myth

Myths about the Middle East Peace Process

By Ronald Forthofer, Ph.D. February 05 2002
[A reservist with the Christian Peacemaker Teams and was in
Israel/Palestine this past July and August. He is also a retired
professor and was a Green Party candidate for Congress in 2000.]

COLORADO (PalestineChronicle.com): Since the July 2000 Camp David
debacle, there has been a steady drumbeat of media propaganda
falsely blaming only the Palestinians and, in particular, their
leader, Yasser Arafat, for the failure of the peace negotiations.
Some columnists again spouted the Big Lie that the Palestinians
'never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.' These pundits
claimed that the Palestinians foolishly rejected Israel's
'generous' offer.

Ami Ayalon, head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service
from February 1996 to May 2000, recently spoke about the peace
negotiations and Israel's offer in an interview in the December
23, 2001 edition of Le Monde. In response to the question, "From
Oslo to Camp David, did Israel miss a rare opportunity for
peace?", Ayalon responded:

"Yes. It is not all the Israelis' fault. The Palestinians, the
international community, bear some responsibility, but we missed
an extraordinary opportunity: the international situation was
incredibly favorable after the fall of communism, the Gulf war,
the emergence of globalization, all these phenomena led Israel to
reexamine its own assumptions. Now, we are regressing."

Regarding the 'generous' offer, Ayalon said: "In Israel, no one
is in touch with reality. This is a consequence of a
misperception of the peace process. 'We have been generous and
they refused!' is ridiculous, and everything that follows from
this misperception is skewed."

Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper, in describing Barak's
'generous' offer at Camp David (the return of most of the West
Bank and Gaza while Israel still controlled much of the road
system and the borders), used the metaphor of a prison: "in a
prison, the prisoners live in about 95% of the space, and the
guards control 'only' about 5%. But this 5% includes all of the
corridors between the cells, and therefore the guards control the
entire prison. Thus it is with the Palestinian territories, which
are being incorporated and at the same time isolated by Israel's
policy of divide and control."

As a result of the disinformation about the negotiations and the
current intifada, many have concluded that the Palestinians don't
want peace. In an article on the Israeli peace group Gush
Shalom's web site, Dr. Tony Klug, co-chair of the Council for
Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue in the United Kingdom, wrote:

"Many erstwhile supporters of the Israeli peace camp felt
betrayed and duped and have joined the chorus of vengeance that
has swept the land. Once again, there is a mood in Israel of 'no
alternative'. The besiegers feel besieged. However, it is
increasingly becoming clear that the simple Israeli view of
events at Camp David and the popular Israeli interpretation of
them are at variance with the truth."

Klug also rejected the idea that Bill Clinton and the U.S. played
the role as an honest broker at Camp David. According to Klug:

"The Clinton administration itself has since publicly disclosed
that all proposals put forward by the US were co-ordinated in
advance with the Israeli delegation. In effect, the most powerful
country in the world teamed up with the most powerful country in
the region to induce one of the weakest non-states anywhere to
accept a sequence of half-baked proposals, with a threat of
sanctions if it did not comply."

Ayalon, addressing the claim that Arafat turned to violence after
negotiations failed to meet his demands, said:

"Yasser Arafat neither prepared nor triggered the Intifada. The
explosion was spontaneous, against Israel, as all hope for the
end of occupation disappeared, and against the Palestinian
authority, its corruption, its impotence. Arafat could not
repress it. The peace process is what allowed Arafat to be seen
as the head of a national liberation movement rather than a
collaborator of Israel. Without it, he can fight neither against
the Islamists nor against his own base. The Palestinians would
end up hanging him in the public square."

In another article on the Gush Shalom web site, Dr. Ron Pundak,
one of the Israeli negotiators of the Oslo Accords and later
talks, supported Ayalon's view when he said: "Sharon's visit, and
the killing of worshippers on the plazas of Jerusalem's mosques
on the following day, was the match that ignited the powder keg,
which had threatened to explode for years."

In an additional attempt to demonstrate Palestinian
intransigence, some have claimed that Israel offered Palestinians
sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif(Temple Mount) area and that
the Palestinians rejected this offer. However, as late as
December 2000, five months after Camp David, Israel refused to
agree to Palestinian sovereignty. In his December 29, 2000 column
in the British paper, the Independent, Robert Fisk reported that
Danny Yatom, Barak's security adviser, said Mr. Barak "will not
sign an accord which transfers sovereignty [over the Temple
Mount/ Haram al-Sharif] to the Palestinians."

