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BS’D
The Results of the Recent
Camp David Summit8 August 2000
Well, in case you haven't heard, the final negotiations between Israeli PM Ehud Barak & PLO head Yassir Arafat ended in dismal failure. The three questions I'll attempt to answer here are "what happened", "why?" and "what next?""What happened?" Well, at the negotiations Barak attempted to make concessions to the PLO that exceeded anything that anyone in his political party even dreamed of making -- and Arafat firmly refused them all! Barak played king during these negotiations and offered Arafat concessions purely on his own initiative, many of them exceeded established government policy.
In any government the President or PM is not alone as they must make decisions in consultation with his cabinet and advisors. However, in those negotiations at Camp David Barak consulted with no one, and his closest ministers in his government were kept completely in the dark about what was going on -- that was, until they heard the news on the radio. For example, Barak offered Arafat 80% or so of eastern Jerusalem despite the fact he had said repeatedly before this that Jerusalem was to be Israel's undivided capitol. His own party had this principle regarding not-dividing J'lem as an important policy, too. Yet Barak violated both his own word as well as this, his party's cornerstone negotiating principle. Members of his own government back in Israel were livid and mortified at what he was giving away in these negotiations. Barak replied to their anger saying several times that since he was elected by the people and not appointed by his party he was therefore given a mandate by the people to negotiate whatever he felt necessary to achieve peace with the PLO. Well, despite daily demonstrations all over Israel, and one massive demonstration in Tel-Aviv that had a minimum of 150,000 attendants protesting his capitulation to Arafat, Barak claimed that he had a license to give away whatever he felt like in order to get an agreement.
Here's a summary of the major demands by Arafat followed by what Barak actually offered:
Arafat demanded that Israel completely withdraw to the pre-1967 armistice lines and give to him all of Judea, Samaria & Gaza.
Barak offered 92% of Judea, Samaria & Gaza. And in return offered sections of Israel: part of the Galilee, a piece of the very fertile Jezreel Valley near the coast and a hunk of the Negev Desert to compensate Arafat. The areas that Barak offered were far more than the 8% area that Barak insisted on keeping in Judea, Samaria & Gaza.
Arafat demanded that Israel remove, by whatever means necessary, all 200,000 Jews in communities presently living in Judea, Samaria & the Gaza strip.
Barak had to decline on this point, simply because this is physically impossible to carry out.
Arafat demanded the right to establish an independent Palestinian state in all of Judea, Samaria & Gaza. He announced that he would unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state no later than September 13, 2000
Barak agreed to this without a problem. Barak agreed to Arafat's demand to have total control over borders, total control over air-space above and total ownership of all mineral wealth and water rights. Considering that Israel is presently under a serious water crisis this would have given 40% of Israel's water sources to the PLO. When the news of this hit the Israeli radio talk shows lawyers who were adept in International Law pointed out that since the PLO would be given land that bordered on the Sea Of Galilee by law the PLO state would have the right to one-third of the water in that lake! Gee, the Sea Of Galilee holds 30% of Israel’s water. If that would have to be shared with a PLO state then we would be giving 40% of Israel’s water that lays in the Judean & Samarian Aquifer plus the 15% of the country’s water in the Sea Of Galilee to the PLO. That means that Barak was willing to give away 55% of Israel’s water in this agreement "for the sake of peace". Oh, how Ducky!
Arafat demanded that Israel guarantee a "right of return" to all Arabs. That is, any Arab who claims to have owned houses or property in the Israeli cities of Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Coastal Plain, anywhere in Israel -- must be allowed to ‘repossess’ such property from Jews simply on the basis of such a claim.
Barak agreed to allow 100,000 Arabs to move into Israel under a "right of return" law. In this law, Jews from anywhere in the world are allowed a "right of return" and become citizens of Israel immediately upon arrival. Barak offered this same "right" to 100,000 Arabs but could not possibly agree to allow immediate repossession of property simply on the basis of a claim by an Arab that his family once owned the property. That simply is not possible under the law here, or in any other country -- and Arafat knew this! (The political left-wing really got upset when they heard that Barak offered Arafat this one! Before this they were happy to allow this to happen to us "settlers" way out here in Judea & Samaria. But when it Barak offered to let Arabs do the same thing to those living even in the Tel-Aviv area the leftists shouted, in effect: "Hey! Not to me, ya don’t!")
