Camp David II: Looking Back, Looking Forward

REVIEW ESSAY CAMP DAVID II: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD RICHARD FALK Interpreting Conflict: Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations at Camp David II and Beyond, by Oded Balaban. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. xv + 217 pages. Appendix to p. 271. Notes to p. 314. Bibliography to p. 326. Index to p. 334. $78.95 cloth. Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East, by Yoram Meital. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006. ix + 209 pages. Appendices to p. 230. Bibliography to p. 238. Index to p. 251. $22.00 paper. The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, by Dennis Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004. xvi + 800 pages. Appendix to p. 805. Notes to p. 812. Acknowledgements to p. 815. Index to p. 840. $35.00 cloth; $18.00 paper. The Camp David Summit—What Went Wrong? Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians Analyze the Failure of the Boldest Attempt Ever to Resolve the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, edited by Shimon Shamir and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2005. ix + 250 pages. Appendix to p. 255. Contributors to p. 259. Index to p. 267. $29.95 paper. The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999–2001: Within Reach, by Gilead Sher. New York: Routledge, 2006. xvii + 232 pages. Appendix to p. 267. Bibliography to p. 268. Index to p. 278. $34.95 paper. The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of Middle East Peace Process, by Clayton E. Swisher. New York: Nation Books, 2004. xxii + 405 pages. Notes to p. 436. Acknowledgements to p. 440. Index to p. 455. $14.95 paper. How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process, edited by Tamara Cofman Wittes. Washington: United States Institute for Peace Press, 2004. xiv + 148 pages. Index to p. 160. $40.00 cloth; $14.95 paper.

RICHARD FALK is currently a visiting distinguished professor of global studies at the University of Californian, Santa Barbara, and a visiting scholar at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of The Decline World Order: America’s Imperial Geopolitics (Routledge, 2004) and, with Howard Friel, The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy (Verso, 2004). Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XXXVI, No. 3 (Spring 2007), pp. 78–88 ISSN: 0377-919X; electronic ISSN: 1533-8614. 2007 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jps. 2007.XXXVI.3.78. C

CAMP DAVID II: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD

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Reviewing this group of books on the failed Camp David II summit of 2000 presents a mystery at the outset: why is there such dedicated and contradictory attention paid to international negotiations that ended in what everyone agrees was disastrous failure? A failure, moreover, that contributed to a further spinning of the wheels of violence in the tormented relations between two peoples seemingly incapable of ending their death dance? Of course, it is possible to confer historic significance on what took place. In his introduction to The Camp David Summit—What Went Wrong?, a collection of papers presented at a conference convened to assess the summit and its lessons for the future, Israeli professor and diplomat Shimon Shamir calls Camp David II “a defining event in the history of Palestinian-Israeli relations and perhaps in that of the Middle East as a whole. It was the first attempt ever to reach a comprehensive solution to the hundred-year conflict between the Jewish and Arab communities in the Holy Land” (Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p. 7). He ends his introduction by quoting from the paper by American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who recommended the study of Versailles because “in diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than successes” (Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p. 13). Implicit in the attention given to Camp David are concerns about how this recent effort to find a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict is historically understood, and how its failure underscores a condition of persisting irreconcilability. Or perhaps the preoccupation is because Camp David II was so problematic from the beginning; despite an outcome that should have been expected, the public and many leaders on all sides exhibited shock, anger, and disappointment that the launch of this American initiative during the final hours of Clinton’s presidency did not yield positive results. Most public awareness relates to the ugliness of the aftermath—the Sharon visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount; the second intifada that became so much more violent and polarizing than its predecessor; and the Israeli response, which relied on excessive force from the very first Palestinian demonstrations. This, too, may help us understand the attention to Camp David II. There is no simple answer, and unfortunately the authors of the books under review do not ask themselves the question. The books do, however, exhibit a sense of the foreboding that preceded the summit. Ehud Barak seemed particularly sensitive in this regard, believing that he had only a year and half (the time between his election and the end of the Clinton presidency) to avoid “an iceberg and a certain crash” and that leaders had a “moral and political responsibility to avoid a catastrophe” (quotes from a 2002 Benny Morris interview with Barak, text in appendix to Balaban, pp. 244f). Barak also apparently felt challenged to complete what Rabin had started in 1993, even though he was a sharp critic of the Oslo approach, favoring a conflict-ending settlement, not a step-by-step process with the difficult issues postponed until the end. Barak felt that Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories should not precede such a comprehensive agreement

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as it would mean that Israel had weakened its main bargaining chip, namely, land (Sher, pp. 41–49).

