Another view of the Taba fiasco.
"The Truth Regarding the 2000 Camp David Summit
By Gary D. Keenan
From 11-25 July 2000, the late Palestinian leader President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak conducted what proved to be unsuccessful peace negotiations at Camp David, Maryland, under the stewardship of U.S. President Clinton.
To this day, Arafat is accused by Israel, its lobby, President Clinton and the mainstream media of causing the break down of the talks through his rejection of Barak's "generous" offer of peace and failure to make counter offers.
A Los Angeles Times editorial declared that the talks fell apart due to "Arafat's recalcitrance" (9 April 2002) and a Chicago Sun-Times editorial stated that Israel "offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not event make a counter offer." (10 November 2000) According to staunch pro-Israel columnist Charles Krauthammer, "at Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counter offer!" ( Seattle Times , 16 September 2000.) 1
Barak, however, continues to be praised for doing his utmost to achieve peace at Camp David. Time magazine described Barak's proposal as "an unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians (25 December 2000) and according to Michael Kelly of the Washington Post , it "offered extraordinary concessions." (13 March 2001) A Chicago Tribune editorial described Barak's proposals as "the most far-reaching offer ever" (June 6, 2001) and a Los Angeles Times editorial declared them to be "generous peace terms." (15 March 2002)
As the record clearly demonstrates, however, Arafat was not to blame for the collapse of the Camp David summit. Furthermore, in no way can Barak's offer be described as "generous." Arafat could only reject it. Also, contrary to the reports of Krauthammer and other commentators, Arafat and his team did put their own proposals on the table.
The media has also neglected to mention the failings and overriding pro-Israel bias of President Clinton as well as the fact that his Special Middle East Coordinator, Dennis Ross, repeatedly intervened during negotiations on Israel's behalf. (Hardly surprising, given the fact that prior to joining the Clinton administration, Ross was an executive with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel "think tank." He is currently its director and also chairman of the recently established Policy Planning Institute for the Jewish People which is headquartered in Jerusalem.)
Nor has the media reported that by blaming him, President Clinton broke a solemn promise to Arafat prior to the summit not to do so.
Robert Malley, Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, took part in the Camp David negotiations. He and Hussein Agha, a long time activist in Israeli-Palestinian relations, wrote an account of what actually took place that explains why negotiations failed. It was published in the 9 August 2001 issue of The New York Review of Books.
In the first three paragraphs Malley and Agha absolve Arafat of responsibility for the Camp David summit's unsuccessful outcome and the failure of subsequent talks:
"In accounts of what happened at the July 2000 Camp David summit and the following months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we often hear about Ehud Barak's unprecedented offer and Yasser Arafat's uncompromising no. Israel is said to have made an historic, generous proposal, which the Palestinians, once again seizing the opportunity to miss an opportunity, turned down. In short the failure to reach a final agreement is attributed, without notable dissent, to Yasser Arafat."
"As orthodoxies go, this is a dangerous one. For it has larger ripple effects. Broader conclusions take hold. That there is no peace partner is one. That there is no possible end to the conflict with Arafat is another."
"For a process of such complexity, the diagnosis is remarkably shallow. It ignores history, the dynamics of the negotiations, and the relationships among the three parties. In so doing, it fails to capture why what so many viewed as a generous Israeli offer, the Palestinians viewed as neither generous, nor Israeli, nor, indeed as an offer. Worse, it acts as a harmful constraint on American policy by offering up a single, convenient culprit – Arafat – rather than a more nuanced and realistic analysis." ("Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, The New York Review of Books , 9 August 2001)
Even before the summit began Arafat expressed serious concern that it might fail as not enough time had been devoted to preparation. Nevertheless, he agreed to attend following President Clinton's assurance that he would not be blamed if negotiations collapsed. According to Palestinian negotiator Abu Ala'a (Ahmed Qurei), as quoted by New York Times columnist Deborah Sontag, "[w]e told [Barak that] without preparation it would be a catastrophe, and now we are living the catastrophe. Two weeks before Camp David, Arafat and I saw Clinton at the White House. Arafat told Clinton he needed more time. Clinton said, 'Chairman Arafat, come try your best. If it fails, I will not blame you.' But that is exactly what he did." ("Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed," Deborah Sontag, New York Times , 26 July 2001)
Robert Malley and Hussein Agha concur with Ahmed Qurei: "....Clinton assured Arafat on the eve of the summit that he would not be blamed if the summit did not succeed. 'There will be,' he pledged, 'no finger-pointing'." (Robert Malley and Hussein Agha)
Arafat understood only too well that he would be pressured at Camp David to sign an unacceptable deal.
"Camp David seemed to Arafat to encapsulate his worst nightmares. It was high-wire summitry, designed to increase the pressure on the Palestinians to reach a quick agreement while heightening the political and symbolic costs if they did not. And it clearly was a Clinton/Barak idea both in concept and timing, and for that reason alone highly suspect. That the US issued the invitations despite Israel's refusal to carry out its earlier commitments and despite Arafat's plea for additional time to prepare only reinforced in his mind the sense of a US-Israel conspiracy...."
