The Ben-Ami interview, continued:
The prevailing view is that Camp David failed because of wrongheaded negotiating tactics and because of the behavior of Ehud Barak, because Barak humiliated Arafat and showed him disrespect.
"I think mistakes were made. The method of negotiation was wrong - instead of discussions by teams that then bring the results for the approval of the leaders, there should have been a summit of leaders who would then tell the teams what understandings they wanted them to formulate. There were also missed opportunities. When the breakthrough on Jerusalem occurred, and when Arafat made his concession, the right thing to do would have been to convene the leaders for a kind of shock summit.
"But when all is said and done, Camp David failed because Arafat refused to put forward proposals of his own and didn't succeed in conveying to us the feeling that at some point his demands would have an end. One of the important things we did at Camp David was to define our vital interests in the most concise way. We didn't expect to meet the Palestinians halfway, and not even two-thirds of the way. But we did expect to meet them at some point. The whole time we waited to see them make some sort of movement in the face of our far-reaching movement. But they didn't. The feeling was that they were constantly trying to drag us into some sort of black hole of more and more concessions without it being at all clear where all the concessions were leading, what the finish line was."
Why didn't you propose some kind of partial agreement? When it became clear that it was impossible to crack the basic problems, why didn't you try to reach at least an interim settlement?
"At a number of points in time we did propose to the Palestinians that we go to a partial settlement - without Jerusalem and without refugees. That possibility came up on the last night, too. The Palestinians refused. On the one hand, they weren't ready to compromise on the core issues, certainly not on Jerusalem, but on the other, they didn't agree to go for a partial settlement either. The allegations against Barak on this point are total nonsense. I remember that at a certain point, I proposed to Arafat that we delay the discussion on Jerusalem for two years. `Not even for two hours,' Arafat said, waving two of his fingers."
But what about Barak the person, what about his behavior? Wasn't he too tough in his attitude toward Arafat?
"Look, Ehud is not a very pleasant person. It's hard to like him. He is closed and introverted and there is no emotional contact with him. We all experienced that. But does anyone really think that if Ehud Barak had been nicer to Arafat, that Arafat would have given up the right of return? Or Haram al-Sharif [the Temple Mount]? The fact is that during the dinner that Nava [Barak's wife] and Ehud gave for Arafat in their home in Kochav Yair about two months after Camp David, Barak was extraordinarily warm toward the chairman, in a way that isn't commensurate with his personality. I remember saying to Ruthie, my wife, at the time that Barak wants an agreement so badly that he is ready to change his personality. Three days later the intifada erupted."
Nevertheless, tell me about the relations between the two at Camp David.
"Actually, they never met at all. Not really. There was one dinner that Madeleine Albright gave in order to break the ice, at which Barak sat like a pillar of salt and didn't say a word for hours. That was very embarrassing. That was at one of the low points, when Clinton was in Japan and Barak was absolutely furious with Arafat. He couldn't bear the situation in which he was risking everything and was dependent on that person but didn't find him to be a partner. I remember that we stood there next to some wall clock and Barak said that if an agreement is reached with that character he would make the wall clock walk.
"But there is something deeper here. Barak, as you known, is a Cartesian type. So what happened there between the cabins and the lawns of Maryland was really an encounter between a person who was looking for a rational settlement and another person who talks myths and embodies myths. And that encounter didn't work. In retrospect, I understand that it could never have worked. I believe today that no rational Israeli leader could have succeeded in reaching a settlement with Arafat at that encounter. The man is simply not built that way."
Why?
"Arafat is not an earthly leader. He sees himself as a mythological figure. He has always represented himself as a kind of modern Salah a-Din. Therefore, even the concrete real-estate issues don't interest him so much. At Camp David, it was clear that he wasn't looking for practical solutions, but was focused on mythological subjects: the right of return, Jerusalem, the Temple Mount. He floats on the heights of the Islamic ethos and the refugee ethos and the Palestinian ethos.
"Arafat's discourse is never practical, either. His sentences don't connect and aren't completed. There are words, there are sentences, there are metaphors - there is no clear position. The only things there are, are codes and nothing else. At the end of the process, you suddenly understand that you are not moving ahead in the negotiations because you are in fact negotiating with a myth."
But there have been negotiations with him that succeeded, have there not?
