The latest issue of The New York Review of Books has the final installment of the discussion between Ehud Barak and Benny Morris on the one side and Hussein Agha and Robert Malley as to what actually took place in the Camp David and Taba negotiations and what should be made of them.
Whatever one thinks of these various positions, it's fair now to say that any given interpretation and almost any given restatement of "the facts" is contested. So it's harder still to argue that because those negotiations were unsuccessful, it therefore means Arafat wanted them to end badly so he could crank up the intifada.
One comment about this material. The more I read of Barak's comments, the less I believe him. He simply has too big a stake in creating his legacy.
The New York Review of Books
June 27, 2002
Exchange
Camp David and After—Continued
By Benny Morris, Ehud Barak, Reply by Hussein Agha, Robert Malley
In response to "Camp David and After: An Exchange (2. A Reply to Ehud Barak)" (June 13, 2002)
nybooks.com
Just a taste of the bluntness of the writing. First paragraph of Barak and Morris:
Robert Malley and Hussein Agha ["Camp David and After: An Exchange," NYR, June 13] still don't get it (or pretend they don't). And it's really very simple—Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton put on the table during July–December 2000 a historic compromise and the Palestinians rejected it. They concede that Barak's offer at Camp David was "unprecedented" and that the upgraded (Clinton) proposals offered the Palestinians 94–96 percent of the West Bank, 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, a sovereign Palestinian state, an end to the occupation, the uprooting of most of the settlements, and sovereignty over Arab East Jerusalem—and Arafat and his aides still rejected the deal and pressed on with their terroristic onslaught.
And the first paragraph of the Agha Malley reply:
One might be tempted to dismiss much of what Benny Morris and Ehud Barak write as hollow demagoguery were it not so pernicious and damaging to the future of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. In the past, and through his words and actions, Barak helped to set in motion the process of delegitimizing the Palestinians and the peace process, thereby enabling Ariel Sharon to deal with them as he saw fit and absolve himself of all responsibility for Israel's diplomatic, security, and economic predicament. Now, the inability to reach a peace deal in the seven months between Camp David and Taba has become, in Barak's and Morris's version, a tale in which Arab cultural deficiency and the Palestinians' inherent desire to destroy Israel are the dominant themes. As Shimon Peres has famously put it, Barak is making an ideology out of his failure. It is time he dealt with the failure, put aside the ideology, and let Israelis and Palestinians return to the far more urgent and serious task of peacemaking.
Very good stuff. |
