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>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,681673,00.html
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Comment
The brilliant offer Israel never made
To get peace talks started again means confronting a few myths
David Clark
Wednesday April 10, 2002
The Guardian
Yesterday's carnage in the West Bank provided a bloody illustration of the limits of
Ariel Sharon's military strategy. Armed force cannot provide his people with the
security they crave because the terrorist infrastructure he has set out to destroy
consists of little more than the willingness of ordinary Palestinians to kill
themselves
while taking as many Israelis with them as possible. This week, the hatred on which it
is built burns deeper than ever. In the absence of a meaningful peace process,
further atrocities are inevitable, and when they happen, the consequences may be
far worse than anything we have so far seen.
Israeli leaders are trapped in a mindset in which further military escalation appears
to
be their only option. Yet it is difficult to see how much further they can go without
triggering a wider regional conflagration that might threaten the state of Israel
itself.
The "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from large tracts of the occupied territories?
The murder of Arafat? The consequences are unthinkable. Left to his own devices,
Ariel Sharon may yet turn out to be the ultimate suicide bomber.
Into the maelstrom steps Colin Powell on a mission that could represent the best
hope of avoiding such a catastrophe. His task is clear: to secure a ceasefire and
persuade both parties to return to the negotiating table. To succeed, however, he will
need to do more than indulge in hand-wringing. He will need to come armed with
some harsh truths and some even harsher consequences.
With Israel, it will be necessary to challenge some deeply held illusions about the
peace process and why it broke down. Chief among these is the assertion that the
Palestinians rejected a "generous" Israeli offer at Camp David two years ago. It is a
view that spans the Israeli political spectrum, uniting the hard right with born-again
rejectionists like Ehud Barak, confirming all in their belief that political dialogue
has
been exhausted and that Arafat is an inveterate terrorist. It is time for some
constructive revisionism.
Barak's proposal for a Palestinian state based on 91% of the West Bank sounded
substantive, but even the most cursory glance at the map revealed the bad faith
inherent in it. It showed the West Bank carved into three chunks, surrounded by
Israeli troops and settlers, without direct access to its own international borders.
The land-swap that was supposed to compensate the Palestinians for the loss of
prime agricultural land in the West Bank merely added insult to injury. The only
territory offered to Palestinian negotiators consisted of stretches of desert adjacent
to
the Gaza Strip that Israel currently uses for toxic waste dumping. The proposals on
East Jerusalem were no better, permitting the Palestinians control of a few scattered
fragments of what had been theirs before 1967.
Barak offered the trappings of Palestinian sovereignty while perpetuating the
subjugation of the Palestinians. It is not difficult to see why they felt unable to
accept.
The only surprise is how widely the myth of the "generous offer" is now accepted.
For this, Bill Clinton must accept responsibility. With the end of his presidency in
sight, Clinton saw time running out along with the hope that he might be remembered
in history for something more dignified than blow jobs in the Oval Office. He needed
a quick deal rather than a just deal and chose to attempt to bounce Arafat into
accepting Israel's terms. When this failed, Clinton vented his wrath at the Palestinian
leader.
Maladroit diplomacy played its part, but the failure at Camp David was the product of
a deeper problem for which the Palestinians must also accept their share of blame.
With the benefit of hindsight, the 1993 Oslo agreement that embodied the land-for-
peace compromise was a mirage. Although both sides signed up to a two-state
solution, neither was completely sincere in accepting its implications. The
Palestinians clung to maximalist demands on refugee returns in the hope that
demographics would allow them to rewrite the past. The Israelis insisted on territorial
demands that made a mockery of the idea of a viable Palestinian state.
It is here that the Saudi peace initiative has come to play such a critical role in
getting
the peace process back on track. In calling for Israel's withdrawal from all of the
occupied territories and holding out the prospect of a compromise on the refugees
that would meet Israeli concerns, it forces both sides finally to come to terms with
each other's existence.
Tony Blair's call for the Saudi plan to be enshrined in a new UN resolution is a tacit
acceptance that Camp David was a botched job. Progress will now depend on Colin
Powell's willingness to spell that out to Sharon and Arafat this week.
· David Clark was a special adviser at the Foreign Office until May 2001.
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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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