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The Barak “generous offers” myth Fictions About the Failure at Camp David Spurned peace proposal was neither equitable nor just The fraud of American "peacemaking" Barak tries to fend off American mediation Fictions About the Failure at Camp David July 8, 2001 By ROBERT MALLEY The New York Times WASHINGTON — A year ago this week, President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat gathered at Camp David for what, in retrospect, many consider a turning point in Israeli-Palestinian relations. From right to left, hawks to doves, comes unusual harmony of opinion both here and in Israel: Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed. Offered close to 99 percent of their dreams, the thinking goes, the Palestinians said no and chose to hold out for more. Worse, they did not present any concession of their own, adopting a no-compromise attitude that unmasked their unwillingness to live peacefully with a Jewish state by their side. I was at Camp David, a member of the small American peace team, and I, too, was frustrated almost to the point of despair by the Palestinians' passivity and inability to seize the moment. But there is no purpose — and considerable harm — in adding to their real mistakes a list of fictional ones. Here are the most dangerous myths about the Camp David summit. Myth 1: Camp David was an ideal test of Mr. Arafat's intentions. Mr. Arafat told us on numerous occasions that he had not wanted to go to Camp David. He thought that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had not sufficiently narrowed the gaps separating their positions before the summit, and once there, he made clear in his comments that he felt both isolated from the Arab world and alienated by the close Israeli-American partnership. Moreover, the summit occurred at a low point in Mr. Arafat's relationship with Mr. Barak — the man with whom he was supposed to strike a historic deal. A number of Israeli commitments, including a long-postponed Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and the transfer to Palestinian control of villages abutting Jerusalem, remained unfulfilled, and Mr. Arafat believed that Mr. Barak was simply trying to skirt his obligations. It also took a genuine leap of faith — for Mr. Barak as for the United States — to imagine that the 100-year conflict between Jews and Palestinians living in this region, with roots going back thousands of years more and tens of thousands of victims along the way, could be resolved in a fortnight without any of the core issues — territory, refugees, or the fate of Jerusalem — having previously been discussed by the leaders. Myth 2: Israel's offer met most if not all of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations. Yes, what was put on the table was more far-reaching than anything any Israeli leader had discussed in the past — whether with the Palestinians or with Washington. But it was not the dream offer it has been made out to be, at least not from a Palestinian perspective. To accommodate the settlers, Israel was to annex 9 percent of the West Bank; in exchange, the new Palestinian state would be granted sovereignty over parts of Israel proper, equivalent to one-ninth of the annexed land. A Palestinian state covering 91 percent of the West Bank and Gaza was more than most Americans or Israelis had thought possible, but how would Mr. Arafat explain the unfavorable 9-to-1 ratio in land swaps to his people? In Jerusalem, Palestine would have been given sovereignty over many Arab neighborhoods of the eastern half and over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. While it would enjoy custody over the Haram al Sharif, the location of the third- holiest Muslim shrine, Israel would exercise overall sovereignty over this area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. This, too, was far more than had been thinkable only a few weeks earlier, and a very difficult proposition for the Israeli people to accept. But how could Mr. Arafat have justified to his people that Israel would retain sovereignty over some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, let alone over the Haram al Sharif? As for the future of refugees — for many Palestinians, the heart of the matter — the ideas put forward at Camp David spoke vaguely of a "satisfactory solution," leading Mr. Arafat to fear that he would be asked to swallow an unacceptable last-minute proposal. Myth 3: The Palestinians made no concession of their own. Many have come to believe that the Palestinians' rejection of the Camp David ideas exposed an underlying rejection of Israel's right to exist. But consider the facts: The Palestinians were arguing for the creation of a Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967, borders, living alongside Israel. They accepted the notion of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory to accommodate settlement blocs. They accepted the principle of Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — neighborhoods that were not part of Israel before the Six Day War in 1967. And, while they insisted on recognition of the refugees' right of return, they agreed that it should be implemented in a manner that protected Israel's demographic and security interests by limiting the number of returnees. No other Arab party that has negotiated with Israel — not Anwar