[lit-ideas] Re: What Can Israel Achieve ?

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 07:30:02 -0700 (PDT)

Judy Evans has provided some information on Immanuel
Wallerstein; I didn't know who he was and posted it
just because it looked like a good article. Of course,
we know that Israel negotiated with Arafat during the
Oslo process (though against persistent opposition of
the Likud and the other right-wing parties) but it had
refused to negotiate with him for many years before
that and it ceased to negotiate as soon as the Likud
came into power again. As to Camp David negotiations,
I don't think that we really know what happened behind
more or less closed doors there. The chief contentious
issues besides territory were the control of East
Jerusalem, the guardianship of the Temple Mount, and
the right of return of refugees. Here is a brief
account: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_2000_Summit

Barak was later saying that he was making Arafat a
'generous offer', but this source indicates otherwise:
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/books_ME/Camp_David_Negotiations.html


......................................
Barak's proposal in Camp-David was based on a document
known as the Beilin-Abu-Mazen understandings. It was
concluded, following intensive negotiations 'behind
the screens', in november 11, 1995 (three days before
Rabin's assassination). In fact, the Beilin-Abu Mazen
Plan is a shameful document that leaves all the
settlements untouched. On the eve of the Camp David
Summit June 21, 2000 then Justice Minister Yossi
Beilin presented the document to the cabinet meeting
of the Israeli government. Its content was that Israel
will withdraw from 90%-95% of the West Bank, "about
130 settlements will remain under Israeli sovereignty,
50 will stay within the Palestinian state. In the
Jordan valley, which will be under Palestinian
sovereignty, Israeli military forces will be posted.
The Palestinian state will recognize Western Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel, while Israel will recognize
that the [portion of the] area defined as 'El Kuds'
prior to the six days war which exceeds the area
annexed to Israel in 1967 will be the capital of the
Palestinian state... Temple Mount [Al Aksa complex]
will be given to Palestinian Sovereignty..."
(Ha'aretz, main headline, June 23, 2000, MT). 

Read briefly, the text may seem to include some
Israeli concessions. What gives this impression is the
statement that Israel will recognize Palestinian
sovereignty over 90%-95% of the West Bank, from which
it will withdraw. But a closer reading reveals a
different picture. The question is what precisely
Israel means by "sovereignty." Inside the Palestinian
"sovereign area," 50 Israeli settlements will remain
intact and the Israeli forces will remain in the
Jordan valley. As we shall see directly, the complex
language describing "El Quds" means that the
Palestinian capital will be the remote village of Abu
Dis. A better picture of the plan can be drawn from
how Beilin himself described it in an interview in
1996: "As an outcome of my negotiations, I can say
with certainty that we can reach a permanent agreement
not under the overt conditions presented by the
Palestinians, but under a significant compromise [on
their side]... I discovered on their side a
substantial gap between their slogans and their actual
understanding of reality a much bigger gap than on our
side. They are willing to accept an agreement which
gives up much land, without the dismantling of
settlements, with no return to the '67 border, and
with an arrangement in Jerusalem which is less than
municipality level." (Interview with Lili Galili,
Ha'aretz, March 3, 1996) 
...............................................

It is also said (I can't find the source for this now)
that Clinton was not impressed with Barak's diplomatic
skills and reminded him that he, as a former general,
was a novice in politics. In any case, when the talks
did not succeed at that round, they should have been
continued. Instead, the Israeli side lost patience and
started the violence - Ariel Sharon's provocative
visit to the Temple Mount, and Barak ordering the
police to shoot at the Palestinians protestors. If you
don't remember this then perhaps you need to refresh
your memory as well. Barak failed in part because he
wanted quick results and was not willing or able to
spend a sufficient amount of time in negotiations. His
later statements were an attempt to save himself from
political embarrassment by blaming Arafat. The talks
were indeed renewed later at Taba, but at that time
Clinton was already going out of office and Barak's
political authority was too undermined. I would
recommend this article:


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15502

Barak's central thesis is that the current Palestinian
leadership wants "a Palestinian state in all of
Palestine. What we see as self-evident, two states for
two peoples, they reject." Arafat, he concludes, seeks
Israel's "demise." Barak has made that claim
repeatedly, both here and elsewhere, and indeed it
forms the crux of his argument. His claim therefore
should be taken up, issue by issue.