DIPLOMATS AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS A number of the books reviewed come from participants in the process, who seek to show simultaneously that they did everything reasonable to reach the goal of peace and that the bad outcome was the result of the other sides’ unreasonableness. Dennis Ross’s The Missing Peace is the most elaborate—and utterly unconvincing—example of this self-serving genre. Rattling on for 840 pages, it is so tainted by Ross’s obvious effort to touch up his own performance as diplomat (and defend Clinton as political leader) as to be of little use except in providing some details on various aspects of negotiations since Oslo. It is also of mild interest in documenting the U.S. approach at Camp David and the occasional tensions among American insiders (this last serving mainly to demonstrate the United States’s usefulness as an ally of Israel and its dysfunction in its role as trusted and indispensable intermediary). Gilead Sher, Ross’s Israeli counterpart, covers much the same ground in The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999–2001, although he appears less defensive in tone and substance. He conveys a sense that Israel was sincere in its effort to find a solution at Camp David, and that it was prepared to make what it considered painful concessions provided that the Palestinians respected its red lines on issues such as refugees and Jerusalem. Sher writes movingly about Israel “at an historic crossroads.” The country needs to make “[a] brave choice . . . regarding the norms of a moral, healthy society confident in itself and reconciled with its conscience. To me, that meant a society that values sanctity of life over the sanctity of land.” Sher also takes note of the fact that perpetuating the occupation “corrupts every good part in our nation and society” (p. 43). This theme is repeated in different ways by other Israeli authors, especially Yoram Meitel, to suggest that Israel is paying a heavy nonmaterial price for continuing the occupation. The Israeli participants in the Camp David Summit—What Went Wrong? volume, especially Danny Yatom and Yossi Ginosaur, emphasize more pragmatic concerns, such as the demographic trends that create the dilemma of either sacrificing Israel’s Zionist character or abandoning any pretense of democratic governance. Another motivation evident in several of these volumes is to show up the diplomats from the more neutral and reflective perspective of the social scientist. Aside from the Shamir and Weitzman volume, the most knowledgeable illustration of this approach is Yoram Meital’s Peace in Tatters. Meital, an Israeli, manages an impressive level of objectivity, which makes his book far more illuminating and persuasive than the partisan apologists who write as if talking to the mirror of history, an accusing finger pointed at the adversary. I found his book the most helpful in trying to figure out why the summit was convened at all, given the known pre-summit disparity of Israeli and Palestinian positions


