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| November 23, 2005
3. The Failure of the 2001 Taba II Negotiations and subsequent events Gary D. Keenan
________________________________________________________________________ (A) Taba II During December 2000, President Clinton hosted Israeli and Palestinian representatives in Washington and presented them with a bridging proposal he hoped would end the Al Aqsa intifada which had erupted on September 29th. As a consequence, Israeli and Palestinian delegations held marathon talks at the Egyptian resort of Taba from January 22 to January 28, 2001. Unfortunately, however, as Aaron David Miller, a key member of the U.S. negotiating team, revealed to author Clayton Swisher (The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, Nation Books, 2004), even at this late stage President Clinton remained poorly prepared and as a result his bridging proposal was ill-defined: "Things got no better as the final months of Clinton's administration went on. Miller confesses to Swisher that the so-called 'parameters' that Clinton finally presented in late December 2000 - the first time the Clinton team had ventured to adopt a policy position - were still being revised the very day they were presented, meaning that, as Miller notes, 'we were not ready.' This was less than a month before the end of eight years in office. Clinton and company lacked a clear strategy and 'dithered' over what exactly the parameters were to define." (Kathleen Christison, "Camp David Redux, Counterpunch, 15 August 2005)1 Although the Taba II talks were ultimately suspended in the midst of discussions, official reports indicated that some progress had been made. "'Peace seemed very possible at Taba'," [Israeli Foreign Minister] Mr. Ben-Ami said. And [Palestinian negotiator] Mr. Abu Ala said, 'In Taba, we achieved real tangible steps toward a final agreement'." ("Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed," Deborah Sontag, New York Times, 26 July 2001) As had occurred following the breakdown of the Camp David Summit, Israel (and subsequently, President Clinton, Dennis Ross et al.) falsely accused Arafat of turning down another "generous offer" at Taba II and contrary to reality, blamed him for the suspension of talks. Although his remarks received scant attention in the media, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's foreign minister, set the record straight regarding the suspension of Taba II: "Despite reports to the contrary in Israel, however, Mr. Arafat never turned down '97 percent of the West Bank' at Taba, as many Israelis hold. The negotiations were suspended by Israel because elections were imminent [February 2001] and 'the pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted '...." (Deborah Sontag) For his part, Arafat was willing to continue discussions with Israel at another location and there were signs that he was ready to compromise even further on the key issues of refugees and Jerusalem. "Still, the details of a permanent peace agreement were as clear at Taba [II] as they ever have been, most participants said. So afterward, United Nations and European diplomats scrambled to convene a summit meeting in Stockholm. There, they believed, Mr. Arafat, who is known to make decisions only under extreme deadline pressure, was prepared to deliver a breakthrough concession on the central issue of the fate of Palestinian refugees, and a compromise was possible on Jerusalem." (Deborah Sontag) Unfortunately, however, Israel rejected further discussions and the peace process ended with the election of Zionist hardliner Ariel Sharon as prime minister on 6 February 2001. The Likudists again ruled Israel and they had no inclination to negotiate with the Palestinians. "For a variety of reasons, the [Stockholm] summit meeting never took place. In the Israeli elections in February, Mr. Barak lost resoundingly to Mr. Sharon. It was then that peace moves froze, not six months earlier at Camp David [emphasis mine]." (Deborah Sontag) (B) Post Taba II Perhaps already planning for Israel's August 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Sharon soon revealed his position on the crucial issues of illegal Jewish settlements and water resources in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem/the Old City: "You know, it's not by accident that the settlements are located where they are.... 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." (Ha'aretz, 12 April 2001)2 President Clinton's inability to rid himself of his pro-Israel bias and adopt a position in accordance with international humanitarian law while overseeing peace talks proved to be a major blunder, not only for the parties to the conflict, but also the U.S. and the world. "What [Aaron David] Miller essentially reveals [in his May, 2005 op-ed piece in the Washington Post], although he does not say this explicitly, is that because it could not separate itself from Israel's interests and Israel's demands, the Clinton administration is ultimately responsible not only for the collapse of the peace process at Camp David, but for setting in motion everything that has followed: the intifada that erupted two months later, the five years (so far) of Palestinian-Israeli violence since then, the atrocities of Ariel Sharon's governance of the occupied Palestinian territories, and the end of Palestinian national hopes for a long time to come. Beyond all this, the continuation of the set of policies on the Palestinian issue that Clinton and company put in place probably wipes out any real hope of reducing terrorism against the U.S. and its allies. Although U.S. and other Western policymakers refuse to acknowledge this, Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, supported by the U.S., is a major cause of the hatred and resentment that spawned terror attacks such as September 11[emphasis mine.] As Israeli historian Avi Shlaim recently observed, 'For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people and America's blind support for Israel.' This perception intensified on Clinton's watch." It is important to remember that as discussed in my first article in this series ("The Truth Regarding the 2000 Camp David Summit"), President Clinton and his Special Middle East Coordinator, Dennis Ross, went out of their way to unjustly blame Arafat for the failure of Camp David. They also unjustly held him responsible for the lack of success at Taba II and did their utmost to convince the incoming Bush administration that he was untrustworthy and not sincerely seeking peace. In short, Arafat was made to pay the price for Clinton's incompetence, lack of leadership and servitude to Israel. To reiterate: With Clinton's approval, "Dennis