Arafat demanded free and unrestricted access for Arabs to move and settle permanently in Judea Samaria & the Gaza strip. He says that absolutely anyone – except for Jews – will be able to come and settle in this area. He announced publicly that he could easily bring in 2-million more Arab settlers into that region.
Barak agreed to allow 500,000 Arab settlers into Judea, Samaria & Gaza.
Arafat demanded that Jews be absolutely forbidden to enter areas he proclaims to be part of his Palestinian state.
Barak couldn't agree to this because he could not possibly evict the 60,000 Jews living inside the 92% of Judea, Samaria & Gaza area that he previously agreed to hand over to Arafat. Besides, he could not possibly prevent them visiting Israel and then returning to their homes in a Palestinian state. He agreed to prevent other Jews who were not residents in their future Palestinian state to stay out, though.
Arafat demanded free and unrestricted access to Jerusalem and Israel by any Arab who wants to enter via his Palestinian state.
Barak suggested that there be a fence with checkpoints but Barak didn’t push this point. Arafat refused any sort of physical barrier between Palestinian areas and Israeli areas.
Arafat demanded that Jerusalem be re-divided along the pre-1967 lines. This would put about 20% of the Jewish population of Jerusalem into PLO control. Arafat mentioned earlier that he might be willing to contemplate leaving the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the Western ("Wailing") Wall and access via the Dung Gate.
Arafat later increased his demand: he wanted all of the above plus the entire Old City of Jerusalem, Jewish Quarter & Kotel Ma’aravi ("Wailing Wall") included. Barak agreed to give Arafat 85% of eastern Jerusalem, which included: 1.) all Arab neighborhoods, 2.) the entire Old City of Jerusalem, 3.) the Kotel Ma'arvi (the "Wailing Wall") as well as the two Jewish neighborhoods of Nevay-Ya’akov & Pizgat-Ze’ev (containing about 70,000 Jews). Barak insisting on holding on to the neighborhood of French Hill (containing about 55,000 Jews). In return for holding on to these areas he was willing to allow "Joint Sovereignty" over Jerusalem so that it would be the capitol of both Israel and the Palestinian state, he was willing to allow PLO "police" control over all areas given to them. Barak offered Arafat an office in the Old City of J'lem, and offered to permit the PLO flag to fly over the Temple Mount.
Arafat demanded that all convicted Arab criminals in Israeli jails and prisons be released immediately & unconditionally without regard to the crime, penalty or time remaining to serve.
Barak simply avoided this issue and diplomatically told Arafat something to the effect that he understood their concerns but at this time this was not an option. Fact is that Barak has no power to release criminals en masse but if he thought that he could swing this he would have agreed.
During the Camp David negotiations Arafat added this new item to his list of demands:
Arafat insisted that Israel give the PLO $40-billion to compensate the "Palestinian people" for all the years of the existence of the State of Israel. Arafat's position is that the State of Israel is a "Nakba", a "Disaster" or "Catastrophe" for the Palestinians and so compensation at the amount of $40-billion is a fair considering the "damage" caused by the Jewish state's 50 years of existence.
Clinton heard Arafat's demand. He then put out feelers to the American Congress for an aid appropriation to the tune of $40-billion, but this was refused outright. They basically laughed in his face. Clinton then went to the G8 Summit Conference in Japan and begged money from some of the wealthiest countries in the world, but was again refused such an absurd request.
In short, Arafat rejected all of Barak's offers and simply refused to compromise on any matter and even increased his demands. Barak, for his part, offered above and beyond what he was allowed to give by his own party, his own government policies, and above and beyond any rational way of dealing with this issue.
"Why?" Why did Arafat demand the land and sky to the point of absurdity? Partly because Arafat has a PLO of many factions, and those factions have been getting very impatient. These include the "rejectionist" factions of the PLO as well as Hamas Islamic fundamentalists. All of these factions have perceived Israel as being sufficiently weak and the PLO sufficiently strong to demand the heavens and the earth. Arafat has been told that if he gives in to any of Israel's demands he'll be regarded as a traitor to the Palestinian cause, and will be killed. In this sense Arafat has several rifles pointed into his back at all times by his own people. The common people are also in agreement with those "rejectionist factions" of the PLO. When Arafat returned to this area after the Camp David negotiations the Arab population of Gaza turned out to greet him and they carried placards which called him a "hero" for not making any concessions to Barak.