"Those were negotiations on interim agreements. A leader of that type can let his aides conclude redeployments of 10 percent or 20 percent because he assumes that what he doesn't get today, he will get tomorrow. There, he will be able to compromise. But when the end of the game arrives, he finds himself in a terrible plight because for him to conclude the process is to say, `I have stopped being a myth; now I am just the head of a small state.' He is a kind of eternal globetrotter who is simply afraid to face up to reality. That's why he is always fleeing from decision-making. I don't know any precedent in history for such severe behavior of fleeing decisions as that of Arafat."
But even after Camp David you didn't throw in the towel: the contacts continued in August and September 2000, did they not?
"Of course. Dozens of meetings were held in those two months, a good many of them at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. There was a two-track effort: our talks with the Palestinians, and talks by the Palestinians and us with the Americans. Throughout this period, we were really waiting for the Americans to work out a package that would be presented to both sides. In this period I personally pressured the Americans to work the collective memory that was created at Camp David into a document: to collate all the presidential summations that were recorded there, and out of them build a comprehensive proposal.
"However, the Palestinians were very much afraid of any such proposal. They knew that they wouldn't say yes to it, and they knew that saying no would cause them tremendous international damage. As it was, their situation was already very bad. Europe supported us, the Arab world didn't support them - they were quite isolated. On the eve of the intifada their situation was almost desperate."
Are you suggesting that the intifada was a calculated move by the Palestinians to extricate them from their political and diplomatic hardships?
"No. I am not attributing that kind of Machiavellian scheme to them. But I remember that when we were at Camp David, Saeb Erekat said that we had until September 13. And I remember that when I visited Mohammed Dahlan and from his office spoke with Marwan Barghouti, he also said that if we didn't reach an agreement by the middle of September, it would not be good. There was a tone of threat in his words that I didn't like. So, when you look at the course of events and see that the violence erupted exactly two weeks after September 13 [the seventh anniversary of the Oslo accords], it makes you think. One thing is certain: the intifada absolutely saved Arafat."
Did any changes occur in the Israeli position during the talks that were held in August and September?
"Yes. By this stage, we were talking about the division of vertical sovereignty on the Temple Mount. Now the Temple Mount wasn't under Israeli sovereignty and Palestinian trusteeship, it was completely under Palestinian sovereignty. All we asked for was sovereignty in the depths of the mount. We demanded recognition that the site is sacred to us, that we have an attachment to it. But all along, the Palestinians were scornful of our demand. They denied that we had any sort of right on the Temple Mount."
Was there also a change on the territorial issue?
"By September we were talking about 7 percent [of the West Bank to be retained by Israel] in return for 2 [percent of sovereign Israeli territory to be transferred to the Palestinians]. I think we also dropped the demand for sovereignty in the Jordan Rift Valley."
When did that happen? When was the decision made to give up sovereignty in the Rift Valley?
"I can't tell you exactly when. But in the wake of the summations at Camp David on security and on a multinational force, the feeling was that we had arrived at solutions that would preserve our most essential security interests even without sovereignty. It was clear to us that our demand for sovereignty in the Jordan Rift Valley was something the Palestinians could not live with."
Did you draw up new maps?
"As I told you, no new map was presented to the Palestinians through Taba. But we worked on new internal maps that would reflect the new percentages. And when the ridiculous contention was voiced that what we were proposing to the Palestinians was cantons and that they would not have territorial contiguity, I went to [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak and showed him a map. As I recall, it was still the 8-percent map, a map of 8-92. Mubarak perused it with interest and asked aloud why the Palestinians were claiming they didn't have contiguity."
Throughout this whole period, didn't the Palestinians present maps of their own? Was there no Palestinian geographical proposal?
"They did not present maps at all. Not before Taba. But at Camp David I did chance to see some sort of Palestinian map. It was a map that reflected a concession of less than 2 percent on their part in return for a territorial swap in a 1:1 ratio. But the territories they wanted from us were not in the Halutza dunes, they wanted them next to the West Bank. I remember that according to their map, Kochav Yair, for example, was supposed to be included in the territory of the Palestinian state; they demanded sovereignty over Kochav Yair."
When the talks resumed in November-December, as the violence raged, but with elections for prime minister in the offing, in what area did they make progress?
"Mainly on the Jerusalem question. By this stage, we had agreed to the division of the city and to full Palestinian sovereignty on Haram al-Sharif, but we insisted that some sort of attachment of ours to the Temple Mount be recognized. I remember that when we held talks with Yasser Abed Rabbo at Bolling Air Force Base, I raised the following idea without consulting anyone: the Palestinians would have sovereignty on the Temple Mount, but they would undertake not to conduct excavations there because the place was sacred to the Jews. The Palestinians agreed not to excavate, but under no circumstances would they agree to give us the minimal statement, `because the site is sacred to the Jews.'