Many are probably unaware that, despite all the negative
rhetoric, negotiations continued after Camp David, concluding in
a session at the Egyptian resort of Taba in January 2001.
Although some have claimed that the issue of return of the
Palestinian refugees was a stumbling block preventing an
agreement, many insider Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian sources
refute this charge.

The January 27, 2001 joint statement issued by the Israeli and
Palestinian negotiators after Taba supports the idea that an
agreement was close at hand.

"On all these issues there was substantial progress in the
understanding of the other side's positions and in some of them
the two sides grew closer. As stated above, the political
timetable prevented reaching an agreement on all the issues.

However, in light of the significant progress in narrowing the
differences between the sides, the two sides are convinced that
in a short period of time and given an intensive effort and the
acknowledgment of the essential and urgent nature of reaching an
agreement, it will be possible to bridge the differences
remaining and attain a permanent settlement of peace between
them. In this respect, the two sides are confident that they can
begin and move forward in this process at the earliest practical
opportunity."

In addition, Pundak wrote:

"The negotiations in Taba ... proved that a permanent status
agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was within reach.
.. The talks did not end in an explosion, but rather in the
feeling that the time remaining would not enable the two sides to
reach a written and signed agreement. On the delicate issue of
the Palestinian refugees and the right of return, the negotiators
reached a draft determining the parameters and procedures for a
solution, along with a clear emphasis that its implementation
would not threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel."

In an August 2001 article located on the Palestinian National
Authority's web site, Dr. Herbert C. Kelman, Director of the
Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard
University, agreed with Pundak on Taba as well as on the right of
return issue.

"At the same time, it needs to be clear that, just as Israelis
cannot endorse the right of return, Palestinians cannot renounce
that right, as it is a central element of the Palestinian
national narrative. Negotiations need to deal with the issue at
two levels. At the level of principle, they must find language
whereby Israel would acknowledge its share of responsibility and
express regret for the plight of the refugees. At the level of
implementation, negotiations would develop a comprehensive
program of resettlement and compensation of refugees, according
to which a limited number would have the choice to return to
Israel and others would be able to settle in the Palestinian
state, to stay in their countries of current residence, or to
immigrate to other countries around the world.

The specific positions on the issues, as proposed above, are well
within the range of positions that both Palestinian and Israeli
officials were prepared to endorse during and after the Camp
David talks."

In an April 15, 2001 letter to U.S. Congressional members, Yaser
Abed Rabbo, of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the
Palestine Liberation Organization, stated:

"The refugee issue is not insurmountable, however. In the weeks
following Camp David, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators engaged
usefully on the issue of refugees. In the negotiations at Taba,
for example, very workable solutions to this issue were
discussed."

According to Israeli peace activist Uri Averny of Gush Shalom,
even Shlomo Ben Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister during the last
part of Barak's tenure, "admitted that Arafat did in fact make
some far-reaching compromises from the Palestinian perspective."
Among these was that Arafat "agreed to relinquish the historical
claim of the refugees to return to their homes and accepted, in
principle, that Israel will only allow the return of an agreed-
upon limited number."

Given all this, why does Israel continue to vilify Arafat and
claim that he is 'irrelevant' and not a reliable partner? Shabtai
Shavit, head of the Security Service (Mossad) from 1989-1996 and
now the chairman of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, explained:

"In the thirty something years that he [Arafat] leads, he managed
to reach real achievements in the political and international
sphere ... He got the Nobel peace prize, and in a single phone
call, he can obtain a meeting with every leader in the world.
There is nobody in the Palestinian gallery that can enter his
shoes in this context of international status. If they [the
Palestinians] will loose [sic] this gain, for us, this is a huge
achievement.The Palestinian issue will get off the international
agenda." (interview in Yediot's Weekend Supplement, December 7,
2001).

In conclusion, if there is to be peace in the Middle East, people
must face reality and stop falsely blaming the other side for all
the problems. Klug expressed it well when he said "It is of the
utmost importance for the destinies of the two peoples that the
record is set straight and the myths debunked so that a path may
be cleared for a future peace initiative."