> From: Luke Weiger [mailto:lweiger at umich.edu]
>
> Seth: I said "say whatever you want about what was on the table in 2000."
> Maybe it was (I simply don't know enough to say) a pretty bad deal for the
> Palestinians, but I don't see why it couldn't have served as a starting
> point.
It did serve as a starting point. A starting point for the negotiations that continued for the next six months. Then Israel broke off the talks.
Seth
>
> -- Luke
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <sethia at speakeasy.net>
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 3:21 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Luke!!!
>
>
> > > From: Luke Weiger [mailto:lweiger at umich.edu]
> > > So Arafat's intransigence has nothing to do with the sorry state of the
> ME?
> > > Say whatever you want about what was on the table in 2000, but to walk
> away
> > > without even making a counter offer...
> >
> > Good god, man. Expand your reading. May I suggest a piece I wrote?....
> >
> > http://fair.org/extra/0207/generous.html
> >
> > The Myth of the Generous Offer
> > Distorting the Camp David negotiations
> > By Seth Ackerman
> >
> > The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East
> leave many people wondering why the two sides can't reach an agreement. The
> answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David
> meeting in July 2000, Israel "offered extraordinary concessions" (Michael
> Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), "far-reaching concessions" (Boston Globe,
> 12/30/01), "unprecedented concessions" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post,
> 12/4/01). Israel?s "generous peace terms" (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02)
> constituted "the most far-reaching offer ever" (Chicago Tribune editorial,
> 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was "an
> unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).
> >
> > But due to "Arafat's recalcitrance" (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and
> "Palestinian rejectionism" (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report,
> 3/22/02), "Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals
> without even making a counteroffer" (Salon.com 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat "walked
> away without making a counteroffer" (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today,
> 6/18/01). Israel "offered peace terms more generous than ever before and
> Arafat did not even make a counteroffer" (Chicago Sun-Times editorial,
> 11/10/00). In case the point isn?t clear: "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 counteroffer!" (Charles
> Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).
> >
> > This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its
> implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with
> its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army?s increasingly deadly attacks,
> in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian
> aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.
> >
> > Locking in occupation
> >
> > To understand what actually happened at Camp David, it's necessary to know
> that for many years the PLO has officially called for a two-state solution
> in which Israel would keep the 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate (as
> Britain's protectorate was called) that it has controlled since 1948, and a
> Palestinian state would be formed on the remaining 22 percent that Israel
> has occupied since the 1967 war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East
> Jerusalem). Israel would withdraw completely from those lands, return to the
> pre-1967 borders and a resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees
> who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 would be negotiated between the
> two sides. Then, in exchange, the Palestinians would agree to recognize
> Israel (PLO Declaration, 12/7/88; PLO Negotiations Department).
> >
> > Although some people describe Israel's Camp David proposal as practically
> a return to the 1967 borders, it was far from that. Under the plan, Israel
> would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would
> annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West
> Bank--while retaining "security control" over other parts--that would have
> made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within
> their own state without the permission of the Israeli government (Political
> Science Quarterly, 6/22/01; New York Times, 7/26/01; Report on Israeli
> Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 9-10/00; Robert Malley, New York
> Review of Books, 8/9/01).
> >
> > The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into
> three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands
> that happen to contain most of the region?s scarce water aquifers, Israel
> offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about
> one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic
> waste dump.
> >
> > Because of the geographic placement of Israel?s proposed West Bank
> annexations, Palestinians living in their new ?independent state? would be
> forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods
> from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those
> routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called ?bypass
> roads? that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign
> Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
> >
> > Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period
> of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border
> between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free
> access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting
> Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli
> military.
> >
> > Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have
> permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation
> they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded
> that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old
> war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further
> claims against Israel.
> >
> > Violence or negotiation?
> >
> > The Camp David meeting ended without agreement on July 25, 2000. At this
> point, according to conventional wisdom, the Palestinian leader's "response
> to the Camp David proposals was not a counteroffer but an assault"
> (Oregonian editorial, 8/15/01). "Arafat figured he could push one more time
> to get one more batch of concessions. The talks collapsed. Violence erupted
> again" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). He "used the uprising to
> obtain through violence...what he couldn't get at the Camp David bargaining
> table" (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21/00).