"What particularly outraged me on that occasion wasn't only the fact that they refused, but the way in which they refused: out of a kind of total contempt, an attitude of dismissiveness and arrogance. At that moment I grasped they are really not Sadat [Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979]. That they were not willing to move toward our position even at the emotional and symbolic level. At the deepest level, they are not ready to recognize that we have any kind of title here."
Three days later, on December 23, 2000, at the end of the Bolling talks, Clinton convened you again and presented his narrow parameters. What were they?
"Ninety-seven percent: 96 percent of the West Bank [to the Palestinians] plus 1 percent of sovereign Israeli territory, or 94 percent of the West Bank plus three percent of sovereign Israeli territory. However, because Clinton also introduced into this formulation the concept of the safe passage route - over which Israeli sovereignty would be ethereal - it could be argued that the Palestinians got almost 100 percent. Clinton constructed his proposal in such a way that if the Palestinians' answer was positive, they would be able to present the solution to their public as a solution of 100 percent."
And Jerusalem?
"As the reports said: what is Jewish is Israeli, what is Arab is Palestinian. The Temple Mount would be under full Palestinian sovereignty, with Israel getting the Western Wall and the Holy of Holies. But Clinton, in his proposal, did not make reference to the `sacred basin' - the whole area outside the Old City wall that includes the City of David and the Tombs of the Prophets on the road to the Mount of Olives. We demanded that area, in which there are hardly any Arabs, but the Palestinians refused. During the night, there was a very firm phone call between Barak and Clinton on this subject, because we were afraid he would decide against us. As a result of that call, the subject remained open. Clinton did not refer to it."
What about the refugees?
"Here Clinton tried to square the circle. He went toward the Palestinians to the very end of the farthest limit of what we could accept. His formulation was that `the two sides recognize the right of the refugees to return to historic Palestine' or `to return to their homeland,' but on the other hand, he made it clear that `there is no specific right of return to Israel.' We were pleased that he talked about a two-state solution and that the Palestinian state was the homeland of the Palestinian people and Israel the home of the Jewish people.
"The mechanism he referred to was more or less that of Stockholm. He obligated a certain absorption of refugees in Israel, but subject to Israel's sovereign laws and its absorption policy."
What about the security arrangements and demilitarization?
"We insisted that the Palestinian state be demilitarized. The president suggested a softer term: a `non-militarized state.' He also asserted that we would have a significant military presence in the Rift Valley for three years and a symbolic presence at defined sites for three more years. We were given three early-warning stations for a 10-year period with the presence of Palestinian liaison officers."
Was there an explicit ban on Palestinian use of tanks, war planes and missiles?
"No. To the best of my knowledge, we didn't reach those details. They were certainly not mentioned by Clinton. But that was the intention."
And what about air and water rights?
"The Palestinians refused to enter into a discussion about the water issue, so Clinton did not make any reference to the subject. On the other hand, with regard to air space, the term was `agreed use.' Clinton declared that sovereignty over air space would be Palestinian, but recognized Israel's right to make use of it for training purposes and for operational needs, providing such use would be agreed. One idea was that the ways for it to be used would be on a mutual basis: by giving the Palestinians the right to make nonmilitary use of Israeli air space."
What was the Israeli reaction to Clinton's parameters? Did Barak accept them wholeheartedly?
"The president dictated the points to us and to the Palestinians in a conference room adjacent to the Oval Office in the White House. It was a Saturday. I remember walking from the hotel to the White House and back. Clinton explained that the parameters were not an American proposal but constituted his understanding of the midway point between the positions the sides had reached. Now everything depends on the decision of the leaders, he said, and asked for that decision to be made within four days.
"The proposal was difficult for us to accept. No one came out dancing and singing, and Ehud especially was perturbed. At the same time, three days later, the cabinet decided on a positive response to Clinton. All the ministers supported it, with the exception of Matan Vilnai and Ra'anan Cohen. I informed the Americans that Israel's answer was yes."
And the Palestinians?
"Arafat wasn't in any hurry. He went to Mubarak and then to all kinds of inter-Arab meetings and dragged his feet. He didn't even return Clinton's calls. The whole world, and I mean the whole world, put tremendous pressure on him, but he refused to say yes. During those 10 days there was hardly any international leader who didn't call him - from the Duke of Liechtenstein to the president of China. But Arafat wouldn't be budged. He stuck to his evasive methods. He's like one of those stealth planes. Finally, very late, his staff conveyed to the White House a reply that contained big noes and small yeses. Bruce Reidell, from the National Security Council, told me that we shouldn't get it wrong, that there should be no misunderstandings on our part: Arafat in fact said no."