el- Sadat's Egypt, not King Hussein's Jordan, let alone Hafez al-Assad's Syria — ever came close to even considering such compromises. If peace is to be achieved, the parties cannot afford to tolerate the growing acceptance of these myths as reality. The facts do not indicate, however, any lack of foresight or vision on the part of Ehud Barak. He had uncommon political courage as well. But the measure of Israel's concessions ought not be how far it has moved from its own starting point; it must be how far it has moved toward a fair solution. The Palestinians did not meet their historic responsibilities at the summit either. I suspect they will long regret their failure to respond to President Clinton — at Camp David and later on — with more forthcoming and comprehensive ideas of their own. Finally, Camp David was not rushed. It was many things — inadequately prepared for, perhaps; too informal, possibly; lacking proper fall-back options, without a doubt — but premature it was not. By the spring of 2000, every serious Israeli, Palestinian and American analyst was predicting an outbreak of Palestinian violence absent a major breakthrough in the peace process. The Oslo process had run its natural course; if anything, tackling the sensitive final status issues came too late, not too soon. The gloss that is put on the past matters. The way the two sides choose to view yesterday largely will determine how they choose to behave tomorrow. And, if unchallenged, their respective interpretations will gradually harden into divergent versions of reality and unassailable truths — that Yasir Arafat is incapable of reaching a final agreement, for example, or that Israel is intent on perpetuating an oppressive regime. As the two sides continue to debate what went wrong at Camp David, it is important that they get the lessons right. Robert Malley was special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001. He is joining the Council on Foreign Relations as a senior fellow. The Peace Criminal Uri Avnery 21.7.01 The Peace Criminal Everybody knows who is a war criminal. For example, somebody who kills prisoners-of-war or massacres a civilian population (or allows others to do this) is one. The time has come to define who is a peace criminal: somebody who kills peace and thereby makes war inevitable. Golda Meir, for example, in the early 70s, killed the chances for peace with Egypt and caused the Yom Kippur war, in which 2000 Israelis and countless others died. Ehud Barak is such a peace criminal. He brought about the failure of the Camp David summit and its consequence, primarily the present intifada, in which hundred have already died. This might well lead to a general war, in which thousands will perish. If there were an International Court for Peace Crimes, Ehud Barak would be indicted on two counts: Count 1: The accused pressured Arafat and Clinton into agreeing to the summit and brought about its failure by presenting to it an ultimatum of unacceptable proposals. Count 2: The accused spread the lie that he had offered Arafat “everything he asked for” and that Arafat rejected it. By spreading this lie, the accused destroyed the Israeli peace camp which believed him, brought the extreme right to power, prepared the ground for a “national unity” based on the lie and almost obliterated any real opposition. At the Barak trial, evidence will be produced to show that he proposed at Camp David the formal annexation of 10% of the West Bank area (“settlement blocs”) and informal annexation of another 10% (Jordan valley etc.), with the rest of the territory cut up into enclaves and cut off from the neighboring countries (Egypt and Jordan); that he pretended to “give up” East Jerusalem but without giving the Palestinians full sovereignty there, and especially not over the compound of the mosques (“Temple Mount”); that he did not agree to any compromise on the refugees; and that he demanded that the Palestinians declare this to be “the end of the conflict”. Until now, Barak’s blind admirers have fervently denied these facts. But this week a witness appeared who could decide the outcome of the trial. He is a neutral and objective eye-witness, whose integrity cannot be doubted by any judge: Robert Malley, personal assistant to President Clinton on the Middle East, who took part in all the Camp David deliberations. He will testify to the following facts, among others: 0 Before the summit, Barak reneged on his promise to transfer to the Palestinian Authority the village of Abu Dis and two other villages near Jerusalem, in spite of the fact that Clinton personally conveyed this promise to Arafat. Also, Barak refused to honor Israel’s obligations under the previous agreements: the third withdrawal from most of the West Bank areas, the release of Palestinian prisoners etc. Because of this, Clinton was furious with Barak on several occasions. 0 Before the summit, Barak continued to enlarge the settlements and build by-pass roads at a furious pace, thus destroying any vestige of Palestinian trust in his intentions. 0 Before and during the summit, the Palestinians not only gave up 78% of Mandatory Palestine, but also agreed to the annexation to Israel of “settlement blocs” and the Jewish neighborhoods built in occupied East Jerusalem. They also agreed to the principle that the Right of Return should be implemented without prejudicing the demographic and security interests of Israel. No other Arab government has ever agreed to similar concessions. 