Ungenerous occupier: Israel's Camp David exposed

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2008

After seven years of rumors and self-serving memoirs, the Israeli media has finally published extracts from an official source about the Camp David negotiations in summer 2000. For the first time it is possible to gauge with some certainty the extent of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's "generous offer" to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat's reasons for rejecting it.

In addition, the document provides valuable insights into what larger goals Israel hoped to achieve at Camp David and how similar ambitions are driving its policies to this day.

The 26-page paper, leaked to the Haaretz daily, was drafted by the country's political and security establishments in the wake of Camp David as a guide to what separated the parties. Entitled "The Status of the Diplomatic Process with the Palestinians: Points to Update the Incoming Prime Minister," it was prepared in time for the February 2001 general election.

Although this is far from the only account of the Camp David negotiations, it is the first official document explaining what took place -- and one that certainly cannot be accused of being unsympathetic to Israel's positions.

The document came to light last month after it was presented to current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prepare him for his meeting with the Palestinians at Annapolis. Olmert had agreed, under American pressure, to revive negotiations for the first time since the collapse of Camp David, and the follow-up Taba talks a few months later. It is clear that, far from reviewing his stance in light of the Camp David impasse, Olmert chose to adopt some of Barak's most hardline positions.

The earlier negotiations, in July 2000, were Barak's attempt to wrap up all the outstanding points of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that had not been addressed during a series of Israeli withdrawals from the occupied territories specified in the Oslo agreements.

Barak, backed by the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, pushed Palestinian Authority President Arafat into the hurried final-status negotiations, even though the Palestinian leader believed more time was needed to build confidence between the two sides. Contrary to the spirit of the Oslo agreements, Israel had doubled the number of illegal settlers in the occupied territories through the 1990s and failed to carry out the promised withdrawals in full.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Israeli document does not acknowledge the most generous offer of all during the six decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the PLO's decision in the late 1980s to renounce its claim to most of the Palestinian homeland, and settle instead for a state in the two separate territories of the West Bank and Gaza -- on only 22 percent of historic Palestine.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9181.shtml

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. How fascinating (and typical) that when Israel's great myths finally get debunked

they are met with silence.

[kayecy]

2. It is stupid to declare what you are prepared to give away

ProgressiveMuslim What puzzles me is why Arafat or Abas should show their hand by making statements like "....the PLO's decision in the late 1980s to renounce its claim to most of the Palestinian homeland"

Israel has never declared what its borders were at the time of independence, or what borders it is now claiming. That's real negotiating tactics.

Even Clinton couldn't get Barak to tell him anything about the 'concessions' Israel was prepared to offer.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

3. It was stupid for the PLO to formally recognize Israel. That should have been the concession, not

the starting point.

[Vegasaurus]

4. And what has "recognition" accomplished?

The PLO is only marginally different in its claim to "historic Palestine" than Hamas.

[Shaktimaan]

5. What was stupid about it?

Recognizing Israel's right to exist isn't a concession, it is a table-stake. It has to be, by the nature of what these negotiations are. Look at it this way, there is only one real requirement expected of any parties considering entering peace negotiations. The desire to make peace. In terms of the IP conflict, that means formal recognition.

You can't enter into peace talks saying that the very right of Israel to exist remains subject to negotiations. And until Arafat was willing to acknowledge this no peace talks were able to take place at all. Would the Palestinians truly be better off now had Oslo never happened? No elections, no autonomy over any areas at all, no IDF redeployment from anywhere, settlements remaining in Gaza, etc.?

It's not as if the US or Israel would have suddenly decided to drop this requirement had Arafat not agreed to it. What you're suggesting is that peace talks not have taken place.

[Lithos]

6. Haaretz' original article is here:

It avoids the partisanship and discusses more of the details.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/934110.html