Camp David dialogues
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, September 2000
Camp David was the most important meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo accords. The crucial questions of refugees and Jerusalem, as well as settlements and land, were debated. But the meeting was always doomed to failure
"In this same room, not long before the Camp David invitations were issued, I told Madeleine Albright in the clearest possible terms that such an important meeting was doomed to failure without proper preparation." Speaking in his Ramallah office the day after he got back from the 11-25 July summit, Yasser Arafat was adamant. He thought he had convinced the United States secretary of state of the need to take more time preparing the groundwork. But Albright allowed herself to be persuaded by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and advised Clinton to get the parties together quickly.
Barak managed to persuade the US that a meeting behind closed doors between himself and Arafat, with Clinton personally taking part, could make the Palestinian leader agree to a settlement that would meet with Israel's satisfaction and put an end to the century of conflict between Jews and Palestinians. But did he really think he would make a final, lasting peace, with the Palestinians declaring they would put an end to all their claims, after just a week or two of negotiations, when there was still so great a gap between the two sides?
There were conspiracy theory articles in the Israeli press (1): Barak would lay down conditions on Jerusalem, refugees, borders, Jewish settlements, etc. that the Palestinians could not agree to. If, however, Arafat succumbed to the joint Clinton-Barak pressure and accepted the unacceptable, it would be a brilliant victory for Barak. And if not, he would put the blame for the failure on the Palestinians. That would confirm the old, old saying of the Israeli right: "there’s no-one to talk to on the Palestinian side".
To show the pressure he had been under, Arafat said that the two weeks of the summit had been harder than the two months of the siege of Beirut and Israeli bombing during the summer of 1982 (2). Still, he could scarcely have turned down Clinton's invitation. After all, he had increased US links with the Palestinian Authority since 1993 and in December 1998 he had even gone to Gaza to make a speech to the Palestinian National Council. And, during his eight years in office, he had invited Arafat 22 times to the White House, far more than any other Arab leader. Clinton was counting on this special relationship to help Barak get his view to prevail.
At the summit Arafat explained several times why he could not accept the proposals put forward. When Clinton insisted, Arafat asked him if he was hoping to take part in his funeral (3). Clinton and Barak had already worked together to soften up another Arab leader, the late President Hafez al-Assad of Syria. But in spite of a Clinton-Assad summit in Geneva in March, it was a complete failure. Just before Camp David President Mubarak of Egypt had warned Arafat about a repeat of this manoeuvre, designed to make the Arabs seem intransigent.
'Take what you're offered'
Like it or not, Arafat had to go to the summit. Yet he knew the results of the side talks in Stockholm between Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli minister for internal security, and Ahmad Qurai (Abu Ala), head of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly. In spite of 20 sessions, there had been complete stalemate. The Palestinians had invoked international legality, i.e. the United Nations resolutions, as the starting point for any negotiations. They said that once the Israelis took the resolutions on board (particularly 242 calling for withdrawal from territory occupied in the June 1967 war, and 194 on the refugees' right of return), they would find the Palestinians flexible. To which the Israelis responded: "You need far more moderate positions before you can make any progress". Earlier on, the Israeli negotiator had said: "You don't have the power to get what you're asking for, so be realistic and take what you're offered". After this humiliating advice, Ben Ami declared the talks over and said it was time to get the leaders together to make the appropriate historic decisions. When Abu Ala commented that they had not yet made any progress whatever, Ben Ami replied that they were running out of time.
Clinton was, of course, the lead actor on the Camp David stage. He talked of thousands of dollars in aid to try and win over Arafat - while, Barak, who had instigated the gathering, systematically avoided any private conversation with Arafat throughout the summit. Meanwhile, four committees were at work - on refugees, Jerusalem, borders and settlements, and security. This last, which mainly addressed the question of control of the eastern border with Jordan, was the only one to make any headway.
Clinton boasted of his detailed knowledge of the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem. But none of his advisors whispered in his ear that opening a synagogue on the Haram al-Sharif - esplanade of the al-Aqsa mosque which is the third most sacred place in Islam - might be a provocation: as was the suggestion of a horizontal division between Muslims and Jews across the hill it stands on, with the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa above, and the foundations of the Jewish Temple directly beneath them.
The extraordinary proposal of allowing Jews to pray on the Haram al-Sharif - forbidden hitherto by the Grand Rabbis of Jerusalem (4) - came from US security advisor Sandy Berger. Yasser Abed Rabbo, Palestinian minister for culture and information, amazed and angry, warned him that the repercussions from the entire Arab and Muslim world would be "a thousand times worse than the riots that took place after Netanyahu opened the tunnel in the Old City in 1996" (Israeli excavations near the Muslim holy places provoked rioting that left 80 dead and hundreds injured). Berger turned pale and forbade him to mention what he had just proposed. And Arafat declared with some bitterness that he would "refuse to concede any part of the Haram al-Sharif even in exchange for Haifa or Jaffa" (5).
In calling for adherence to Security Council Resolution 242, the Palestinians were demanding sovereignty over all the Arab part of East Jerusalem occupied in 1967, leaving Israel the Jewish Quarter within the Old City and the Western (Wailing) Wall. However, the Israeli proposal was to give the Palestinians sovereignty only over outlying villages and areas, with some form of self-rule over the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City along with other Palestinian sectors outside the walls of the Old City. Israel also proposed handing over 87% of the West Bank and annexing the remainder - taken up mainly by the Jewish settlements.
Getting nowhere fast
The least productive of the committees was the one on refugees - those living reminders of the disaster of 1948 known as the nakba and its raw scars. The Palestinians expect some real gestures from the Israelis - especially since their responsibility for the expulsion of the refugees in 1948-49 has now been proved (6). Despite this, there were just the same old speeches: Israel immediately disclaimed all responsibility and refused to make any sort of apology. "The most we can do", said an Israeli official, "is to express our sorrow for the sufferings of the refugees, the way we would for any accident or natural disaster." According to Israel, those responsible for this tragedy, which has affected a whole people, are "the Arab countries who told the Palestinians to leave their homes while they waited for the liberation of their country by the Arab armies". In the sitting room of Holly chalet, the committee heard the same old propaganda from the 1950s repeated all over again.
As far as Israel is concerned, UN Resolution 194, affirming the refugees' right of return, still means the destruction of the state of Israel. Even so, Israel put forward its "contribution" to the committee towards a solution of the problem: absorbing 5-10,000 refugees over 10 years, or else several thousand in one go.
What about the compensation also expected under Resolution 194? At one session of the committee, the following exchange of views took place:
Yasser Abed Rabbo, for the Palestinians: "We expect to be repaid for the property of the refugees, administered by the Israeli official responsible for abandoned Palestinian property. In 1949 a tripartite committee [British/French/Turkish] estimated the value of this property at