0 In exchange for the settlement blocs, Barak offered the Palestinians areas amounting to one ninth of the territory to be annexed, a ratio of 1 to 9, without specifying where. 0 During the course of the summit, Barak did not submit any proposal in writing nor specify the details of his oral proposals, and, most importantly, did not disclose either to Arafat or even to Clinton his ideas for a final settlement. In return, Arafat, too, did not submit any proposals, so that in practice there was no negotiation at all. 0 Clinton agreed with Arafat that Barak is “politically inept, frustrating and devoid of personal contact warmth”, but believed, in spite of this, that Barak wanted peace. Arafat believed that Barak did not want peace; he only wanted to convince the world that the Palestinians don’t want peace. As a matter of fact, since the summit and until now, Barak’s main boast has been that he “unmasked Arafat”. 0 Clinton has broken his word to Arafat. Before the summit, he promised that if it fails, he would not blame the Palestinians. Only on this condition did Arafat agree to come to the conference, which took place without proper preparation. After the failure, Clinton put the sole blame on Arafat, in order to help Barak in his reelection campaign. * * * When Barak’s admirers were compelled to admit that the story about “the generous Camp David offers” is a legend, they fell back to another line: “True, at Camp David no reasonable offers were made, but later, at the Taba meeting in January 2001, much more generous offers were made. These met all Palestinian demands, but were nevertheless rejected by them. At Taba the Israeli negotiators also submitted a map that reduced further the areas that Barak wanted to annex.” Here are some of the answers: 0 If Barak really wanted to make much more “generous” offers, why did he not make them at Camp David, even when he realized that the summit was about to break down? 0 The failure of the summit caused the outbreak of the intifada, as we (and, it now appears, the Americans, too) prophesied. From that moment on, the political reality on the Palestinian side changed completely, hundreds were killed, and it became much more difficult for Arafat to convince his public opinion to halt the uprising without getting an important political achievement in advance. 0 The Taba proposals were never put to paper, and until this very moment it is not clear what was proposed, who proposed what and on whose authority. Barak, of course, repudiated everything the next day. 0 In the meantime, the election campaign had started in Israel and all the polls showed that Barak was about to be defeated by a landslide. How could Arafat make sweeping concessions to a man who, almost certainly, would lose power within two months? Especially since Barak did not reveal the proposals to his own public? 0 Arafat did not reject the Taba proposals, but declares even now that they must serve as a basis for any future negotiations, while Barak himself proclaims that the Taba proposals are null and void. At the end of the trial, the question will remain: Did the accused, Barak, sincerely intend to reach a peace agreement, and only a mixture of arrogance, ignorance and political stupidity prevented him from achieving this (as Clinton believes, according to Malley), or did he, from the beginning, not have any such intention, but only intended to convince the world that he wanted peace while Arafat wants to throw Israel into the sea? It’s up to the judges to decide that. Spurned peace proposal was neither equitable nor just http://www.phillyburbs.com/couriertimes/editorial/803456.htm GUEST OPINION Generous offer? Friday, April 6, 2001 Spurned peace proposal was neither equitable nor just By FRED GUENTHER It has been widely reported that Israeli Prime Minister Barak made many concessions to the Palestinians but was rebuffed and the Palestinians rejected the peace offers. I would like to mention items that are not part of the peace offering concessions made by Barak. Barak offered 95 percent of the territory to the Palestinians. The offer does not include the borders of Palestine, which would remain under Israeli military control. Palestine would border on no state but Israel, which would maintain military control of passage into and out of Palestine. Military control would extend to the Palestinian airport at Gaza and the potential seaport at Gaza. The 95 percent offer does not include most of the Israeli settlements (illegal by international standards) that exclusively house 200,000 people. The offer would abandon 20 percent of the settlements and retain the remainder. The 95 percent offer does not include any of the ground already confiscated from the Palestinians to continue to enlarge the retained settlements, which have been declared illegal by the United States, the United Nations and all the nations of the world excluding Israel. The 95 percent offer does not include any of the ground confiscated for the "Bypass Roads" that are racially segregated for use by Jews only. The combination of settlements and bypass roads effectively dismembers the Palestinian territory into separate compounds with no access to one another. Compounds separated by military checkpoints that have and will continue to totally stifle the growth of a