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and perceptions on key issues. Indeed, this momentous gap on the key issues virtually ensured that negotiations within the rigid time frame of a few days would end in recrimination and mutual frustration and, rather than raise hopes for the future, would almost certainly encourage a renewal of violence. The most curious book under consideration is Interpreting Conflict by Oded Balaban, a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. Framed as philosophical and linguistic inquiry, it is intended to penetrate the surface diplomacy by exploring the participants’ underlying meanings, which are either deliberately or unwittingly obscured. The device relied upon is a detailed textual review of the controversy in the pages of the New York Review of Books between the perceptions of Dennis Ross and Ehud Barak (and Benny Morris) on the one hand and those of Hussein Agha and Robert Malley on the other. I found the treatment interesting as a way of reviewing this controversy step by step, but I did not find in the approach any new insights into the underlying issues. Concerning the issue of substantive disparity, there is a second mystery present in the volumes under review: Were the Israelis so narcissistic that they could conceive only of their own offers and red lines while being so oblivious to those of the Palestinians who ever since 1948 had been relentlessly pushed into one corner after another? The social scientists, such as Meital, seem to grasp the reality of the other side, the diplomats less so. For instance, Shlomo Ben-Ami is quoted as saying that Israel’s willingness to leave the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem “is something in the order of a domestic earthquake” (Sher, p. 44). But as Malley, an American and an advisor to Clinton, notes in different ways, if we understand Barak’s constraints so clearly, why can’t we grasp Arafat’s? In their exchanges with Ross in the pages of the New York Review of Books, Agha and Malley argue that Arafat’s behavior is viewed in “a vacuum” without taking account of “years of mistrust and loss of faith in the peace process” (Balaban, pp. 238–41). Ross, in turn, insists that peace will come only when the Palestinians face “painful truths” and are told by their leaders “what is possible and what is not” (Balaban, pp. 236–38). Ross insists that Palestinians must abandon “taboos and myths,” which means especially abandoning the “right of return,” the recovery of the entire West Bank, and sovereign rights over all of East Jerusalem. But Ross’s insistence on Palestinian realism is complemented by his deference to Israel’s “essential needs,” which include Palestinian renunciation of any right to return to pre-1967 Israel, acknowledgement of Israel’s presence in East Jerusalem, and acceptance of the bulk of Israeli settlers as permanent. It is this kind of mind game that allows commentators to bash Arafat for his rejection of the Barak proposals while praising Israel for its forthcoming approach. Of the various political figures who risked falling victim to Camp David II miscalculations, Bill Clinton, who convened the summit, undoubtedly had the least to lose. With success, Clinton would leave the American presidency on a dramatic, positive note, and with failure, he would be praised for making a serious effort to bring peace. Clinton and his advisors apparently hoped that

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the president’s brilliant talent as a stage manager, combined with the dramatic setting, could produce a political miracle, despite the obvious difficulties of such an unlikely gamble, and that this might save his historical legacy from being forever locked in Monica Lewinsky’s embrace (see Swisher, pp. 3, 13; also Martin Indyk in Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p. 29). In fairness, Clinton also appeared genuinely concerned that disaster could follow from a failure to find a solution for the conflict. He was also doggedly persistent. He convened a White House meeting in January 2001 where he presented Arafat with a more conciliatory set of parameters for a settlement, and offered to spend 47 of his final 50 days in office working to bring the parties together. At the same time, Clinton’s role, as depicted by Meital and in greater detail by the American observer Clayton Swisher in his book The Truth about Camp David, reveals some of the worst sides of this gifted American politician who seems to aspire for the best even while so often behaving politically in a narrowly opportunistic fashion. Swisher and Meital offer similar overall assessments, with Meital being more academic and Swisher more journalistic, providing an interpretative narrative of what went on. Both writers are convinced that no matter what had been done, the outcome would still have ended in failure.

THE BLAME GAME The Israeli post mortem conference, whose papers make up the abovementioned The Camp David Summit—What Went Wrong?, provides the most probing discussion of the Camp David experience and its implications from insider perspectives, especially from the Israeli side. The Palestinian principals were invited to the conference but did not attend (according to Mohammed S. Dajani, p. 83, they claimed that the Israeli closure and checkpoints policy prevented them from obtaining a visa for travel to Tel Aviv, although other Palestinians did take part, as did Americans). But what makes the volume such a valuable and surprisingly revealing resource is the discussions among heavyweight Israeli political figures and intellectuals. These discussions disclose sharp cleavages among the Israelis as to what went wrong and what the failure means for the future. For instance, Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad as well as a member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David, said this about the Palestinian position: “we were not guilty of misunderstanding the depth of concessions that were required of the Palestinians. We understood very well the Palestinian argument that they had already made all the possible concessions when they agreed to the borders of June 4, 1967. We understood this, but did not accept it. It was not a matter of misunderstanding, but of disagreement” (Danny Yatom in Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p. 39). There is no evidence that Ross or Sher understood this. Worse, if they did understand it, there is no evidence that they were prepared to acknowledge it. Several participants in the discussions were extremely critical of the manner in which Yasir Arafat was unfairly held responsible for the failure. Clinton


