilian administration will be withdrawn as soon as a self-governing authority has been freely elected by the inhabitants of these areas to replace the existing military government. To negotiate the details of a transitional arrangement, Jordan will be invited to join the negotiations on the basis of this framework. These new arrangements should give due consideration both to the principle of self-government by the inhabitants of these territories and to the legitimate security concerns of the parties involved.


You'll note that the ethnic/national identity of the "inhabitants" is not defined leaving open, in theory, the participation of any Jew resident in the area (unlike Abbas' position of apartheid).

What do you think about that?


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It’s a plausible reading though:

1. The right of the inhabitants in the section is solely to participate in elections; as for the powers of the authority, they are to be defined by negotiations between Israel and Egypt and Jordan (each incorporating Palestinians in its delegation). It is true, however, that the elected representatives are supposed to be those taking part in the negotiations.

2. Camp David is an agreement between Israel and Egypt. It doesn’t bind the Palestinians. It can only be held against Israel. It has also been superseded between Israel and the Palestinians (and the US) by the Oslo Accords.