Palestinian nation and any viable Palestinian economy. The 95 percent does not include East Jerusalem, over which the Palestinians have been offered some municipal control (they can take out the garbage) while military control, Palestinian entry and exit from Jerusalem, remains in the hands of Israel. What portions of Palestine does 95 percent represent? No Israeli map has been published detailing how the 95 percent was calculated and which shows the configuration of the future Nation of Palestine. The original UN partition granted Israel 54 percent of the former area of Palestine. By force of arms and by quasi-judicial confiscation that has enlarged in the year 2001 to 77 percent of the combined Israel/Palestinian territory, 95 percent of the remaining 13 percent is not acceptable to the aspiring Nation of Palestine. Palestinians and Palestinian expatriates all over the world have title to property in Israel and the occupied territories. Many of these properties are being illegally lived in by Israeli families or have been zoned in such a manner that Palestinians are not permitted to live in or utilize them. Restitution for this confiscation is not on the table for discussion by the Israeli government. The division of natural resources, especially the water aquifer, which lies beneath Palestine, not Israel, is not being reported as part of the peace process. Total withdrawal from the occupied territories would place Palestine in control of the aquifer. Since the occupation, water access has been controlled solely by Israel. Palestinians, under occupation, have severe water restrictions while being charged three times the rate of nearby Israeli settlers who have water available for swimming pools and green lawns. For example, in the area around Hebron, 4,000 Israeli settlers receive 75 percent of the water, the Palestinian population of 230,000 is limited to 25 percent of the supply. The United States and the United Nations promptly stepped in to reverse military occupation of Kuwait and Kosovo. The Israeli military has occupied all of the Palestinian territory since 1967. The Israeli military has been a harsh occupying force while at the same time insisting that the Palestinians cease to resist this dehumanizing confiscation and occupation of their territory. Israel is dictating a peace that is neither equitable nor just! Fred Guenther is a resident of Newtown. The fraud of American "peacemaking" http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/01/04/middle_east/index.html The fraud of American "peacemaking" Clinton is just the latest U.S. leader whose one-sided support for Israel has doomed the region to bloodshed. By Michael Adams Jan. 4, 2001 | With a couple of weeks to go before he leaves the White House, President Clinton's last forlorn attempt to pose as a peacemaker in the Middle East seems doomed to failure. After seven years of a "peace process" in which Clinton claimed to be acting as a mediator, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he was willing to consider the latest in a series of proposals put to him by the outgoing U.S. president, but expressed serious reservations. The Palestine Liberation Organization raised three main objections to the proposals. The proposals made no provisions for a viable Palestinian state, without which there could be no lasting peace. By permitting them to keep the settlements they built in the West Bank and Gaza in violation of United Nations Resolution 242, the proposals effectively rewarded the Israelis for their illegal colonization effort. And they denied the right of Palestinians exiled at the time of Israel's birth in 1948 to return to their homes, although this right is enshrined in the United Nations' Resolution 194, adopted half a century ago and reiterated every year since. Even if he wanted to, Arafat would not be able to agree to these conditions for a peace settlement so blatantly weighted in Israel's favor. His people would not sanction it, nor would they give up their "Intifada of al-Aqsa" uprising against the Israelis' continuing denial of their right to freedom and independence. The fact is that the Palestinians have concluded that Clinton's "peace process" is in reality a smokescreen behind which the Israelis and their American patrons have collaborated to frustrate the right of the Palestinians, accepted by the rest of the world, to self-determination. This conclusion is widely shared here in Europe, where many people think that U.S. Middle East policy is unreasonably biased in favor of Israel as the result of the influence of the powerful Zionist lobby in Congress. Most obviously, American compliance with the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza have plainly made it more difficult to envisage any possible agreement between Israel and the people whose land it is occupying. There is an opportunity here for President-elect George W. Bush to modify the U.S. bias toward Israel and explore the ground for a more even-handed approach to the problem of establishing peace in the Middle East. For more than three months now, as violence has flared up all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the streets of Arab cities all across the Middle East have resounded to the cry of Arab unity. This has awakened echoes for me of my first days as a newspaper correspondent in 1955, when I was reporting the Suez crisis for the old