| Lost
Opportunities Jeremy
Pressman
The Missing Peace: The
Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
Dennis Ross
Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, $35 (cloth)
8
On January 2, 2001, five days after the
American-imposed deadline
for responding to the Clinton Plan for ending the
Israeli–Palestinian
conflict, Yasser Arafat finally met with President
Bill Clinton.
According to then-Ambassador Dennis Ross’s new
book, The
Missing Peace, when asked if the Palestinian side accepted
the plan, Arafat said yes, then proceeded to reject
crucial elements
of it. Arafat had just derailed the peace process, Ross writes:
“The game was over. For the foreseeable future, it would
be necessary to switch gears; we would be out of the
peacemaking
business and back to a preoccupation with crisis prevention and
the defusing of conflict.”
Since the collapse of the
Israeli–Palestinian peace
process, the outbreak of the second intifada, and the defeat of
then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak by Ariel Sharon, participants and
scholars have sought to assign blame for the diplomatic failure and
the ensuing violence. The Missing Peace is a particularly important
contribution to this discussion. An ambassador in the first Bush and
the Clinton administrations, Dennis Ross spent 12 years shepherding
the negotiations. At virtually every key juncture he was there to
talk, negotiate, pressure, threaten, and cajole. He apparently kept
careful notes, because his book is deeply informed and rich in
detail. Unfortunately, Ross’s conclusions about both
Israeli–Palestinian and Israeli–Syrian relations are highly
misleading, and because he was such an important player, his
arguments are likely to carry great weight—and do great harm. The
idea that the Palestinians are not serious about negotiations—and
that negotiating with them is therefore a waste of time—enjoys wide
currency. The conventional evidence for that view is the failure of
Camp David and the Palestinian rejection of the Clinton plan. By
canonizing that story here, Ross reinforces current American and
Israeli policy. In 2004,
Arafat and the same group of
Palestinian negotiators remain in power. By claiming that the
Palestinians refuse to accept a negotiated settlement, Israel asserts
that it has no negotiating partner. If this is true, bilateral
diplomacy is no longer an option, and Israel must rely on unilateral
action, including military force. Thus, an inaccurate understanding
of the events of 2000 and 2001 constrains policymakers and forecloses
the one path—diplomacy—that has the best hope of bringing some
normalcy to Israeli-Palestinian relations. * * * On December 23,
2000, President Clinton read his plan for a final settlement of the
conflict to Israeli and Palestinian officials. Ross observes that
Arafat dragged his feet until January 2, 2001, then accepted the
plan, and then immediately offered three reservations that Ross calls
“deal-killers.” Arafat accepted Israel’s sovereignty over the
central Jewish holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem known as the
Wailing Wall but not over the entire ancient temple wall of which it
is a part; he objected to Israeli use of West Bank air space; and he
requested a different formula for dealing with Palestinian refugees.
Arafat answered after the Clinton-imposed deadline, but as Ross
explained during earlier negotiations over Hebron, “No political
leader I have ever dealt with or observed relishes taking a
difficult, potentially costly decision if he or she can avoid it or
delay it.” Contrary to
Ross’s claim that Arafat’s
three objections vitiated the Clinton plan, only the refugee point
seems fundamental. At the same time, Ross ignores or minimizes
Israeli reservations, barely noting them in the book’s preface
(with no specifics), and then, near the end of the book, dismissing
them with the claim that they “were within the [Clinton]
parameters, not outside them.” In fact, Barak gave Clinton a
20-page letter outlining Israel’s reservations, some of them quite
significant. Furthermore, in January 2001 Barak publicly rejected the
Clinton plan’s call for Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram
al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. This rejection was no less
fundamental than Arafat’s opposition to the refugee formula.
Moreover, Barak also expressed reservations about Clinton’s
proposal on refugees. In hindsight, Israel’s response to the
Clinton plan probably benefited from a more politic presentation.
