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By Bruce S. Ticker
February 7, 2005
Ehud Barak barely touched on a crucial issue when he addressed an audience in Philadelphia in late January.
"We put an offer on the table," the former Israeli prime minister said. "The Palestinians could get a Palestinian state contiguous and 90 percent plus."
The operative word here is "contiguous." In July 2000, Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a proposed settlement with creation of a Palestinian state as the centerpiece. Arafat subsequently touched off questions as to whether the Israeli offer was "contiguous."
Arafat claimed that when he attended the peace talks at Camp David with Barak and President Clinton the final offer that was proposed would give the Palestinian a chopped-up West Bank split into three separate sections.
Both Barak and Dennis Ross, who was then U.S. envoy to the Middle East, dismissed Arafat's accusation as hogwash, in not so blunt language.
Barak's employment of the word "contiguous" conforms with Ross's explanation in his book, "The Missing Peace," which lays out in black and white what transpired at Camp David.
Arafat used his version of the final offer to justify his refusal of any settlement. Even after violence broke out in Israel and its territories, Clinton invited him to the White House in January 2001, a few weeks before President Bush succeeded him, to propose a slightly better deal in order to end the uprising, Ross reported in his book. Arafat again refused, and the rest is history - 1,000 Israeli deaths and 3,000 Palestinian deaths later.
The Arafat version was later presented in a controversial documentary as if it was fact. If it was true, one could not blame Arafat for rejecting the offer.
His accusation seemed fishy from the outset. If this proposed Palestinian state would include more than 90 percent of the West Bank, then the Israelis must have done a lot of tricky maneuvering to split that land into three sections and still give the Palestinians more than 90 percent.
My jaw dropped when I read Ross's recollections in his book, which was published last August. Arafat's claim was clearly a baldfaced lie that has not been sufficiently challenged. There are still many people - reasonable people among them - in the West who believe this, and pro-Israel supporters should confront this lie head-on.
Ross provides two contrasting maps before the primary text even begins. The first map is labeled, "Palestinian Characterization of the Final Proposal at Camp David." He writes, "This map reflects a map proposed by the Israelis early at Camp David, but it inaccurately depicts Israeli security zones carving the West Bank into three cantons, and includes Israeli settlements in the proposed Palestinian state.
"Official Palestinians now cite this map as the final offer they turned down at Camp David. (The initial Israeli proposal called for a Palestinian state in 87 percent of the West Bank. This map shows that state comprising only 83 percent of that territory.)"
Ross's second map is labeled "Map Reflecting Actual Proposal at Camp David." He writes, "While no map was presented at the final rounds at Camp David, this map illustrates the parameters of what President Clinton proposed and Arafat rejected: Palestinian control over 91 percent of the West Bank in contiguous territory and an Israeli security presence along 15 percent of the border with Jordan.
"This map actually understates the final Camp David proposal because it does not depict the additional territorial swap of 1 percent that offered from Israeli territory."
Why would Barak and Ross dispute Arafat if he was telling the truth? These two are perhaps the most aggressive individuals to seek a peace settlement. They look foolish themselves by contradicting Arafat because they trusted him sufficiently to negotiate. Besides, Barak and Ross are widely reviled among the right-wing.
This same right-wing regards the entire Oslo peace process to be a sham, anyway, so Arafat's response was vintage Arafat. In their eyes, it made no difference.
It did make a difference. Westerners came to believe that Israel played some vicious games with the Palestinians when it did not. Arafat's story was far different from accusing Israel of deliberately poisoning Palestinians. His version bore a stamp of plausibility.
Israel did its people no favor by failing to more aggressively stomp on Arafat's accusation. It is long overdue that Israelis and their supporters destroyed this myth once and for all.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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