Manchester Guardian. At that time, the Americans were regarded as friends of the Arabs. Today things are very different; it's the Americans, along with Israel, whom most Arabs regard as their enemy. In Cairo and Amman and Damascus, and even in the sheikhdoms of the Gulf and in distant Yemen and Morocco, voices are being raised -- spontaneously and insistently -- by ordinary citizens who want their governments to unite in pursuit of a common objective: to save Arab Jerusalem from a blatant attempt by Israel, with the backing of the United States, to hijack the Holy City. Some people, including President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, would challenge the assertion that the United States supports Israel in its determination to hold on to what it has taken by force. Hasn't Clinton devoted endless hours in his efforts to bring the Arabs and the Israelis together? Hasn't he been the "honest broker," selflessly sacrificing all his energies to the search for a just solution to their quarrel? And is not the reason for his failure -- and you have only to look at the situation in the Middle East today to understand the enormous scale of that failure -- due to the obstinacy of Arafat and the refusal of the Palestinians to accept the terms of peace they have been offered? That may be the way it looks from 5,000 miles away, but to the Arabs the situation couldn't be more at odds with that image. They see the American government pouring money and arms into Israel, to the tune of some $5 billion a year (far more than the U.S. gives any other country), while the Palestinians whose lands the Israelis have occupied and whose economy they have destroyed are condemned to live in refugee camps or, if they are lucky, to work at menial tasks for Israeli employers. And for those of us who have been in close touch with the Arab-Israeli problem for many years, this is very close to the truth. What about the celebrated peace process then, which started seven years ago with that famous handshake on the White House lawn between Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's prime minister, and Arafat? Surely all these meetings at Camp David, the Wye River Valley and, more recently, Sharm al-Sheikh were attempts by the Americans to reach a fair compromise between the Israelis, with their anxiety about security, and the Palestinians, who wanted to win their independence. On the face of it, yes. But in reality the peace process (lots of process, but no peace) has consisted of a series of piecemeal deals proposed by the United States and Israel acting as one team and reluctantly accepted by the Palestinians on the basis of "concessions" by the Israelis, which were, in fact, never made. The clearest illustration of the insincerity of Israel's approach to the peace process is to be seen in the Jewish settlements established by successive Israeli governments all over the occupied territories. When the Israelis won their sweeping victory in 1967 and occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the U.N. Security Council debated long and hard before reaching a unanimous decision about the peace that should follow. That decision -- expressed in the famous Resolution 242, to which the United States was a party -- called for a bargain between Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs were to recognize Israel's right to exist in peace and security and the Israelis were to withdraw their forces "from territories occupied in the recent conflict." But within weeks of the ending of "the recent conflict," the Israeli government established the first Jewish settlements on land confiscated from Arabs. This was against the spirit of Resolution 242 and it was illegal under international law, which forbids an occupying power to colonize the territories it occupies -- as is clearly stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1948. This matter of the Jewish settlements is one of which I have a good deal of personal knowledge. In January 1968, I was in Jerusalem on a fact-finding mission and went to see the Palestinian mayor, who was still in office in East Jerusalem. (The Israelis deported him a few months later, without any pretext or accusation of ill-doing.) As we talked, an aide came in to tell him that the Israeli government had announced the confiscation of 800 acres of Arab land on Mount Scopus, overlooking the old walled city. On it they were to build in the following years the first of the settlements with which they gradually altered the demographic balance between Jews and Arabs in the city that they were to claim as the "eternal and undivided capital" of the Jewish State, brushing aside the rights and the feelings of the Palestinians whose ancestors had lived there for centuries. In May 1968, the Security Council "deplored" Israel's unilateral action and called on it to undo it. The U.S. abstained, but when the council adopted an even stronger resolution in the following year, the U.S. voted for it, making the resolution unanimous. But the rebuke meant little to the Israelis, who pushed full steam ahead with their unabashedly illegal project in Jerusalem. Before the end of 1968 the Israelis also expanded the settlement projects into the other occupied territories -- effectively thumbing their nose at Resolution 242. At that time, there was ample opportunity for the United States, with its unparalleled