But didn't Israel also have reservations?
"Yes. We sent the Americans a document of several pages containing our reservations. But as far as I recall, they were pretty minor and dealt mainly with security arrangements and deployment areas and control over the passages. There was also clarification concerning our sovereignty over the Temple Mount. There was no doubt that our reply was positive. In order to remove any doubts, I called Arafat on December 29, at Ehud's instructions, and told him that Israel accepted the parameters and that any further discussion should be only within the framework of the parameters and on how to implement them."
In the light of all this, was there any point in holding the Taba meeting? After all, you went all the way to the red line and the Palestinians said it wasn't enough. What was there left to talk about?
"The truth is that Ehud thought exactly that. He didn't want to go to Taba. He didn't see any point or purpose in it. But at this stage there was a pistol on the table. The elections were a month away, and there was a minister who told Ehud that if he didn't go to Taba they would denounce him in public for evading his duty to make peace. He had no choice but to go to a meeting for something he himself no longer believed in."
So what did you talk about in Taba? What new progress was made there?
"We insisted that Clinton's parameters for negotiations would not be thrown open for renewed discussion in any sphere, that we would address only the question of how to implement them. The Palestinians, however, tried to whittle away at the parameters. They tried to squeeze a bit more out of us: on the Jerusalem question they didn't accept the idea of the Holy of Holies, which appears explicitly in the Clinton proposals. And on the refugee issue they suggested a formulation that meant that they had their own reading of [United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, December 11, 1948], while the Israelis had a different reading. They said `we have to establish the right of return and then discuss the mechanisms.' That demand of principle infuriated me no less than when they occasionally mentioned numbers [of refugees]."
What sort of numbers did they mention?
"Look, I didn't sit opposite them in the negotiations on the refugee issue at Taba. But the various information papers that were passed around at Taba contained some extraordinary numbers. What do you think of 150,000 refugees a year during a 10-year period?"
And what did we propose?
"Yossi Beilin said he proposed 40,000. I don't know whether that is really the figure, but with that figure it was obvious that no deal could be struck unless the ends were left loose for additional claims in the future."
What was the new map you showed the Palestinians at Taba?
"Here it is, you can see for yourself. The brownish-mustard color is Palestinian, the white is Israeli. It represents a ratio of 94.5 percent [of the land for the Palestinians] against 5.5 percent. And that's before the [territorial] swap, of course."
Did you reach agreement on a territorial exchange?
"No. It turned out that the Palestinians don't like the idea of the Halutza dunes. I'm not crazy about it either. I see that area as a last reserve for Zionist settlement inside the [1967] Green Line. So we examined the possibility of transferring land in the southern Mount Hebron region, in the area north of Arad. But that was extremely difficult - half a percent here, a quarter there. I'm not sure that the whole idea of a land swap is feasible. It could be that the only way to do it is by moving the border with Egypt to the east and then giving the Palestinians Egyptian territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip. But neither we nor the Palestinians wanted to raised that idea with the Egyptians."
Is it the case that Israel would have to uproot about a hundred settlements according to the new map?
"I don't know the exact number. But we are talking about uprooting many dozens of settlements. In my view, that map also fails to meet the goal we set ourselves and to which Clinton agreed - 80 percent of the settlers in sovereign Israeli territory."
Did the Palestinians accept this map?
"No. They presented a counter-map that totally eroded the three already shrunken [settlement] blocs and effectively they voided the whole bloc concept of content. According to their map, only a few isolated settlements would remain, which would be dependent on thin strings of narrow access roads. A calculation we made showed that all they agreed to give us was 2.34 percent."
You say that during this whole period between June and January, in the period when you conceded the Rift Valley and accepted the idea of a territorial swap and divided Jerusalem and handed over the Temple Mount - that the whole movement of the Palestinians toward Israel was in fractions of percentage points. So, all they added to the pledge of 2 percent that they gave Clinton from the outset was 0.34 percent?
"It's hard for me to argue with you. But that is exactly why the criticism we have taken from the left leaves me gaping. I simply don't understand it. It's true that both Barak and I were sort of `outside children' of the left. Neither of us is a professional peace industrialist. But look where we got to. Tell me what more we were supposed to do."
Shlomo Ben-Ami, you and Ehud Barak set out on a journey to the bowels of the earth, as it were, to the very heart of the conflict. What did you find?