Why did Barak offer so much? Because Clinton needs a positive reference about himself in future history books. Being written up a peacemaker would be good for him. Getting the Nobel Peace Prize would be a dream come true. Barak wants the fame and prestige in history books as a peacemaker, too. Probably more compelling is that Barak is owes Clinton an enormous favor for helping to get him into office. It was Clinton’s public relations team that ran the Israeli elections, and it was $150,000,000 most of which was donated by the US government and illegally accepted by Barak’s party for his election campaign. Due to these Barak feels he owes Clinton far more than he owes the Israeli public.
"What Next?" Well, just the other day the news here reported that the PLO raided Hamas explosive factories in their areas that were producing large quantities of homemade explosives. It should be noted that Hamas & Islamic Jihad has told the PLO that it will attack the PLO if Arafat doesn't declare a Palestinian state like he promised for 13 September 2000. It seems that those explosives were in preparation to use against the PLO and not against Jews. How do we know? Simply that when Hamas has decided to murder Jews with bombs in our cities they used hi-tec explosives that are extremely powerful. For this kind of operation they need these hi-tec explosives to be able to get them into the cities of Israel undetected. Homemade explosives don't carry such a punch so large quantities have to be made up to do the job. Just remember that the bomb that blew up the World Trade Center was homemade from 50 lbs. of nitrate fertilizer. Hamas doesn't have much of a hope of getting that kind of explosive into major Israeli cities, but it would easily used by them to punish the PLO for not being tough enough in establishing a PLO state. Just the other day another official in the Palestinian hierarchy explicitly proclaimed that if Arafat doesn’t declare a state the is a pistol bullet waiting for him. So Arafat is getting pressure to be tough and go into a confrontation with Israel from every level of Arab society.
Arafat has also been flying from capitol to capitol attempting to get support and recognition for his Palestinian state if he declares one on September 13, 2000, and has been very disappointed. Oh, the Arab countries will support this, no problem. But it seems that a lot of western governments that Arafat counted on to give immediate recognition to a Palestinian state, should he declare one, have refused to do so. Clinton does not want a unilateral declaration of one , he insists on an agreement with Israel. Turkey has refused to recognize it out of hand. Surprisingly, France has also refused to do so unless Israel agrees to it through negotiations. What this means in practical terms is that if Arafat declares his Palestinian state and the rest of the world doesn’t recognize it’s legitimacy then Israel will not be under pressure to restrain herself when the PLO’s army starts to attack our forces or communities. If the Arabs in Judea, Samaria & Gaza declare their state and go to war against us then we can put it down without many calls for restraint from the nations. So that’ll be very good for us.
As far as the Israeli public is concerned there is a growing change of attitude toward this whole "peace process" because Barak offered Arafat the earth but Arafat refused it because he didn’t get the sky, too. A good portion of the Israeli public are now realizing that the Arabs never wanted a deal that involved "land in exchange for peace" as they originally claimed, rather, the Arabs just used this as ploy to get the land and not give the peace. (We on the Israeli political right-wing knew this from the very start but more left-leaning types had to learn this by experience. Pity they didn’t use their brains rather than their hearts and figure this out without having to sacrifice lots of money and time on a useless, if not destructive, venture.) A lot of Israelis are developing a toughening attitude toward Arafat & the Arab population. In addition, there are so many of Barak’s friends in politics that are very angry at him for selling us out in the negotiations and failing. The Israeli Parliament, the Keneset, reacted against Barak having screwed up royally, and has voted to hold early elections probably in April, rather than in 2003. Despite this Barak still hasn’t comprehended what has happened and, at the writing of this, Barak still thinks that he can swing a peace treaty with Arafat in the 5 weeks remaining until Arafat will declare his Palestinian state. Barak exuded strong but highly unrealistic confidence about his government's future and its objectives. "We must continue to storm the target," Barak said, "and whoever feels that he cannot withstand the pressure is asked to step aside!" Well, the rest of his party has indeed stepped aside and he resembles the general who is charging into a battle entirely alone. The more Barak denies the reality of the situation the more the Israeli public is turned off by him and his whole party is being included in the public’s disfavor. Barak’s own party is angry at him for screwing up so badly, and just plain livid because he hasn’t comprehended the error of his ways and insists on carrying on the "peace process" and thereby dragging his party down with him. They can’t shake him off! Anyway, early elections will be upon us and Barak will be out, but if he would try to make concessions even more absurd than what he’s attempted so far then the Keneset will convene for a special session despite their summer recess. They will then pass a ‘No Confidence’ motion against him and that will immediately strip Barak of all power. So the Israeli political system has the tools to protect us all from someone so reckless and foolhardy.