"In the end, Arafat went to Camp David, for not to do so would have been to incur America's anger; but he went intent more on surviving than on benefiting from it." (Robert Malley and Hussein Agha)
As the Palestinian delegation saw it, Barak and Clinton were primarily concerned about their own reputations and oblivious to the forces Arafat was facing at home and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world.
"[T]he Palestinians felt that they were being dragged to the verdant hills of Maryland to be put under joint pressure by an Israeli prime minister and an American president who, because of their separate political time tables and concerns about their legacies, had a personal sense of urgency."
"[T]hey had been repeatedly told by the Americans that the Israeli leader's coalition was unstable; after a while, they said, the goal of the summit meeting seemed to be as much about rescuing Mr. Barak as about making peace. At the same time, they said, the Americans did not seem to take seriously the pressures of the Palestinian public and the Muslim world on Mr. Arafat. Like Mr. Barak, Mr. Arafat went to Camp David dogged by plummeting domestic approval ratings." (Deborah Sontag)
Lack of progress towards the establishment of a Palestinian state since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed, together with a dramatic increase in the number of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian lands had taken its toll on Arafat's prestige. Also, although he was never personally tainted with scandal (indeed, his lifestyle was austere to the extreme), some members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were taking advantage of their positions for personal gain. (For a scathing indictment of corruption within the PA see David Hirst's article "Shameless in Gaza" published in the Guardian Weekly , 27 April 1997.)
Palestinians had good reason to be greatly disappointed in the Oslo accords and sceptical regarding the peace process in general.
"The Palestinians, however, while they began the process of building a state, lost faith as land transfers were routinely delayed [by Israel] and as they watched the West Bank and Gaza sliced up by Israeli bypass roads and expansion of Jewish settlements. The settler population increased by 80,000 between 1992 and 2001. The expected economic dividends of the peace path did not materialize; the Palestinian standard of living dropped by 20 percent.... And Mr. Arafat kept setting and postponing dates for declaring Palestinian independence...."
"This created a growing disaffection with the peace effort that was largely ignored by the Israeli and American negotiators. The Palestinian opposition - the Islamic militants who considered the negotiations to be a sell out and others frustrated by the corruption of the Palestinian leadership gained adherents who were more than ready to return to the streets when the peace effort broke down [on 29 September 2000.]" (Deborah Sontag)
Prior to the Camp David summit Arafat and his associates indicated that in order to achieve a peace agreement they were prepared to allow Israel to annex some of the West Bank settlements in exchange for an equal amount of land within Israel. They also revealed their willingness to negotiate a division of East Jerusalem (the Old City) and to work with Israel to find a mutually equitable solution to the refugee problem - one that took full account of Israel's demographic concerns - based on Resolution 194, accepted in 1949 (along with Resolution 181, the 1947 Partition Plan), by Israel before the General Assembly and at the Lausanne Peace Conference as a precondition for U.N admittance.
"Even during the period following the Oslo agreement, the Palestinians considered that they were the ones who had come up with creative ideas to address Israeli concerns. While denouncing Israeli settlements as illegal, they accepted the principle that Israel would annex some of the West Bank settlements in exchange for an equitable amount of Israeli land being transferred to the Palestinians. While insisting on the Palestinian refugees' right to return to homes lost in 1948, they were prepared to tie this right to a mechanism of implementation providing alternative choices for the refugees while limiting the numbers returning to Israel proper. Despite their insistence on Israel's withdrawal from all lands occupied in 1967, they were open to a division of East Jerusalem granting Israel sovereignty over its Jewish areas (the Jewish Quarter, the Wailing Wall, and the Jewish neighbourhoods) in clear contravention of this principle." (Robert Malley and Hussein Agha)
Arafat had always believed that the only way negotiations could succeed was step-by-step, i.e., each interim agreement had to be implemented before moving on to the next stage. Hence, "he requested that the third Israeli territorial withdrawal [from Zone C (under exclusive Israeli occupation) as called for in the 1995 Oslo II (Taba) agreement] be implemented before Camp David – a demand that, when rebuffed by the US, turned into a request that the US 'guarantee' the withdrawal even if Camp David did not yield an agreement (what he called a 'safety net'.)" (Robert Malley and Hussein Agha)
In contrast, Barak's approach to negotiations before and during Camp David was "all-or-nothing." In his mind, "Arafat had to be made to understand that there was no 'third way,' no 'reversion to the interim approach,' but rather a corridor leading either to an agreement or to confrontation. Seeking to enlist the support of the US and European nations for this plan [prior to Camp David], he asked them to threaten Arafat with consequences of his obstinacy: the blame would be laid on the Palestinians and relations with them would be downgraded. Likewise, and throughout Camp David, Barak repeatedly urged the US to avoid mention of any fall-back options or of the possibility of continued negotiations in the event the summit failed." (Robert Malley and Hussein Agha)
...."
The rest of the article can be found here. quite interesting. A confirmation that Israel does not want a peace that results in a viable Palestinian state.
canpalnet-ottawa.org |