> >
> > But the Intifada actually did not start for another two months. In the
> meantime, there was relative calm in the occupied territories. During this
> period of quiet, the two sides continued negotiating behind closed doors.
> Meanwhile, life for the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation went
> on as usual. On July 28, Prime Minister Barak announced that Israel had no
> plans to withdraw from the town of Abu Dis, as it had pledged to do in the
> 1995 Oslo II agreement (Israel Wire, 7/28/00). In August and early
> September, Israel announced new construction on Jewish-only settlements in
> Efrat and Har Adar, while the Israeli statistics bureau reported that
> settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000.
> Two Palestinian houses were demolished in East Jerusalem, and Arab residents
> of Sur Bahir and Suwahara received expropriation notices; their houses lay
> in the path of a planned Jewish-only highway (Report on Israeli Settlement
> in the Occupied Territories,!
> > 11-12/00).
> >
> > The Intifada began on September 29, 2000, when Israeli troops opened fire
> on unarmed Palestinian rock-throwers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,
> killing four and wounding over 200 (State Department human rights report for
> Israel, 2/01). Demonstrations spread throughout the territories. Barak and
> Arafat, having both staked their domestic reputations on their ability to
> win a negotiated peace from the other side, now felt politically threatened
> by the violence. In January 2001, they resumed formal negotiations at Taba,
> Egypt.
> >
> > The Taba talks are one of the most significant and least remembered events
> of the "peace process." While so far in 2002 (1/1/02-5/31/02), Camp David
> has been mentioned in conjunction with Israel 35 times on broadcast network
> news shows, Taba has come up only four times--never on any of the nightly
> newscasts. In February 2002, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz (2/14/02),
> published for the first time the text of the European Union's official notes
> of the Taba talks, which were confirmed in their essential points by
> negotiators from both sides.
> >
> > "Anyone who reads the European Union account of the Taba talks," Ha'aretz
> noted in its introduction, "will find it hard to believe that only 13 months
> ago, Israel and the Palestinians were so close to a peace agreement." At
> Taba, Israel dropped its demand to control Palestine's borders and the
> Jordan Valley. The Palestinians, for the first time, made detailed
> counterproposals--in other words, counteroffers--showing which changes to
> the 1967 borders they would be willing to accept. The Israeli map that has
> emerged from the talks shows a fully contiguous West Bank, though with a
> very narrow middle and a strange gerrymandered western border to accommodate
> annexed settlements.
> >
> > In the end, however, all this proved too much for Israel's Labor prime
> minister. On January 28, Barak unilaterally broke off the negotiations. "The
> pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted,"
> Ben-Ami said (New York Times, 7/26/01).
> >
> > Settlements off the table
> >
> > In February 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel.
> Sharon has made his position on the negotiations crystal clear. "You know,
> it's not by accident that the settlements are located where they are," he
> said in an interview a few months after his election (Ha'aretz, 4/12/01).
> >
> > They safeguard the cradle of the Jewish people's birth and also provide
> strategic depth which is vital to our existence.
> >
> > The settlements were established according to the conception that, come
> what may, we have to hold the western security area [of the West Bank],
> which is adjacent to the Green Line, and the eastern security area along the
> Jordan River and the roads linking the two. And Jerusalem, of course. And
> the hill aquifer. Nothing has changed with respect to any of those things.
> The importance of the security areas has not diminished, it may even have
> increased. So I see no reason for evacuating any settlements.
> >
> > Meanwhile, Ehud Barak has repudiated his own positions at Taba, and now
> speaks pointedly of the need for a negotiated settlement "based on the
> principles presented at Camp David" (New York Times op-ed, 4/14/02).
> >
> > In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League--from moderate Jordan to
> hardline Iraq--unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around
> full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in
> exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders as well as a
> "just resolution" to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath
> declared himself "delighted" with the plan. "The proposal constitutes the
> best terms of reference for our political struggle," he told the Jordan
> Times (3/28/02).
> >
> > Ariel Sharon responded by declaring that "a return to the 1967 borders
> will destroy Israel" (New York Times, 5/4/02). In a commentary on the Arab
> plan, Ha'aretz's Bradley Burston (2/27/02) noted that the offer was "forcing
> Israel to confront peace terms it has quietly feared for decades."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
> >
>
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