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had twisted Arafat’s arm to attend the summit and had reassured the skeptical Palestinian leader that whatever happened at Camp David, he would not be blamed. In Martin Indyk’s words, “Arafat had to be dragged to Camp David” (Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p.26). One of the members of the Israeli delegation, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former general, observed that just prior to the summit, Arafat “had only one demand of the Americans: that he should not be blamed if the talks failed” (Shamir and Maddy-Weitzman, p. 44). Not only did Clinton recklessly override the reluctance of the Palestinian leader, but by singling him out for blame afterwards while praising Barak for his efforts, he broke his word in an outrageously irresponsible manner. What made this maneuver particularly objectionable is that it was Barak, along with Clinton, who had pushed for the summit behind the scenes both because of domestic political pressures to fulfill his electoral promises and because of a self-confident bravura that only he could break the logjam and produce an agreement. It was widely agreed, even among Israeli participants, that Barak’s “take it or leave it” manner was disrespectful to the Palestinians, minimizing the prospects for a useful Palestinian response. This assignment of blame pushed both parties toward violence. The Israeli public, convinced that Arafat’s failure to respond to Barak’s offer was proof that the Palestinians were intent on destroying the State of Israel, concluded that Israel had no choice but to fight back. Similarly the Palestinians, seeing how the Americans had made Arafat the scapegoat of the failed diplomacy, concluded that the Americans were simply playing Israel’s game, that negotiations were a fruitless charade, and that the only success story with regard to Israel was achieved by force of arms, when sustained Hizballah armed resistance forced the Israel Defense Forces to leave Lebanon in 2000. In this respect, the immediate lesson learned by both sides was that violence rather than diplomacy was going to determine the outcome of the conflict. Part of the false consciousness that distorts the general public understanding of Camp David II arises from the mutually reinforcing, and misleading, use of language by Western commentators and mainstream media. Barak’s proposals were consistently and uncritically presented to the public as “generous,” “unprecedented,” and “courageous”; as such, any Palestinian response other than gratitude and acceptance could only appear unreasonable. This perception lent credibility to the Israeli narrative that interpreted Palestinian moves toward peace as nothing more than a display of tactical cunning illustrating their unwavering resolve to destroy the State of Israel. This motif underlies How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate, a useful set of essays on the negotiations prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Institute for Peace and edited by Tamara Cofman Wittes. In contrast, Swisher and Meital are more critical of such a one-sided spin on the Israeli proposals. What is considered generous from the pro-Israel perspective is the eventual apparent willingness (it was never formally tested or even offered in writing) by Israel to withdraw from 94–95 percent of the West Bank and to let the Palestinians have their own state with a capital in the West Bank village of Abu Dis near Jerusalem, which they

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would be allowed to call al-Quds. But from a more objective perspective, there is nothing generous about the Barak proposals. Israel would be relinquishing territory that it had occupied in the June 1967 war, and the withdrawal would be far less than the total withdrawal called for under UN Security Council resolution 242, itself simply an endorsement of international law’s prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force. Part of Clinton’s duplicity during the negotiations was to go along with Israel’s insistence that 242 did not mean what it said, and to praise Barak for his stated willingness to withdraw from such a large part of the West Bank. The offer to allow some sort of Palestinian capital that could be called Jerusalem seemed to contradict promises Barak had made to the Israeli public before Camp David; this surprise show of Israeli forthcomingness on an issue assumed to have great symbolic status among the Palestinians was supposed to be a deal-maker, according to some of the Israeli diplomats. Secretary of State Madeline Albright called these Israeli proposals “both far reaching and brave,” while the influential Israeli minister Shlomo Ben-Ami writes that “Clinton told me several times: ‘I have never met such a courageous person’ [as Barak]” (both statements quoted in Swisher, p. 295). What is incredible here is the enthusiasm for proposals that so clearly fall far short of what any Palestinian could be expected to accept, and of what any truly impartial third-party would propose. Equally evident is the lack of comparable understanding accorded the Palestinian position, starting with the fact that they came to Camp David against their better judgment, given the timing of the event. Beyond this, the Palestinians were expected for the sake of a phantom state to renounce once and for all the refugee right of return to pre-1948 Israel, shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, dismantlement of the settlement blocs, and any prospect of becoming a fully independent state with control over borders and security.

