Posted on 05/01/2002 10:38:20 AM PDT by Ancesthntr
Myths of the Intifada
Yasser Arafat has propagated three myths about the deals he turned down. Now Dennis Ross has set the record straight.
by Fred Barnes 04/25/2002
PALESTINIAN and other apologists for Yasser Arafat have propagated three myths about his failure to reach peace with Israel. And only now--two years after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed because of Arafat's intransigence--is the truth becoming known. This is mostly thanks to Dennis Ross, the Middle East negotiator for both the first Bush administration and President Clinton.
The first myth is that the final deal offered to Arafat would have created a new Palestinian state fragmented into four "cantons" on the West Bank, each surrounded by Israeli territory, none connected to Gaza. It was understandably unacceptable to the Palestinians. The second is that Arafat actually accepted a later, more generous peace settlement, only to have it nullified by the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister in February 2001. And the third is that this final offer, an official United States proposal made by Clinton, was never put on paper, making it a matter not to be taken seriously, then or now. (Yes, the myths conflict. Arafat is said to have turned down one final deal but accepted another, later, final offer.) Myth number one has an element of truth. Indeed, the terms of the peace settlement offered by then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in July 2000 involved four separate clusters of territory on the West Bank and no land link to Gaza. Arafat said no and didn't make a counteroffer. Instead, in September, he started a violent new intifada, or insurrection, against Israel. But the myth, persistently voiced by such Arafat sympathizers as James Zogby of the Arab American Institute and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is that this was the final peace proposal. It wasn't.
Following the Camp David summit, Arafat asked for another meeting, according to Ross, and was told he would need to be prepared to accept a deal before a new summit would be set up. So Arafat "agreed to set up a private channel between his people and the Israelis," Ross told Brit Hume on "Fox News Sunday" on April 21. Arafat knew the United States was "poised to present our ideas" when he ordered a new intifada. The United States asked Arafat to prevent violence from erupting after Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and he said he would. "He didn't lift a finger," Ross said.
In December 2000, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were brought to Washington. And on December 23, President Clinton presented a new plan to them. The Palestinians would get 97 percent of the West Bank, Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new Palestinian state, refugees would be allowed to return to Palestine but not Israel, and a $30 billion fund would be established to compensate refugees. This was the final offer: The cantons were gone and a land link to Gaza was included.
And that leads into myth two, that Arafat accepted the fresh and far more generous proposal. True, he said yes when he met with Clinton on January 2, 2001, in the Oval Office. "Then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give," Ross said. He rejected the idea Israelis would have sovereignty over the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other religious sites. He rejected the scheme for refugees and what Ross called "the basic ideas on security . . . So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him, he rejected." How can Ross be so sure of that? He was in the room with Clinton and Arafat when it happened.
As for myth three, Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi and others have dismissed the U.S. offer, which the Israelis under Barak were willing to accept, as so inconsequential it wasn't even written down and publicly announced. But by late 2000, Ross said, Americans had learned Arafat's negotiating style. Any formal offer would be taken as the floor for further negotiations requiring more Israeli concessions. But with the Clinton administration soon to leave office, there wasn't time to allow Arafat to prolong talks. "We wanted them to understand we meant what we said," Ross said. "You don't accept it, it's not for negotiation, this is the end of it, we withdraw it . . . It couldn't be the floor for negotiations. It was the roof." So for Arafat, it was take it or leave it. He left it, and soon the negotiating environment changed with the election of Sharon and George W. Bush.
In truth, the offer was written down when it was initially presented by Clinton in December. "He went over it at dictation speed," Ross said. After Clinton left the meeting, Ross stayed behind to make certain the Palestinian negotiators had gotten "every single word." They had. A footnote: Ross insists the Palestinian negotiators were ready to accept the offer. They "understood this was the best they were ever going to get. They wanted [Arafat] to accept it." He refused. Why? Ross believes Arafat simply doesn't want to end the conflict with Israel. His career is governed by struggle and leaving his options open. "For him to end the conflict is to end himself," Ross said.