On the question of the boundaries of the future state,
the Palestinian position, formally adopted as early as
1988 and frequently reiterated by Palestinian
negotiators throughout the talks, was for a
Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967, borders,
living alongside Israel. At Camp David (at which one
of the present writers was a member of the US
administration's team), Arafat's negotiators accepted
the notion of Israeli annexation of West Bank
territory to accommodate settlements, though they
insisted on a one-for-one swap of land "of equal size
and value." The Palestinians argued that the annexed
territory should neither affect the contiguity of
their own land nor lead to the incorporation of
Palestinians into Israel. 

The ideas put forward by President Clinton at Camp
David fell well short of those demands. In order to
accommodate Israeli settlements, he proposed a deal by
which Israel would annex 9 percent of the West Bank in
exchange for turning over to the Palestinians parts of
pre-1967 Israel equivalent to 1 percent of the West
Bank. This proposal would have entailed the
incorporation of tens of thousands of additional
Palestinians into Israeli territory near the annexed
settlements; and it would have meant that territory
annexed by Israel would encroach deep inside the
Palestinian state. In his December 23, 2000,
proposals?called "parameters" by all parties?Clinton
suggested an Israeli annexation of between 4 and 6
percent of the West Bank in exchange for a land swap
of between 1 and 3 percent. The following month in
Taba, the Palestinians put their own map on the table
which showed roughly 3.1 percent of the West Bank
under Israeli sovereignty, with an equivalent land
swap in areas abutting the West Bank and Gaza.[*]

On Jerusalem, the Palestinians accepted at Camp David
the principle of Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing
Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and Jewish
neighborhoods of East Jerusalem?neighborhoods that
were not part of Israel before the 1967 Six-Day
War?though the Palestinians clung to the view that all
of Arab East Jerusalem should be Palestinian.


In contrast to the issues of territory and Jerusalem,
there is no Palestinian position on how the refugee
question should be dealt with as a practical matter.
Rather, the Palestinians presented a set of
principles. First, they insisted on the need to
recognize the refugees' right of return, lest the
agreement lose all legitimacy with the vast refugee
constituency?roughly half the entire Palestinian
population. Second, they acknowledged that Israel's
demographic interests had to be recognized and taken
into account. Barak draws from this the conclusion
that the refugees are the "main demographic-political
tool for subverting the Jewish state." The Palestinian
leadership's insistence on a right of return
demonstrates, in his account, that their conception of
a two-state solution is one state for the Palestinians
in Palestine and another in Israel. But the facts
suggest that the Palestinians are trying (to date,
unsuccessfully) to reconcile these two competing
imperatives?the demographic imperative and the right
of return. Indeed, in one of his last pre? Camp David
meetings with Clinton, Arafat asked him to "give [him]
a reasonable deal [on the refugee question] and then
see how to present it as not betraying the right of
return."

See also:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1113


O.K.


--- Stan Spiegel <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >After 1967, the Israeli governments never felt they
> >had to negotiate anything with the Palestinians or
> >with the Arab world. They offered one-sided
> >settlements but these were always on Israeli terms.
> >Israel wouldn't negotiate with Nasser. Then it
> >wouldn't negotiate with Arafat. And now it won't
> >negotiate with so-called terrorists. Instead, it
> has
> >relied on successive shows of military strength.
> 
> I can't counter all the points this writer has made
> at the moment (I'm going 
> to bed now), but when Wallerstein says "Then it
> won't negotiate with 
> Arafat..." I wonder about the substance of
> everything he says.
> 
> I remember that fateful summer of 2000 when Ehud
> Barak and Arafat sat down 
> together with Bill Clinton to negotiate. Arafat got
> nearly 96% of everything 
> he wanted, and then suddenly instead of continuing
> to negotiate -- I 
> remember this -- he picked himself up and left.
> Clinton was puzzled. Barak 
> was puzzled. Then Arafat went back home and started
> the Intifada. Two years 
> of deadly suicide bombing against Israel.
> 
> Omar, has your memory failed you?
> 
> Ehud Barak lost his job because he was willing to
> negotiate and negotiate 
> and negotiate. He wanted to bring about peace. But
> peace wasn't the outcome. 
> And Ariel Sharon won the election because Barak was
> seen as too soft. If 
> peace had resulted from that meeting with Clinton
> mediating between them, 
> Barak would still be Prime Minister.
> 
> Who is Wallerstein? Where does he get his facts
> from? What axe does he have 
> to grind that he makes such ridiculous statements?
> Anyone who paid attention 
> to that meeting with Barak and Arafat, as I did,
> knows this account is a 
> fraud.
> 
> I'm tired of dealing with frauds, Omar.
> 
> Stan Spiegel
> Portland, ME


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