Ross, actually worked with an Israeli negotiator in the middle of the night before the [Camp David] summit collapsed to draft Clinton's 'blame speech,' casting Arafat as the bad guy and Barak as the courageous risk-taker.... [Ross also] spent four hours with [Colin] Powell during the transition [to the Bush administration after Taba II] and reportedly told the incoming secretary of state not to believe a word Arafat said because he was 'a con man.' "(Kathleen Christison) Furthermore, according to author Clayton Swisher, "Clinton spent Inauguration Day 2001...telling the incoming Bush team about his disappointment with Arafat, who he said had torpedoed the peace process, and he urged Colin Powell not to invest any energy dealing with the Palestinian leader...." (Kathleen Christison) Under the leadership of George W. Bush, who became president on 20 January 2001 (due in large measure to the support of America's large and powerful pro-Zionist dispensationalist "desperately seeking Armageddon" fundamentalist Christians), Washington became more pro-Israel than ever. From the very beginning of his term President Bush appeared to be in awe of Ariel Sharon and more so after 9/11. As Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George Bush Sr., observed during an interview with the London Financial Times, "Sharon just has him [George W. Bush] wrapped around his little finger.... I think the president is mesmerized.... When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of terrorism,' and the president says, 'Yes, you are . . . .' He [Sharon] has been nothing but trouble." (Washington Post, 16 October 2004) On 28 March 2002, a peace proposal based on principles set forth by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah known as the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative was adopted by the Arab League. It was presented to Israel in early April. Accepted wholeheartedly by the Palestinians, who had long since agreed to a sovereign state in only 22 per cent of their original homeland, the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative calls for a formal peace treaty and normalization of relations, including full recognition of Israel as a sovereign state, exchange of ambassadors, etc. if Israel complies with mandatory U.N. Security Resolution 242 and agrees to withdraw to the borders of 4 June 1967, the 1949 armistice lines. Respecting Israel's demographic concerns, the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative does not call for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel. Instead, in line with policy first enunciated by President Arafat prior to and during the 2000 Camp David Summit, Article II of Paragraph 2 "calls upon Israel to affirm" that it agrees to pursue the "[a]chievement of a just solution [emphasis mine] to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194." 3 These peace proposals put forth by the Arab states and the Palestinians in the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative are truly generous and also demonstrate their sincere desire to reach a just solution to the conflict. Unfortunately for the region and the world, they were rebuffed by Israel. In fact, there is nothing new in Israel's dismissal of the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative. Other peace initiatives that the Palestinians welcomed and various Israeli governments rejected include: The Rogers Plan (1969); The Scranton Mission on behalf of President Nixon (1970); Sadat's land for peace mutual recognition proposal (1971); Carter's call for a Geneva international conference (1977); Saudi King Fahd's peace offer (1981); The Reagan Plan (1982); The Shultz Plan (1988); The Baker Plan (1989); A continuation of the Taba II negotiations (2001); The unofficial Geneva peace initiative of November/ December 2003. And of course, the 1993 Oslo accords signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin unravelled following the latter's assassination and subsequent return to power of the Likud party under Benjamim Netanyahu (1996-99.) As summarized by the Israel newspaper Ha'aretz, in his book The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000), Israeli historian Avi Shlaim puts the blame for the ongoing conflict squarely on Israel's shoulders: "[I]n very readable prose, based on facts, he surveys the history of Israel's contacts with the Arab world from 1948 to 2000, and states decisively ('The job of the historian is to judge,' he says) that the Israeli story that Israel has always stretched out its hand to peace, but there was nobody to talk to - is groundless. The Arabs have repeatedly outstretched a hand to peace - says Shlaim - and Israel has always rejected it. Each time with a different excuse." (Ha'aretz, August 11, 2005) In short, contrary to the late Abba Eban's assertion, it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who "have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" to achieve peace. For the record: Without interruption, Prime Ministers Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon continued with settlement expansion in the occupied territories. In so doing they blatantly contravened not only the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, mandatory UNSC Resolution 242 and international humanitarian law in general, but also Paragraph 5 of Article XXIII (Final Clauses) of the Oslo accords calling for preservation of the "integrity" of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and paragraph 7 which declares that "their status shall not be changed for the period of this Agreement." On 28 January 2003, Ariel Sharon and the Likud were re-elected as Israel's government. Continuing with the policy of the Clinton administration, President George Bush and his neo-conservative pro-Israel/Likudist advisors worked hand in hand with Sharon to portray Yasser Arafat as a villain and an impediment to the peace process. With Bush's approval, Sharon set about depriving Arafat of the ability to lead his people while holding him responsible for the resulting violence against Jews. Israeli occupation forces surrounded his battle scarred compound in Ramallah and imprisoned him there for the final years of his life. What I believe to be the reason Sharon and his government humiliated Arafat (and perhaps why President Bush did not object) was well expressed by Lieutenant General Moshe (Bogie) Yaalon, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces in 2002, when he declared that "the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." ("For Sharon, Gaza was Just the Latest Act of A Long War", by David Clark, The Guardian, 22 August 2005) Moshe Yaalon's fascistic comments bring to mind those written 53 