first-hand account of 1999-2000 Israeli-Palestinian negotiations:
The fingers of one hand are sufficient to count the number of people closer to both the cradle and the sickbed of the peace process than Shaul Arieli. At the end of 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, Colonel Arieli was commander of the Gaza Brigade, and he is the one who withdrew the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip. In 1995, he was appointed to head the "Interim Agreement Administration," and five years after that, in his capacity as deputy military secretary to then prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak, he was appointed to head the "Peace Administration." He was closely involved with every stage of the negotiations on a final-status agreement, from the talks that preceded the Camp David summit in July 2000 to the Taba talks in January 2001.
Since retiring from the army a year ago, Arieli, along with studying for his doctorate, has participated in several negotiating channels, both open and secret, between Israeli and Palestinian organizations. He believes that it is possible to breathe new life into the Oslo process, which he considers the high point of relations between the parties. He also believes that the myth that "Barak gave them almost everything and Arafat responded with terror" has become one of the deepest pits blocking the road back there. Only the violence and the Palestinians' difficulty in publicly waiving the right of return can compete with the theory "there is no partner for peace," which he believes is false.
Arieli breaks his silence
On Sunday, after long agonizing, Arieli decided to break his silence. In a lecture to the Herzliya branch of the Meretz Party, attended by dozens of party members, he presented for the first time the story of the peace process from his point of view as a key participant, who racked up hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of conversation with senior Palestinian Authority officials. Over the course of two hours, he dissected the series of failures that comprised the positions and functioning of his last boss. Both the Palestinians, and first and foremost Yasser Arafat, and the Americans, and first and foremost Bill Clinton, also come out of his analysis poorly.
At the start of his lecture, Arieli proposed an explanation for the transformation of the Oslo spirit into an evil spirit. "The Palestinians entered into the Oslo agreement on the understanding that through diplomacy, they could attain the goal they had set themselves since 1988: a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. In their view, their great concession was their willingness to make do with 23 percent of the land of Palestine [Israel and the territories - A.E.]. They thought a solution would be found to the problem of the right of return by means of a trick that would remove its sting. From their point of view, any proposal that fell short of this would not enable them to make concessions on other issues. They did not give up terrorism in order to get a redeployment here and a redeployment there. The cessation of terror was conditioned from the start on achieving their goal. Therefore, when they understood that Israel did not intend to bring them there, they returned to terrorism."
According to Arieli, the "almost everything" that Barak supposedly offered was almost nothing from the Palestinians' perspective. "The members of the Peace Administration knew from the start that there was no chance of Yasser Arafat becoming the Israeli security services' subcontractor in exchange for anything less than a state in the 1967 borders, with border adjustments and exchanges of territory. On the other hand, the Palestinians also knew from the start that Barak, or any other Israeli politician who wanted to survive, would not sign off on the words `right of return.'"
According to Arieli, "we didn't understand that faced with a choice between maintaining our security and the interests of their own population, they would always choose the latter. And they didn't understand our sensitivity to statements such as that issued in 1999 by the PLO's executive committee, which said that the return of the refugees to Israel would not result in the eviction of a large number of Jewish `migrants.'"
The weakness both leaders displayed when it came to making decisions, said Arieli, brought professional and sectoral organizations into the picture, with the most significant being the IDF. "In the absence of a dialogue with and backing from the political echelon, the IDF adopted short-term thinking that focused on routine security," he said. "The army is the one that promoted the idea of Area B (territory under Israeli security control but Palestinian civilian control), which created points of friction between the two armed forces.
This was an attempt to compromise with the settlers - the second party whose intervention crossed all procedural bounds. The doors of every prime minister, including Rabin, were wide open to them and they had something to say on every issue. The most salient expression of this was found in the agreements: They caused delays and forced changes in every agreement, from the Declaration of Principles through the Wye Agreement to the Sharm Agreement in 1999. Because of this, everything was set back, and implementation mechanisms turned into mechanisms for tracking violations and became a focal point of mutual conflict."