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GENEROUS OFFERS The Israeli/American cynicism with regard to international law, while no surprise, is still disturbing and helps explain persisting gaps in perceptions of “reasonableness” and the contours of a fair solution. The cynicism is illustrated vividly by Israeli official Shlomo Ben-Ami when he chides the Palestinian delegation at a pre–Camp David meeting in Washington: “You are here—so close to an agreement—thanks in large part to your political struggle rather than international law, which was supposedly on your side for the past fifty-two years. Do you want another UN resolution or rather an agreement?” (quoted in Sher, p. 45). Incidentally, what is going on here is not a matter of Israel’s ignoring international law in shaping its negotiating positions. Sher describes traveling to The Hague to meet the prominent international lawyer, Eli Lauterpacht, who is described as “having generously agreed to ‘do whatever I can to help Israel.” Lauterpacht’s specific contributions are not described, but Sher expresses deep gratitude for his assistance, noting that “[t]here was no substitute for


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Lautherpacht’s clear, focused and comprehensive thinking, which resulted both in a unique perspective in terms of the text, and a fresh view of the issues we were dealing with” (Sher, pp. 40–41). It is, of course, one thing to use international law as a means of identifying unlawful behavior from a detached perspective, and quite another to use it to denounce an adversary in the spirit of national propaganda. Indeed, it was the Palestinians who were far more deserving of adjectives such as generous and courageous when they confined their claims to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a scant 22 percent of historical Palestine and less than half of what the 1947 UN partition plan had proposed. Furthermore, the Palestinians showed an implicit willingness to allow some Israeli settlements to remain on West Bank territory, provided that Israel would transfer an equivalent amount of land to the Palestinians. The settlements, widely condemned as violating Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the rights and duties of a belligerent occupant, were daily irritants for the entire Palestinian population, accounting over the years for much of the violence in the occupied territories. Without taking international law into account, it is impossible to evaluate the reasonableness of the negotiating postures of the two sides. Thus, Ross’s acknowledgement that “Israel’s policy of building settlements in the West Bank was wrong and misguided” (Ross, p. 7) does not alter his view that it is the Palestinians who must give way if peace is to be obtained. It was partly the unwillingness of the United States to challenge Israel on settlement expansion that made the Palestinians wary of relying on the advice of diplomats such as Dennis Ross (see Swisher, pp. 30–32). Barak’s proposals should also be seen in the context of his assurances to the Israeli public soon after he assumed office in May 1999. Elected to carry on where assassinated prime minister Yizhak Rabin had left off, Barak delineated four inviolable red lines: “We will move quickly toward separation from the Palestinians within four security Red Lines: a united Jerusalem under our sovereignty as the capital of Israel for eternity, period; under no conditions will we return to the 1967 borders; no foreign army west of the Jordan River; and most of the settlers in Judea and Samaria will be in settlement blocs under our sovereignty. And permanent arrangement will be put to a national referendum. In the long run, you, the people of Israel, will decide” (quoted in Swisher, p. 15). Had Arafat made comparable assurances to the Palestinian peoples, the width of the chasm between the respective leaders would have made it obvious that any attempt to bring them together to settle the conflict was premature. In this sense, Barak was perhaps correct to suppose that the only approach that might have worked was an American-backed Israeli diktat. Though the Palestinians were weak, if Arafat had acceded to the Israeli offer, as some Palestinians feared, he would without doubt have become a casualty of Palestinian fury instead of a sacrificial victim of Israel. It is here that Ross, in particular, is either obtuse or so committed a partisan that he neither notices nor cares about the underlying realities. Instead, his most abiding concern, as was the case more generally with the American negotiators,