Arafat agreed to the plan and simultaneously offered his
reservations; Barak had the Israeli cabinet approve the Clinton plan
and then, in a separate time and place, presented Clinton with its
own list of reservations. Despite this jockeying by both
sides in early January 2001, high-level Israeli–Palestinian talks
began a few weeks later, on January 21, in Taba, Egypt. The Taba
talks were serious and largely based on the Clinton plan, according
to Ross himself in an August 2001 interview (“What was done in Taba
was basically to focus on the Clinton ideas”) and according to the
concluding communiqué issued by the high-level Israeli and
Palestinian representatives at Taba (the “two sides took into
account the ideas suggested by President Clinton together with their
respective qualifications and reservations”). And the two parties
reported unprecedented progress: the final statement from Taba,
issued about ten days before Sharon trounced Barak in the Israeli
elections, announced, “The sides declare that they have never been
closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that
the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of
negotiations following the Israeli elections.” Yet Ross
discounts the importance of Taba, giving it only two sentences, late
in the book. While Ross’s friend, the journalist and scholar David
Makovsky, has written that Taba was unimportant, many others have
drawn the opposite conclusion, including Akiva Eldar of Ha’aretz,
Alain Gresh of Le Monde, and Charles Enderlin of France 2 television
(the Jerusalem bureau chief, who has also written a book of his own
on the period called Shattered Dreams). Miguel Moratinos, the
European Union envoy who attended the Taba negotiations, released
notes of the talks that reflect substantive exchanges. David Matz, a
negotiations and conflict-resolution specialist at the University of
Massachusetts, interviewed most of the negotiators and concluded that
they were actively seeking a settlement. That Ross is
willing to overlook the developments at Taba for the sake of
bolstering the credibility of the side he favors is not surprising
given his views on diplomacy. He explains that there is room for
manipulation: “Never lie in a negotiation. You don’t have to tell
the whole truth, you can certainly manipulate, but you should never
lie. It will come back to haunt you.” If not at the
Clinton–Arafat meeting on January 2, 2001, when was the “game”
really over? After Taba ended and newly elected Israeli Prime
Minister Sharon chose not to resume the talks. * * * In blaming
Arafat and fixing his responsibility on January 2, Ross largely
ignores a more compelling explanation for the failure of the peace
process. The alternative story begins at Camp David in July 2000. The
American–Israeli offer there was simply insufficient, so Camp David
was not a true test of Palestinian intentions. The offer, seen in the
most favorable light, would have given to the Palestinians 92 percent
of the occupied territory. The 92-percent figure included sections of
the Jordan Valley that Israel would control for as long as 12 years.
And the Palestinians were not offered sovereignty in a number of the
Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. The Palestinian refugee
question, at least as far as can be deduced from Ross’s account,
did not receive the sustained attention the subjects of land and the
holy city did, so, not surprisingly, it was not ready for
resolution. Clinton’s
December 2000 plan, then, was set up
to be a true test of both sides. The new Palestinian state would
include a contiguous 97 percent of the West Bank, and Israel would
control the Jordan Valley only “in fixed locations” and for up to
six years, not 12. In East Jerusalem, all Arab neighborhoods would
fall under Palestinian sovereignty. Both aspects of the plan came far
closer to meeting Palestinian needs. On refugees, the details were
more concrete and favored the Israelis: Israel would retain the
sovereign right to determine how many Palestinian refugees could
enter Israel. The vast majority would receive compensation and live
outside of Israel. Because Sharon’s election and rejection of the
process came so soon after the efforts in Taba to move the Clinton
plan forward, we do not know whether the Clinton plan would
ultimately have provided the basis for a settlement. Ross
obscures this history in part by making the territorial proposals at
Camp David look better than they really were. In 2002, Barak conceded
that he had not envisioned a contiguous Palestinian state at Camp
David: “The Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of
sovereign territory except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running
