Israeli right wing was opposed to it from even before the negotiations started - in fact, they were opposed to even the first contacts - Netanyahu and others are on record about that, and in fact came to power and obliterated the OA. It was killed not by Arafat, but by the Israeli right wing. As to the Barak situation - I addressed it in another post:
"Arafat was given an ultimatum by Barak - something he could not accept. Arafat was not the guilty party here - Barak tried to stampede Arafat into accepting less than pre-67 borders with unacceptable conditions on Jerusalem. Arafat had NO CHOICE, but to reject this deal - if nothing else, the Palestinian people would not have accepted it. Immediately following that, Barak took a series of measures that intensely escalated the conflict
You're the first person I've seen who called Barak a member of the "Israeli right-wing". So Arafat walks out of Camp David, starts the intifada, and Barak sweetens the deal at Taba, which according to you somehow escalated the conflict. Actually, you're probably right here -- Arafat figured that if the intifada got him the offer at Taba, he could go on getting more advantages by negotiating with diplomats at the table and human bombs in street. What Arafat could not see, for reasons that are still unclear to everybody, is that Barak was about to lose the election and Clinton was about to leave office, so when they said "this is the last offer," they meant it. This is known in politics as a humongous miscalculation -- not the first such in Arafat's career, I might add.
This was not an "ultimatum," it was just political reality. Nor were the Camp David or Taba offers ultimatums in the usual sense of the word -- "take it or leave it" -- in fact, Clinton was begging and demanding Arafat to make a counter-offer, just the opposite of an ultimatum. Arafat never once countered.
Now I suppose that if you steadfastly refuse to ever put a counter-offer on the table, you can certainly pose as a great rejecter of ultimatums -- and Arafat did so. But why anyone should then blame the failure of negotiations on the side that negotiated and not the side that refused to negotiate, I leave to the reader to decide. |