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was to assess what the Israeli public would swallow, given Barak’s domestic weakness. Concomitantly, the Palestinians were faulted for not providing the Israelis what they needed on such vital Palestinian issues as the right of return or sovereignty over Jerusalem. With these one-sided preoccupations, Palestinian “needs” and red lines were obliterated. Arafat was given the opportunity to have a Palestinian state, and if he did not seize it on the terms offered, he was told, the situation could only deteriorate. Of course, such an outlook is largely self-fulfilling, as the fundamental aspirations of the Palestinian people, affirmed by international law, are shunted aside and their refusal to accept this basis for peace is made into an indictment of their overall national character (“never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity”). Secondarily, as might be expected, Ross was preoccupied with how Camp David II would be received in the United States, and how it would reflect upon the Clinton presidency and his own role as the principal American negotiator. It is difficult to assess whether Ross’s presentation of the peace process is na¨ıvely or cynically one-sided, but one-sided it is. For him, the central question determining the fate of Camp David II is “Could Yasir Arafat end this conflict?” What this means, he goes on to add, is “Could he accept the ideas, the proposals, the President had presented ten days ago [at the beginning of the summit]?” (Ross, p. 3). In the book’s prologue, Ross insists that Clinton’s proposals were “a balanced package designed to end the conflict that tilted toward the Palestinians on territory and tilted toward the Israelis on security and refugees” (Ross, p. 5). There is no indication in Ross’s book that Clinton’s proposals represented a repackaging of Barak’s proposals, nor is there any questioning of Barak, nor even any indication that what constitutes a “balanced package” is an intensely contested matter upon which reasonable persons can sharply disagree. There is no questioning of the limits of what Arafat could reasonably be expected to be able to impose on the Palestinian people in terms of a solution. Instead, Ross asserts imperiously with respect to the summit, “There could be no more haggling. Discussion within the parameters of the President’s ideas was acceptable; trying to redefine these parameters was not” (Ross, p. 5). And further, in a partisan voice, “Peacemaking required that the Arabs understand that no wedge would be driven between the United States and Israel” (Ross, p. 7). Beyond this, Ross approaches the issues on the basis of “the facts” rather than by reference to “rights.” Hence, an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory is termed a concession to the Palestinians rather than a duty under international law. With such an outlook, it is not surprising that the negotiations ended in embitterment, anger, and frustration. This is not to say that the Palestinians are faultless. Far from it. The Palestinians never formulated a coherent criticism of the Clinton proposals, explained how the negotiating parameters favored Israel, or publicized their own generosity in partaking in such an imbalanced process. More serious, and less understandable, was Arafat’s failure to put forward proposals for an outcome acceptable to the Palestinian people he represented. This neglect, explained as a matter of Arafat’s personal style (holding cards close to his vest and the


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like), contributed to the tragic aftermath of this broken peace process. If Arafat had tabled reasonably detailed proposals of his own, this would at least have demonstrated his willingness to entertain an end to the conflict and, what is more, set forth Palestinian expectations in a manner that would make their rejection of the Israeli proposals understandable, if not inevitable. The fact that there had been no pre- negotiations aimed at reducing the wide gaps on the key issues of territory, Jerusalem, security, sovereignty, settlements, refugees, and water, made it all the more essential that the Palestinians show why the Israeli red lines precluded agreement. They also needed to demonstrate how their own red lines were consistent with Palestinian rights under international law— something that could not be said for the comparable Israeli red lines. It is true that even if the Palestinians had made this effort, the media spin would likely have tilted public perceptions against them anyway. Still, the tilt may have been more obviously unreasonable, and perhaps had a less decisive impact in Israel.

