Palestinians fear they may be sold short

Palestinian and Israeli teams opened long-delayed negotiations on a "permanent settlement" this week. According to the Oslo Accord of September 1993, those talks should have taken place no later than May 1996 and the final deal should have been reached by May 1999, when the transitional period of Palestinian self-rule was to have come to an end.

But the negotiations - on defining the final status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements, borders and water - were repeatedly postponed while many of the major provisions of the interim deal, particularly those involving the transfer of land to the Palestinians, were not implemented. The Palestinian Minister for Health, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, and the Israeli ambassador to Jordan, Mr Oded Eran, head the teams, but they are merely acting as proxies for their respective leaders. A Palestinian source close to his team says the real work is being done in "back channels" - as the Oslo Accord was secretly forged in Norway. There is the expectation that agreement on a framework will be reached by the first deadline. This text could mandate the establishment of a Palestinian state, perhaps even by September 2000. But the permanent settlement on the major issues would probably have to be postponed.

One of two scenarios may result: a state without borders, a capital and a defined population could emerge next year. Alternatively, under pressure from the Palestinian people, President Yasser Arafat could issue a unilateral declaration of independence covering the whole of the territory occupied in 1967.

The first option would almost certainly produce widespread Palestinian violence; the second could provoke an Israeli military response. Palestinians in Jerusalem are even talking of rejecting any deal which does not promptly place the Arab sector under Palestinian sovereignty.

Hanan Ashrawi, the legislator and human rights activist, says there is a gulf between the negotiations and reality. "While we are talking, Israeli is building settlements, confiscating land and Jerusalem residence permits, destroying houses and continuing to take other punitive measures against us," she said. A leading Palestinian commentator, Ghassan Khatib, told The Irish Times, "I am totally pessimistic. I think that this Israeli government is extremely dangerous. Barak has done something his predecessor, Netanyahu, did not do when he legitimised illegal settlements."

Palestinians feel all the more trapped in a process which they believe will deny them justice, because Europe supports Barak as enthusiastically as the US does. Khatibedrine, was shocked when the British and French foreign ministers, Robin Cook and Hubert Vedrine, described Barak as the "best you can have" and told the Palestinians to take what he offers.

"I was hoping that the millennium would mark the global rebirth of Palestine, politically, culturally, spiritually, in human terms. But it does not look like this is going to happen," says Ashrawi.