connections with and influence over Israel, to put a stop to a process that was obviously damaging to any prospect of peacemaking between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Instead, the United States did the reverse. Rather than using its ample resources as a superpower to pressure Israel into making peace with its neighbors, the United States took on the task of arming it. The pledge by President Lyndon Johnson during the presidential election campaign in the autumn of 1968 to sell Israel 50 Phantoms, then the most advanced strike aircraft in the world, shocked and alienated the Arabs. By the time Richard Nixon, who replaced Johnson in the White House in January 1969, confirmed the sale, the damage was already done. It was an action that had reverberating and fatal consequences. Not only did it cause consternation in the Arab world, but more ominously it encouraged in the Israelis the dangerous mood of expansionism that had gripped the nation in the wake of its blitzkrieg victory in 1967. Incidentally, it also signalled the involvement of Lebanon in a conflict to which previously it had been only a bystander; the day after the announcement of the Phantoms deal, the Israeli air force raided Beirut airport in reprisal for a guerrilla attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens, and destroyed 13 civil aircraft on the ground. For the next 20 years I visited Israel and the occupied territories at least once every year and I made a particular point of monitoring the developments of the Israeli settlement program. In Jerusalem, I watched the buildings going up on that confiscated land on Mount Scopus, noting the fortress-like style of the constructions, with stone walls and narrow windows, clearly designed to fight off any future attempt by the Arabs to recover the stolen land. I travelled the West Bank and went south to Gaza and on into Egyptian Sinai, and then north to the Golan Heights in occupied Syria. Everywhere the bulldozers were at work and Jewish settlers were on the move, the most aggressive ones, I noted, coming from Brooklyn and other parts of the United States. The Brooklyn settlers have been involved in confrontations with Palestinians whose land they occupy and they are very ready with the firearms they always carry. Brooklyn native son Benjamin Goldstein is notorious for having gunned down 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, while he was wearing his uniform as an officer in the Israeli Army. Goldstein was a follower of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born rabbi who espoused violence against the Arabs until his assassination in 1990. Kahane's divisive rhetoric often encouraged militancy in his disciples. Indeed, Goldstein claimed that he was avenging Kahane's murder when he went on his rampage. (The bitterness engendered by Kahane persists today. Binyamin Kahane, who shared his father's ideology, was murdered along with his wife in the West Bank last weekend.) The settlers claim that the West Bank, which they refer to as Judaea and Samaria, was given by God to the Jewish people, and that the Palestinians, a lthough their ancestors have been there for a thousand years, are interlopers with no rights. Therefore it is legitimate (some of them would say obligatory) for them to get rid of the Palestinians. They call this "cleansing the land." (Hence, the phrase "ethnic cleansing," which in other contexts Americans consider disreputable. Not here though.) When Egypt and Syria went to war in 1973 (the "Yom Kippur war") in an attempt to win back what they had lost in 1967, anger over the settlements was one factor that provoked them to so risky an adventure. But it seemed that nothing could stop the Israelis from pursuing a course of action that plainly indicated their determination not to withdraw from the conquered lands. And the United States, far from trying to discourage Israel, gradually moved away from its commitment as a member of the U.N. Security Council. In American government parlance the settlements were no longer "illegal," but became merely "obstacles to peace," although it was plain for all to see that the enormous American subsidies to Israel were, in fact, helping to pay for them. The touchstone of America's design for the Middle East was the welfare of Israel -- at no matter what cost to the other parties involved. In 1977, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat took the bold decision to visit Jerusalem and to challenge the Israelis on their own home ground to make peace. At the historic Camp David summit subsequently arranged by President Jimmy Carter, Sadat met Israel's Menachem Begin and they worked out the preliminaries of the peace treaty that led in 1978 to Israel's withdrawal from Sinai. American officials helped to draft the treaty and took pride in the achievement of this first peace agreement between Israel and one of its neighbors. The treaty was supposed to be the first stage in a wider Arab-Israeli agreement that was also intended to bring an end to the conflict over Palestine. But when the applause and self-congratulatory rhetoric died down and the time came to read the small print of the treaty, it appeared that a clause forbidding further settlement building had somehow been left out. And what was Begin's first brash action after his return from Camp David? He authorized the construction of a new