THE FALLOUT The terrible violence that followed the collapse of Camp David II should be seen as part of the diplomatic failure. Barak’s inability to produce peace, despite his supposed generosity, paved the way for a further lurch to the right in Israeli politics. The moderate Israeli peace camp became convinced that there was no prospect for compromise and reconciliation. The outcome also created a political climate such that Sharon’s deliberately antagonistic visit to Haram al-Sharif was not blamed for the ensuing violence, and Israel’s use of excessive force and live ammunition against unarmed Palestinian civilian demonstrators, understandably angered by Sharon’s provocation, was not immediately censured by world public opinion. Given Palestinian fury and frustration, recourse to suicide bombings five months later should not have been surprising (though to the extent that civilians are deliberate targets, it is an unacceptable tactic). The terrifying impact of the suicide bombings behind the Green Line unified Israeli public opinion behind the hard-line warrior leadership of Ariel Sharon. The United States, as led by George W. Bush, had no difficulty accepting Sharon’s unilateralist approach involving disengagement from Gaza and eventual withdrawal from parts of the West Bank, a process secured by Israel Defense Forces forays into Palestinian-held territories and through the construction of a separation wall condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice. In ways that these books only hint at, the breakdown of Camp David II and the Oslo process fed extremist politics on both sides, but with the Palestinians, as the weaker party, enduring most of the suffering and, ironically, receiving most of the blame. No one was more unfairly and severely victimized than Arafat. Humiliated by Israeli military action that confined him to his destroyed headquarters in Ramallah, Arafat watched Sharon, with his own record of war crimes, lay claim to the moral high ground and receive some international support for his contention that Israel, lacking a Palestinian “partner,” had to fashion a peace process by

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itself. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bush applauded Sharon’s efforts, lauding him as “a man of peace” and rewarding him for the Gaza disengagement by recognizing Israel’s claim to hold onto most of its West Bank settlements and its right to build a “security” wall on occupied Palestinian territory. One comes away from these books with a number of lessons. First, summits should be held with eyes wide open, without false hopes nurtured by domestic political pressures unrelated to the conflict at hand. Second, pre-summit negotiations in private, without media coverage, should assess in advance whether there is negotiating space on some or all of the disputed issues. Third, a summit should establish a credible atmosphere of neutrality and fairness to both sides. Fourth, the relevance of international law to fixing the contours of a reasonable solution should be acknowledged. Fifth, the Palestinians should never enter negotiations without proposals of their own and without clear explanations of why the proposals presented by Israel or a third party are not acceptable. Sixth, the Palestinians should either emphasize that they had already made their territorial concessions by giving up their claims to the land of pre-1967 Israel, or demand that negotiations on territory use as their starting point the 1947 UN partition plan, the only international effort to divide Palestine between the two peoples. Moreover, while the partition plan favored the Jewish side insofar as it allocated to them 55 percent of Palestine at a time when they comprised less than a third of the population, still, the proposals can be seen as having been based on diplomatic assessments of relative parity rather than relative bargaining power. Of course, relative power is what produced the Israeli state. Against this background, what of the future? The recent plight of Gaza, especially, suggests that the situation for the Palestinians remains intolerable. Hamas’s electoral victory a year ago is one expression of Palestinian distress. The Lebanon war of 2006 also disclosed Israeli vulnerability, as well as the dangers to Israel of proceeding unilaterally with plans to disengage from parts of the West Bank, while retaining the zones containing settlement blocs. The Lebanon war reinvigorated an awareness that Israel’s future security in relation to the Palestinians can not be a one-way street, but needs to rest if at all possible on an accommodation. The American fiasco in Iraq is also a setback for Israeli hawks. The electoral victory of the Democrats in November 2006 provides an opportunity for a reassessment of overall Middle East policy in Washington, but the failure of the Bush White House to go along with the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group recommendations hints at even deeper troubles ahead for the region. Olmert’s Israel is part of this larger problem, reinforcing Bush’s militarist diplomacy by pushing hard for confrontation with Iran. The nearterm prospects for Israel-Palestine, as well as the region, are as bleak as they have been at any time since 1948. Against the background of the failures of Camp David II, the way forward is to learn from past mistakes, and to continue the search for a peaceful accommodation based on an equality of rights between Israelis and Palestinians, including their equal right to enjoy national sovereignty and the security of their state.

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