Through Blood and Fire Shall Peace Arise
by Ian S. Lustick
The most unfortunate aspect of the failed Camp David summit (Camp David II) in the summer of 2000 was not the failure to produce a signed peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. After all, this was the very first time the two sides had actually faced the toughest issues between them—borders, settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees. The odds against such a spectacular success on the first attempt were enormous. Nor was the most unfortunate consequence the tide of violence that erupted after the summit's failure, a spiral of distrust and hatred triggered by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif in September, the heavy-handed response to this violence by Israeli police and soldiers, and the intense, long-simmering discontent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. No, the single most unfortunate consequence of the Camp David failure has been the utterly wrong idea that Israeli proposals met or exceeded minimum Palestinian requirements—and that the impossibility of reaching a two-state solution was proven by their rejection. Clearing away these catastrophic misimpressions is a tremendous analytic, communicative, and political task, although one that, ironically, is helped along by the clarifying effect of unbearable pain.
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tikkun.org
Important points:
--- Prime Ministers Begin, Shamir, and Netanyahu pursued failure as a strategic objective — pretending to negotiate while seeking to destroy any prospects for a two-state solution.
--- Prime Ministers Rabin, Peres, and Barak (again in the first half of his brief tenure in office) did negotiate with the Palestinians at Oslo (after suffering a painful rise in Palestinian violence against Israelis in 1993), but avoided the key issues. They ensured failure by strategic error.
--- Suffice it to say that, in many respects, by its refusal to ever allow peaceful political organization by Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israel effectively produced the kind of Palestinian leadership it now feels doomed to negotiate with. |
