Site Presented By
Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The failure of the Camp David summit could spell war, and soon -- or it could be the best thing for the Middle East peace process.
Aug 10, 2000 | A historical agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that would have settled the thorniest issues of a half-century-long conflict was almost signed at Camp David last month. Now President Clinton, the mediator and miracle worker of Middle East peace talks, is running out of White House time. Ehud Barak, Israel's pro-peace prime minister, deserted by coalition partners left and right, is hanging onto power by his cuticles. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has promised to create a sovereign Palestinian state on Sept. 13 if negotiations prove fruitless.
The peace process is at a critical juncture. Unless something happens fast, a window of opportunity is about to slam shut, unleashing violent energies that will recall the intifada days, the days of stones, blood and anger that preceded the march toward reconciliation begun in Oslo, Norway, in 1993.
If no agreement is reached in coming weeks, a new poll shows, 60 percent of Palestinians are likely to support violent confrontations and emulation of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamic guerrillas whose roadside bombs and suicide attacks forced Israel out of southern Lebanon in May.
Saber rattling can be heard in the Israeli camp too: Twenty-seven percent of Israelis support harsh retaliatory measures if a Palestinian state is declared unilaterally in September. The Israeli army is on standby, with helicopters and tanks, to intervene if residents of the West Bank and Gaza get out of hand.
Or so goes the hype.
Contrarians believe that the status quo is actually much safer than any unpopular agreements. The concessions Barak was willing to make at Camp David included handing over to the Palestinians certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem and giving back 90 percent of the territories occupied by Israel after the 1967 war. Those two far-reaching provisions would have earned him the fury of right-wingers and the disapproval of many average Israelis. Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister who first had the guts to shake Arafat's hand, was shot dead five years ago by Yigal Amir, a Jewish settler, for far less than what Barak almost did at Camp David.
The fear of provoking a popular uproar also influenced Arafat's decision to reject Barak's offerings. The Palestinian leader said repeatedly at Camp David that he was not willing to risk being assassinated by a fellow Arab for being overaccommodating. By not altering a single item on the Palestinian shopping list, Arafat returned from the United States empty-handed -- but to a hero's welcome.
In the view of some Israelis, Arafat exposed his true intentions by refusing what was handed to him "on a silver platter." For Yossi Klein-Halevi, a right-of-center Israeli journalist, Arafat's maximalist attitude shows that the peace process as the Palestinians understand it is "one big bluff. It's not about peace or reconciliation. It's about pushing Israel back."
If that's the case, the failure of the Camp David summit was perhaps a blessing in disguise. Palestinians and Israelis can now return to their no-peace, no-war modus vivendi, in which 120,000 Palestinians work daily in Israel, Israelis shop in Arab stores during the Jewish Sabbath, settlers in the West Bank and Gaza live in relatively secure fenced-in fortified towns and Jerusalem is, in effect, shared by Arabs and Jews.
From the Palestinian point of view, no agreement is also "good news," said Ghassan Khatib, a political analyst at a Palestinian think tank in Jerusalem -- but for different reasons. "An agreement would mean Palestinian concessions," he said.
Palestinians feel they should settle for nothing less than full implementation of the United Nations security resolutions that enshrine their rights under international law. In order to reach an agreement, Palestinians have already made what they call a "historical compromise": They have waived their claim to all of Palestine and limited their demands to the land defined by 1967 borders -- which represents only 22 percent of the land known as Palestine before the creation of the Jewish state. In other words, they accept the existence of Israel. "The problem now is that the Israelis are trying to get the Palestinians to compromise on the compromise," said Khatib, who believes that a final, comprehensive agreement between the two sides at this stage is impossible.
But in the August heat, the sense of burning urgency is hard to shake. Like a terrifying summer blockbuster, the black-and-white, war-or-peace feeling in Israel has received plenty of high-level endorsements.
"I see this as the moment of truth for the country," said Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who just last week lost his bid for the Israeli presidency in a surprise setback. "The next 90 days will determine our destiny," he said.