"I think that we found a few difficult things. First of all, regarding Arafat, we discovered that he does not have the ability to convey to his Israeli interlocutors that the process of making concessions has an end. His strategy is one of conflict."
Are you saying that he is not a partner?
"Arafat is the leader of the Palestinians. I cannot change this fact; it is their disaster. He is so loyal to his truth that he cannot compromise it. But his truth is the truth of the Islamic ethos, the ethos of refugees and victimization. This truth does not allow him to end his negotiations with Israel unless Israel breaks its neck. So in this particular aspect, Arafat is not a partner. Worse, Arafat is a strategic threat; he endangers peace in the Middle East and in the world."
So he still does not recognize Israel's right to exist?
"Arafat's concession vis-a-vis Israel at Oslo was a formal concession. Morally and conceptually, he didn't recognize Israel's right to exist. He doesn't accept the idea of two states for two peoples. He may be able to make some sort of partial, temporary settlement with us - though I have doubts about that, too - but at the deep level, he doesn't accept us. Neither he nor the Palestinian national movement accept us."
Your criticism goes beyond Arafat personally to include also the Palestinian national movement as a whole?
"Yes. Intellectually, I can understand their logic. I understand that from their point of view, they ceded 78 percent [of historic Palestine] at Oslo, so the rest is theirs. I understand that from their point of view, the process is one of decolonization, and therefore they are not going to make a compromise with us, just as the residents of Congo would not compromise with the Belgians.
"But when all is said and done, after eight months of negotiations, I reach the conclusion that we are in a confrontation with a national movement in which there are serious pathological elements. It is a very sad movement, a very tragic movement, which at its core doesn't have the ability to set itself positive goals.
"At the end of the process, it is impossible not to form the impression that the Palestinians don't want a solution as much as they want to place Israel in the dock of the accused. More than they want a state of their own, they want to denounce our state. That is why, contrary to the Zionist movement, they are incapable of compromising. Because they have no image of the future society that they want and for which it is worth compromising. Therefore, the process, from their point of view, is not one of conciliation but of vindication. Of righting a wrong. Of undermining out existence as a Jewish state."
Did you reach these harsh conclusions in the course of the talks?
"I think it was a cumulative process. There were a number of moments that led me to these conclusions, but the hardest moment was Arafat's reaction to Clinton's parameters. Because with Clinton's parameters we reached them with a government that had no parliamentary or public foundation, and with the intifada in the background and the army high command coming out against us. In that situation, the only possibility for a Palestinian leader with a vision to reach a settlement with us was to say a thunderous yes. No mumbling, a thunderous, ringing statement. If Arafat had come out with a ringing yes at the end of December, he would have saved the Barak government and saved the peace."
He saw you drowning and didn't lift a finger?
"He saw us drowning and the peace drowning and time running out. It was only then that I understood clearly that for Arafat, the negotiations would end only when Israel was broken."
In other words, the critical experiment took place not at Camp David but revolved around Clinton's parameters?
"Of course. Until then it could be argued that we didn't give enough, but after Clinton's parameters and at Taba it was already 100 percent of the territory. And you had to be blind and deaf not to know that Barak was going to lose the election. You had to be blind and deaf not to understand that it was all going down the tubes. But despite everything, they didn't budge. At Taba, too, they didn't budge. A dream proposal is on the table, but the Palestinians are in no hurry.
"I remember looking at them and thinking to myself that I don't see any sense of tragedy on their faces. I don't see the pain of a missed opportunity in their eyes. That was a terrible thing for me, something that etched itself within me. In the end, that was what led me to make a reassessment."
Have you reversed your ideological position? Have you reached right-wing conclusions in the wake of your failed journey to peace?
"Absolutely not. I still believe that we cannot rule another people. That hasn't worked anywhere, and it will not work here, either. Nor have I changed my mind about the settlements. It was a brazen act to invest our national energies in a hopeless settlement project in the heart of an Arab population. And I continue to believe that the establishment of a Palestinian state is a moral and political necessity."
"But today I know that we have to construct a new paradigm - in a certain sense, we have to restart the left-wing from the beginning. Not to ignore what we discovered about the image of the other side. Not to ignore the Palestinian and Islamic positions that call into question our right of existence. And not to continue with this culture of giving in to pressure, which is liable to lead us to suicide. We have to stop at the point that we reached with Clinton and try to implement that solution with the help of the international community. We mustn't forgo Jewish and Israeli patriotism any longer, and we must understand that the blame does not always lie with us. We have to say: That's it, there is no more. And if the other side wants to destroy that core thing, too - I take my stand by that core." |