series of settlements. But there was no audible protest from Washington, which was still drunk from the high spirits of Camp David. It was about this time that a rift began to appear between the United States and its European allies over the best way to handle the Middle East problem. America's one-sided support for Israel had become so conspicuous that the European Community, as it was then called, put out the Venice Declaration, signed in June 1980 by all nine member states, distinguishing and distancing their attitude from that of the United States. The declaration stated unequivocally that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were illegal, and that neither side should take any unilateral action to alter the status of Jerusalem. The nine signatories reaffirmed the Palestinian right to self-determination, and they expressed their willingness to take part in and provide guarantees for a comprehensive peace settlement. However, this European protest measure did nothing to discourage America's partisanship for Israel, even though that partisanship was apparent in the increasingly hard-line policies of the Israeli government. When Palestinian misery and frustration boiled over in the "Intifada" popular uprising in 1987, American commentators joined in the universal criticisms of Israel's brutal reprisals, but the government in Washington, under pressure from a strongly pro-Zionist Congress, continued its lavish military and economic assistance to Israel. Only after the Gulf War in 1991, in which the administration of George Bush needed and obtained the cooperation of most of the Arab world, did the Americans initiate an attempt to bring together Israelis and Palestinians in a bid to work out a peace agreement that both could accept. With the active collaboration of Secretary of State James Baker, Bush succeeded in persuading the Palestinians that at last their interests were to be reflected, not subordinated to those of Israel. In 1992, with the election of Clinton, it looked at first as though this even-handed approach was to be continued. After secret negotiations in Oslo had produced the outline of a peace agreement (without any American participation), Clinton invited the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Washington, where on Sept. 13, 1993, the peace process to which Clinton was to devote so much of his time and from which he hoped to secure a foreign policy achievement to gild his fading reputation was launched. As it unfolded, with promises from the Israelis of the release of Palestinian prisoners (many of whom are in prison to this day) and of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza (which were always delayed and were accompanied by an almost frenzied expansion of Israel's colonization program of the same areas), it gradually became apparent to the Palestinians that they were being taken for a ride. Despite Israeli promises and American assurances, the Palestinians found themselves no nearer to their goal, while the Israelis made it plain that they intended to maintain their domination of whatever kind of Palestinian Bantustan might eventually emerge. By late summer 2000 the frustration of the Palestinians had reached a dangerous level and their anger was fueled by the conviction that the American government, under the hypocritical leadership of Clinton, had reverted to the traditional policy of outright support for Israel, right or wrong, and of a corresponding disregard for the rights of the Palestinians. On Sept. 28, the deliberately provocative visit of Ariel Sharon, the most conspicuously anti-Arab of all the leading Israeli politicians, to the area the Israelis call the Temple Mount, but that today houses the sacred mosque of al-Aqsa (and the Dome of the Rock, the most beautiful building in the Arab world), touched off a predictable conflagration. So far there is no sign of its dying down. The catastrophic situation in the Middle East today is not the result of Clinton's actions alone, although he bears a considerable responsibility for it. The fact is that the unconditional support given by successive U.S. administrations to Israel has encouraged in Israel's leaders of every political tendency a sense of megalomania, a conviction that they can get away with that behavior, however illegal and inhumane, without paying the price. It has allowed the Israelis to impose on the Palestinians a regime so repressive that it has left its victims without any legitimate means of redress. When the new administration takes over in Washington, can the world look forward to a change in this vital area of foreign policy? Will George W. Bush be content to follow in the footsteps of his Democratic predecessor, in which case the present phase of low-level guerrilla activity is likely to develop into something much worse? Or will he, with his seasoned secretary of state, Colin Powell, return to the more detached attitude of his father and try to restore some sort of balance to America's relationship with the protagonists in the Middle East? What is needed from Washington is a firm decision to curb Israel's presumption and to restore to the Palestinians their right to independence and a dignified existence in the land of their birth. The best way to go about this would be to take the dispute back to the proper forum for negotiations, namely the United Nations. A blueprint