Locally, our army, the IDF, has revised again the open-fire orders regarding our communities. The army now regards any entry into a Jewish community by someone going through our perimeter fences as a threat to life. So now we are permitted to open fire on anyone attempting to climb over, cut through or pull down our perimeter fences. Before, we were told to "shoot to harm" in the event of such an incursion, now were being told to "shoot to kill". Functionally, there isn’t too much of a difference for us. Except if we’re under ‘shoot to harm’ orders and a terrorist is shot dead while trying to cut through a fence there will be an investigation into the matter which might be a bit uncomfortable for the one who opened fire. OTOH, if we’re under ‘shoot to kill’ orders the resulting investigation for the above case will be relatively painless. As far as the Arabs are concerned, this change of order will make all the difference in the world. The Arabs have definitely heard of the change of order. So with the new order the Arabs will be much more reluctant to even approach a Jewish community out here. This should make far fewer problems overall considering their basically low level of courage regarding us "settlers".
"The (recent) Camp David summit seems to have left a violent taste in the mouths of many Palestinians. A poll taken of 1,300 Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza after the summit shows that 52% are in favor of armed attacks against Israeli targets - the highest this figure has been in six years. Some 63% are in favor of taking an example from Hizbullah in (in Lebanon) waging the armed struggle against Israel." Arutz-7, 3 August 2000.
The PLO is still in a very high state of readiness for war against us. They continue to run "summer camps" for their pre-teenagers instructing them in the use of AK-47 assault rifles and tactics for attacking "settlements". Attached to this e-mail is one of the very pictures that the PLO distributes, and it displays the attitude that they expect from their children. The NY Times ran an article about the PLO’s summer camps entitled:
Palestinian Summer Camp Offers the Games of War:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/080300palestinian-camp.htmlOne last thing: it’s easy for anyone to attempt to predict the future. One doesn’t need to be a prophet to attempt it. Sometimes predictions are based on what already happened in the past combined with a bit of intuition about the future. However there are those who are so good at it, it’s remarkable. I’m not impressed with predictions before the event in question. I like checking on whether they came to pass or fell flat on their faces only after the thing was supposed to take place. Well, I was cruising the web when I found a Chabad website that published speeches of the late Lubaviticher Rebbe (may his memory be a blessing) concerning the ‘peace process’. I found this site…
http://www.truepeace.org/Kunters2ofSichos.htm
…about 2.5 months ago, before the Camp David negotiations with Barak & Arafat took place. The following is a short excerpt from one of the Rebbe’s talks:
"The Al-mighty Shall Perform a MiracleThat The Arabs Will Not Want To Accept Anything."
"…Getting back to the issue at hand – concerning the suggestion to return the ("occupied") territories at all:
"When it was heard in Washington concerning the substance of that delegation – (the US Government) could not believe their ears, that indeed, that it was seriously planned (by the Israeli Government) that the territories should be returned!…
"In any event, after they were successful in convincing them that this was indeed their intent – then, in accordance with the request of the delegation, they relayed this notice and suggestion to the Arabs. And here was the miracle: In spite of all the aforementioned, the Arabs did not agree to accept what the Jews were offering! …The official response was that their wish was to receive more than what was being offered, but regardless, the fact was that the Arabs did not agree to accept what the Jewish people were willing to give them!
"What is important now, is that since there has already been a miracle as this, it may be seen how such a miracle can happen in our times. Meaning, that even if they (the Israeli Government) will continue, Heaven forbid, in the path they have been following until now, the Al-mighty will perform a miracle, that the Arabs will be unwilling to accept their terms!"
(From a talk by the Lubavitcher Rebbe on Shabbath Chayei Sarah, 5746 – November 18, 1985
http://www.truepeace.org/Kunters2ofSichos.htm)Shalom al-Yisrael!
Dale