What's important about the history of peace talks in the Middle East is what it tells us about Arafat. The inescapable conclusion is that he will never reach a settlement with Israelis leading to two countries, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. The Israelis? An honest recounting of the Clinton-led peace talks shows they were willing, though hardly eager, to make substantial concessions to reach a settlement. Had Arafat gone along, Ross believes Barak could have sold the deal to the Israeli people, even as Palestinian terrorism continued and Sharon's election victory loomed. Maybe so, but that was a moment in time that, because of Arafat, has now passed away.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Maybe not. Anyone with any familiarity regarding the PLO's position on the conflict knows that they are on record as saying that they will take a piece, and use that to obtain another and another... until Israel finally bites the dust. Why they didn't in 2000 is a bit of a mystery - either Arafat got too greedy and headstrong, or he feared that he'd be popped shortly after returning with such a proposal. I believe that the latter fate would befall any "moderates" that try to succeed Arafat. There are too many people in that camp that don't know how to do anything else, are consumed with hatred and have no compunction about offing one of their own for straying from the path.
What will you be saying when US troops become the targets of Pallie suicide bombers? Should we just take it, as people like you seem to require of the Israelis? Or perhaps we would move into the area from which such people originate and clean out the bomb factories and terrorist masterminds (as people like you have condemned Israel for doing)?
Maybe at some future time, they could merge into one by mutual agreement.
And maybe Elvis is alive, partying with JFK and his alien-impregnated former wife, Jackie O. What have you been snorting lately? Do you seriously believe that there is one chance in a million that people who print textbooks with no State of Israel, who teach their young that it is not only OK, but mandated by Allah, to kill innocent Israeli women, children and babies, and who've never made any bones about their ultimate goal of destroying Israel and murdering all of its Jewish inhabitants will ever be willing to have a joint state? You've just destroyed any credibility that you might have had before this.
Facts? What are 'facts' anyway? Isn't that just an anachronism, held over from the days when students went to school to study and criminals went to jail because they did bad things? You really show how much of a throwback you are to speack of a concept so outmoded as 'facts'. We've proven once and for all that there really are no 'facts', just perceptions. People who speak of 'facts' just don't know what's going on.
And that's a fact.
Shalom.
Arafat probably cannot survive either a real settlement or ultimate victory, i.e. driving the Jews into the sea. The same social system is in place in Afghanistan and it is obvious that the internecine war would be intense now if the US had already pulled out as happened when the Russians were pushed out.
That was never tried. Egypt and Syria immediately invaded and occupied the land that had been set aside for 'a future Arab state.'
Israel didn't displace the Palistinians, Egypt and Syria did. But they displaced them from a desert that nobody wants to live in. Israel, OTOH, has irrigated their land and made it truly beautiful. Therefore it's Israel the Palis want, and a war to get rid of them.
Shalom.
I agree. However, I also think that he's one of those who don't, and never have, wanted any kind of peace with Israel. I don't look at him as being trapped by the societal problems of the Pallies, but as an architect of those problems. He was never a builder, only a destroyer.
That was never tried.
I believe that Aimhigh was alluding to the fact that the Jewish leaders before independence made the offer of a joint state, but were (to understate matters) rebuffed. I think that he's quite aware of the invasion by 5 Arab armies on the day after Israel was declared to be a nation in 1948.
I largely agree. However, I would like him (and anyone else who reads this thread) to know that his views are without a basis in fact or logic. Some things need to be said.
I agree that the US and the world wouldn't support the killing or deportation of all of the Arabs west of the Jordan River who are not Israeli citizens, nor should they. Beyond that, your assertion/accusation is utter nonsense (like the rest of the bilge that you've spouted on this thread).
If the Israelis themselves would be satisfied to live at peace alongside the so-called Palestinians (and they would be - they've dreamed of it since before the State of Israel even came into existence), then who would I be to object? The problem, however, is that the murderous thugs who pose as the leaders of these Arabs are unwilling to do so. They want it all, everything from "the River to the Sea" (i.e. from the Jordan to the Mediterranean).
Some situations cannot be resolved peacefully. For example, nothing in the historical record suggests that there could have been a world in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would have been able to co-exist with free and independent nations like England and the US. When it is an either/or choice, then a society must make the choice to prevail and survive, or it will perish. I hope that such is not Israel's choice, that the Arabs will finally choose to live with them in relative peace, but I fear not. Given the length of time that has passed since this conflict began, given the blind hatred, given the poisoning of the minds of young Arab children by the PLO and their like, it may be that no settlement is possible that would satisfy both sides. IF that is the case, and only if the choice is between Israel and a 22nd Arab nation, would I choose to back some extreme measure like deportation (but never a mass killing).
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