from Jerusalem through from Maale Adumim to the Jordan River.” This
wedge would have cut the West Bank in two. As mentioned already,
Israel also planned to control the Jordan Valley for as long as 12
years. Ross’s own map of the “Actual Proposal at Camp David” is
contiguous and makes no mention of the decade of Israeli control of
the Valley. And he explicitly contrasts his illustration with the
post-summit Palestinian “characterization”—which does include a
non-contiguous West Bank—and calls it inaccurate. Why,
then, did the United States present the Clinton plan in December
rather than in July at Camp David? Why did it take until December
2000 through January 2001 for Israel and the United States to grasp
what it would take to meet the minimum Palestinian needs in a
two-state solution? Why this possibly fateful delay? At this point,
the answers are tentative. Part of the problem was the second
intifada. The Palestinian uprising erupted in the fall, just as the
United States was about to present a proposal along the lines of the
Clinton plan. But the question of why it took a failed summit to get
to that point remains. Were the Americans and the Israelis simply
hoping to low-ball the Palestinians? Another candidate for blame is
Barak himself. It was Barak, after all, who pushed for a summit in
the summer of 2000 and who resisted following through on previous
Israeli commitments in part because he thought they would all be
wrapped up in a summit anyway. Why bother wasting political capital
on the third “further redeployment” (Israeli withdrawal from
Palestinian territories), the release of a few more Palestinian
prisoners, or even greater Palestinian authority in some Arab
villages on the edge of East Jerusalem, if the two sides were about
to settle the entire conflict? These calculations occurred, Ross
reminds us, as Barak’s broad coalition government was crumbling.
Moreover, by the time of Camp David, as Ross explains, Barak’s
political instincts and bargaining skills were not only limited but
also as likely to get Barak and Bill Clinton into trouble, as they
were to bring peace in the Middle East. In Ross’s account,
Barak’s hubris, impulsiveness, and inexperience knew no bounds.
* * * The fault for delaying the more serious proposal,
then, may
lie in Barak’s wishful thinking. He wanted a summit, needed it
domestically, and so believed it would work despite initial American
doubts, Palestinian reluctance, and Israeli skepticism. Ross
speculates that Barak’s detached behavior at the Camp David summit
revealed that “price he was going to have to pay for a deal was
higher than he’d envisioned and it went against everything he had
ever believed.” * * * To probe Barak’s agenda and reject
Ross’s finger-pointing is not to absolve Arafat of all
responsibility. In Ross’s book, Arafat emerges as a poor strategist
and flawed negotiator even if he, like Barak, meant to reach a
two-state solution. One can easily imagine the extreme frustration of
working with him. Leaving aside Ross’s misplaced conclusion about
the implications of Arafat’s January 2001 comments, his account
still tends to reinforce the words of the Palestinian academic Yezid
Sayigh from the fall of 2001: “Arafat is guilty of strategic
misjudgement, with consequences for the Palestinians of potentially
historic proportions.” It was not that Arafat had the wrong
strategy (that is, rejectionism), but rather, as Sayigh suggests,
that he lacked a strategic frame altogether. While it may be
true that Barak and others who received Palestinian signals about a
final deal were poor receptors, it is equally plausible that the
Palestinian signals were confusing or inadequate. In 1995, Abu Mazen
(Mahmoud Abbas) negotiated a secret final status agreement with Yossi
Beilin, an Israeli minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s government. Abbas
later disowned the Beilin–Abu Mazen agreement, leading some to call
it in jest the “Beilin–Abu Beilin agreement.” More generally,
the competition for leadership roles and influence at the level just
below Arafat was intense (and remains so). That tension alone could
explain a situation in which Palestinian leaders were unable to
project a clear message leading into the final status talks and the
Camp David summit. Neither Ross nor other commentators ever give the
impression that Arafat pressed for precise consistency on the core
issues of those talks. * * * Whereas Ross wants to focus blame
on Arafat, he takes a more balanced approach with respect to the
Israelis and the Syrians. The Israelis and the Syrians had two
decisive moments. According to Ross, the first one was ruined by
Barak and the second by Syrian President Hafez al-Asad.
