Nadine, I realize the site I am linking is problematic - but the information in the page I am linking seems reliable enough that I think it's a fair representation of the other side's point of view vis-a-vis Barak's generous offer at Camp David.
CB, I'm not sure exactly what was on the table at Camp David and Taba. However, I was watching the news carefully, and I do know what the negotiaters said in public at the time. They said that they were close to a deal; they said that they were arguing about 1% of the land and the location and size of land swaps. All sides said this, not just the Israelis and Americans.
At Taba, by accepting the Clinton proposals, Barak clearly offered to evaculate 80% of the settlements, just keeping 20% of the largest settlements next to the Green Line. At Taba, negotiaters on both sides said in public that land and settlements were not the deal breakers. What broke the deal was Arafat's insistence on the "right of return" of unknown millions of refugees, not to Palestine, but to Israel.
All these maps purporting to show how bad Barak's offer really was, were not published until nearly a year after Camp David, in an effort to counter the bad PR the Palestinians had gotten. If you look on memri.org, you can find a good history of the Palestinian's evolving positions on the issue.
Nor does this argument explain why Arafat never made a counter offer. If the problem was that he was being offered 'bantustans', why not publish the map then and there and demand more land? Go on TV, make a speech to the Knesset? Because it would have implied a limit to his demands. Since Arafat had been telling his hard-liners all along that Oslo was just a ruse, he could not afford to do this; he would not have survived.
BTW, I have not seen one person accuse memri.org of faking any of its quotes, which are all meticuously sourced. Much of the so-called history on electronic-intifada, on the other hand, is pure propaganda, such as the assertion that the Zionists started all the Arab-Israeli wars and the Arabs never had declared their intention to destroy the Jews or drive them into the sea.
It is a fact, is it not, that the settlements are populated by deeply religious Jews, who by tradition do not serve in the IDF, but must be protected by bypass roads and checkpoints manned by the IDF? If Israel doesn't intend to change that, and it's not on the table, then just say so.
It was on the table; it was the settlements of the religious ideologues that were on offer to be dismanted. Those are the small settlments scattered through the territories. The settlements by the Green Line are inhabited by secular Israelis who were just looking for cheaper houses. |