Arieli blames Barak for halting implementation of the Wye Agreement, which had been frozen by his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. "Afterward, of the 15 months that remained to him, he devoted five to the Syrian track. At the end of 1999, when Oded Eran was appointed to head the delegation, a lengthy disagreement developed with the Palestinians: Barak objected to their demand that the negotiations begin from the 1967 borders, with Israel proposing whatever adjustments it wanted to request. He demanded that the negotiations begin from 40 percent of the territory already under Palestinian control, with them detailing what else they wanted. This argument lasted for several months. In October 1999, we wrote a document saying that the goal of the negotiations was the creation of two distinct states. Barak insisted that we change that to `entities.'"
According to Arieli, at the Stockholm talks in spring 2000, which preceded Camp David, the Palestinians were not promised more than 87 percent of the West Bank. "At Camp David, we did not present any maps that offered them more than 88 percent," he said. "This meant that 650 square kilometers would be annexed to Israel (not including the Jordan Valley, which was supposed to remain under Israeli control for several years). The annexed territory was slated to include panhandles that extended deep into Palestinian territory. That is what we proposed to people for whom the only interpretation of Security Council Resolution 242 was their receiving all 23 percent of greater Palestine, meaning all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
Arieli backs attorney Gilad Sher, Barak's representative at the talks, who in his book rebutted Barak's claim that the Palestinians did not present any maps at Camp David. As far as Arieli knows, they presented a map that proposed leaving Israel with only a handful of settlements, all isolated from each other, along the Green Line. "One of the key problems was that the talks were conducted there on parallel lines, between two people who had almost nothing in common," said Arieli. "Even when Barak spoke, Arafat didn't understand three-quarters of what he said."
Arieli related that he recently had the opportunity to ask Barak for an explanation of the frequent changes in the percentages. "Barak said that we were obliged to play this game because it derived from the Palestinians' bazaar culture. I can testify that when I was summoned to him at the start of the negotiations, in order to put him into the picture, he was not even thinking of those percentages. He was simply forced to go along with them."
In Arieli's view, the Clinton outline, even if it was not too little, was too late and too general. "The Americans should have submitted the outline at Camp David instead of waiting until December. They should not have given a range of 94 to 96 percent [of the West Bank - A.E.], but should have given an exact figure and stated once and for all whether these percentages included the no man's land, Jerusalem and the northern Dead Sea.
They also left a big hole on the question of whether the 80 percent of settlers whose settlements were supposed to be annexed to Israel under the agreement included the residents of the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem."
The Peace Administration's summary document, in addition to the low grade it gave the Americans for their management of the Camp David Summit, specifically noted "the lack of preparation on the subject of Jerusalem."
Arieli said that until the Stockholm talks, Barak forbade the Peace Administration to deal with Jerusalem. He was convinced that Jerusalem was the winning card, and that once it was laid on the table, it would be possible to settle all the territorial, security and refugee issues that remained open.
At Camp David, Barak announced that under no circumstances would he concede sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Arieli said he happens to know that at that same time, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, who was coordinating the Palestinians' staff work, wrote that the Palestinian public would not be able to swallow more than one concession. "But we thought that the concession on the right of return was already in our pocket and we wanted to get more. This caused the Palestinians to put the right of return back on the table in full force. Today they understand that this was a mistake, and even express this by saying that the Israelis entered Camp David with the feeling that the summit would be the end of the beginning, but left with the feeling that it was the beginning of the end."
Arieli's conclusion is that successive Israeli governments failed to prepare their public for freezing and evacuating settlements, while the Palestinian leadership failed to prepare its public for a historic reconciliation with Israel. But despite everything, Arieli remains optimistic: "Today it seems that a majority of Israelis understand that they must give up the territories, with adjustments that the Palestinians are willing to accept; the Palestinians understand that they must give up the right of return; and both sides understand that Jerusalem must be the capital of both nations."
haaretz.com |