for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict over Palestine was worked out long ago in the Security Council's Resolution 242, and the search for peace should not have been diverted into a fraudulent "peace process," with a self-interested American president masquerading as an "honest broker" but stacking the cards to Israel's advantage. The result has been tragic for the Palestinians, damaging to the reputation of the United States and potentially disastrous for the people of Israel. About the writer Michael Adams is the former Middle East correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He is an honorary research fellow at Exeter University and lives in the United Kingdom. Barak tries to fend off American mediation Ha’aretz December 3rd, 2000 Barak tries to fend off American mediation By Aluf Benn and Nitzan Horowitz Ha'aretz Correspondents Prime Minister Ehud Barak is keen to fend off American initiatives at mediating a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians in view of his assessment, expressed behind closed doors, that the chances of Israel and the Palestinians reaching an agreement do not exceed 10 percent. During a telephone conversation on Friday with Bill Clinton, Barak rejected the U.S. president's offer to do everything in his power to help Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement during the last seven weeks he has left in the White House. "No thank you," was Barak's response. "We are not dealing with diplomatic negotiations at this time, but with an effort to significantly lower the levels of violence," he explained to Clinton. The American president was trying to convince his Israeli counterpart of the need for Israel to cooperate with the international committee of inquiry into the causes of the violence in the territories between the Palestinians and Israel. The committee, under the leadership of former Senator George Mitchell, is planning a visit to the area in less than two weeks. Mitchell himself is eager to complete the committee's report sometime in March, 2001. Nonetheless, the committee has not yet formed the teams of experts - probably military observers from various countries - who will collect the information necessary for the completion of the report. During their telephone conversation, Barak, in what turned into something of a lecture by the prime minister, tried to convince Clinton of the need to put the fact-finding committee's activities on hold, due to the continuing violence in the territories. The differences between Israel and the United States appeared to be even deeper when the subject of the special military assistance package Israel had requested from the Americans was raised by the prime minister. "I will have to check into it," was the president's noncommittal response. The aid package has met with difficulties in getting Congressional approval, and Barak is concerned that it will not be approved. Israeli diplomatic sources explain their caution regarding the American initiatives by arguing that the stance which Washington has taken since the outbreak of the violence has been "balanced." "An analysis of the American position since the Camp David summit [last July] shows that there has been a tendency away from support for Israel and a movement toward the Palestinians, in all aspects," a senior Israeli diplomatic source said. A colleague added that "we do not need Dennis Ross [special U.S. envoy to the Middle East] to mediate in talks for lowering the levels of violence. That will only reward the Palestinian violence." The more senior of the two diplomats concludes: "What is needed now is that the two sides will talk directly without intermediaries, first in order to end the violence and the incitement and later for the renewal of the diplomatic process. If we need someone's auspices or support, even in hosting the negotiations or the leaders, we'll know who to turn to." However, despite the Israeli coolness toward the American offers, the White House continues to believe that Barak is willing to negotiate a deal with the Palestinians even without a complete end to the Al-Aqsa Intifada. This is categorically denied at the Prime Minister's Office. Acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has also taken a hard line with the Americans, in recent negotiations with National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. While Ben-Ami worked hard to stall the work of the fact-finding committee, he also urged the direct participation of Clinton in negotiations with the Palestinians. Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, arriving in Washington last night, was enthusiastic about the role the U.S. could play in the talks. Beilin, Ben-Ami, Transport Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and the director general of the prime minister's office, Gilad Sher, believe that an agreement could be reached during Clinton's final 50 days in office. The four believe that the differences between the two sides were never smaller and that all that is required is a final push. However, Beilin warned that the U.S. is opposed to Barak's suggestion for a partial agreement between the two sides, although he was adamant in his position that the violence in the territories has not altered the prime minister's main aim, which was to reach a final status agreement with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. |