years earlier by an official of Israel's Near East Department of the Foreign Ministry: "The [Palestinian] refugees will find their place in the diaspora. Those who can resist will live thanks to natural selection, the others will simply crumble. Some of them will persist, but the majority will become a human heap, the scum of the earth and will sink into the lowest levels of the Arab world." (Israel State Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, files – refugees, no. 2444/19; quoted by Amnon Kapeliouk in "New Light of the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XVI, Spring 1987, No. 63, p. 21) To this day, the Likud government of Ariel Sharon continues to expand settlements in the occupied territories. This despite the fact that apart from violating the aforementioned 1993 Oslo accords and international humanitarian law in general, it agreed to both the U.S. sponsored Mitchell Plan (30 April 2001) calling for Israel to "freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth' of existing settlements" and the Quartet's (U.S., Russia, United Nations and European Union) "road map" to peace (June, 2003) which calls upon Israel to "immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and "consistent with the Mitchell Report," to "freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)." To be honest, I find it very difficult to be critical of Yasser Arafat. As leader of the Palestinians he faced insurmountable odds. Opposed to him at every turn was not only the armed might of an expansionist Israel, but also the immense financial and political power of its protector and benefactor, the United States. It cannot be denied, however, that Arafat made significant mistakes. In my opinion, his most serious error was not doing all he could to launch a public relations campaign in the U.S. to counter the endless barrage of pro-Israel misinformation and disinformation. He never seemed to understand the importance of striving to win over American public opinion. This was extremely unfortunate as surveys conducted in the U.S. and Canada reveal that the more people learn about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, the more pro-Palestinian they become. Many Palestinians argue that due to their lack of clarity regarding "final status," Arafat should not have signed the Oslo accords (a view endorsed by the late Edward Said.) They also believe it was a mistake for him to subsequently indicate his willingness to recommend to refugees that they accept a compromise regarding their inalienable right of return. A large number of Palestinians also reject his proposal that Israel be granted sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem/the Old City and allowed to annex some Jewish settlements in the West Bank in exchange for an equal area of land inside pre-1967 Israel. Two other commonly heard and certainly valid complaints are that his administration should have been more democratic and not tolerated corruption. In truth, Yasser Arafat did achieve a great deal for his people during nearly four decades at the helm. Most notable is that first as a guerrilla leader, and then as a statesman, he brought the terrible plight of Palestinians - ignored by the Western world for decades - and their right to justice and self-determination to centre stage in international affairs. For this alone history will judge him kindly. Notably, as he revealed during a speech delivered in Jerusalem, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter held Arafat in high regard: "I personally think that Yasser Arafat did the best he could for peace. Not many of my countrymen agree. I knew him quite well. He took a heroic action in the Oslo agreement for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. For the last 3 ½ years, as the elected President of the Palestinian people, he was kept in prison in disgrace and still expected to command the full authority of his people and he was held responsible for acts of violence." It should also be noted that during the same speech President Carter made it clear that he was extremely disappointed in President George W. Bush's role in the peace process, especially his relationship with Ariel Sharon: "More recently, we’ve seen an abandonment of the fair and objective and balanced role of the U.S. government in the negotiations between Israel and her neighbours and sometimes enemies. Lately in particular, our president has totally complied with the desires of the Israeli Prime Minister [Ariel Sharon] to the detriment of the Palestinians and the detriment of their hopes for the future." (From the text of the comments delivered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on 10 January 2005, at a meeting in Jerusalem organized by the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel) To conclude this three part series on Yasser Arafat, I quote from an eloquent and insightful article commemorating the first anniversary of his death by Karma Nabulsi, a former PLO representative: "What of the alternative myth of Arafat - the one that will eventually triumph in the history books? The one that will include just a fraction of the epic stories about him that most Palestinians grew up with? Arafat, for all his flaws and mistakes, stood for a just peace, based on an historic compromise. He believed in international law, in a two-state solution based on implementing UN resolution 242, and for a just settlement for refugees, the main victims of this conflict. His legitimacy came from more than the fact that he was democratically elected: he performed a historic purpose in the life of Palestinians, a purpose as yet unfulfilled. By representing his people's general will and collective spirit, he symbolised the absent state's sovereign institutions. What he represented was the reason he was removed: that Palestinians are one people, whether living under military occupation or in refugee camps. They have a right to self-determination, and they have fought hard for their liberty for generations, which is also a right. For a people to negotiate their way out of an occupation by diplomatic means alone, when the occupier is determined to hold on to their land, has no successful precedent. On the other hand, examples of successful negotiations once the occupier has accepted he must relinquish another's country are legion. Arafat's own much-used example was De Gaulle's 1958 call for "la paix des braves" with the Algerian armed liberation movement, the FLN. Arafat represented an important reality - peace will come when freedom is achieved for the Palestinians, and not one minute before." ("Arafat the obstacle has been exposed as a myth" by Karma Nabulsi, The Guardian Unlimited,November 15, 2005) 4 |