When Barak first took office
in 1999, his highest priority
was signing a peace agreement with Syria. The problem was that all
three of Barak’s immediate predecessors—Rabin, Peres, and
Benjamin Netanyahu—had agreed to a full withdrawal from the Golan
Heights, which Israel captured and occupied in 1967. Even more
troubling from his perspective was that they had agreed to use the
June 4, 1967, line as the basis for the new Israeli–Syrian
border after Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan. The June 4 line
was more favorable to Syria than other options, such as the 1923
international boundary. Could Barak too make the leap? The first
test was the talks in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in January 2000,
and Barak failed that test. Washington and Damascus both sent
representatives to the talks thinking the two sides would have a
major breakthrough. Barak, who was allowing himself to be guided by
unsettling polling results from Israel, had other ideas. For Barak,
Shepherdstown became an opportunity to probe the Syrians rather than
one for an actual policy shift and peace agreement. The Syrians, who
had believed an agreement was possible and had sent their foreign
minister Farouk al-Shara to negotiate, were outraged, and they were
not alone. As Clinton derisively told Barak at the later Camp David
summit, “I went to Shepherdstown and was told nothing by you for
four days.” The second
test came on March 26, 2000, when Clinton
met Hafez al-Asad in Geneva. Again many observers thought a deal was
in the offing. Asad brought a massive delegation, apparently
expecting to negotiate and write a peace treaty. However, in a now
well-known debacle, Clinton had barely begun his presentation to Asad
when the Syrian president objected. As Clinton told Asad that Israel
would withdraw to “a commonly agreed border” at the June 4 line,
Asad said it was a “problem.” When Clinton tried to continue by
adding that Israel would retain control of all the land around the
Sea of Galilee, Asad replied, “Then they don’t want peace.” The
two leaders never recovered, and the meeting was a prominent public
failure. To Ross, the
explanation for the failure was that Asad did
not want peace. “In the end,” Ross wrote, “Asad
passed.” Asad
himself had always insisted on the June 4 line. How could Ross
explain Asad’s rejection of a deal that included Israeli withdrawal
according to his own terms? Asad must have changed his mind about
resolving Syria’s conflict with Israel. The question of exactly
what Clinton said to Asad is still open to debate. In Shattered
Dreams Enderlin writes that Clinton mentioned an “agreed-upon
boundary” without a reference to the June 4, 1967, line. In his
account, it is obvious why Asad rejected the deal. But even if
Ross’s account is correct and Clinton did refer to the June 4,
1967, line, Ross plays fast and loose with the definition of that
line. According to Frederic Hof, an expert on the Golan border area,
Syria controlled land all the way up to the shoreline in the
northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee as of June 4, 1967. This was
more land than Syria was entitled to if one accepted the 1923
international border—that earlierline was ten meters back from the
water. At one point, Ross suggests without elaboration that the 1923
line and the June 4 1967 line are both ten meters back from the
water. Yet whether one takes
Hof’s or Ross’s view of the 1967
line, the map Ross showed Asad on March 26, 2000, was even more
generous to Israel in the northeast corner of the sea. How do we
know? Ross relates that upon seeing the map, the Syrian Foreign
Minister al-Shara “immediately pointed out that the narrow strip
off the lake was to the east of the 1923 line.” Ross’s response
was that “it was true that at that point the line was marginally to
the east of the 1923 line,” though Syria would get more land in the
southeast part of the lake. Further east meant even further from the
Sea of Galilee. In short, even if one accepts Ross’s view of the
June 4, 1967, line as conterminous with the 1923 line at this part of
the Sea of Galilee, the map he presented in 2000 did not follow that
line. If Ross rejected
Hof’s research on the June 4, 1967,
line, he should have made a stiffer defense of his interpretation.
The absence of such an argument makes one suspicious of the rejection
of Hof’s carefully researched claim that Syria controlled the
water’s edge on June 4, 1967, in the northeast section of the sea.
Moreover, even if one adopts Ross’s approach, the line he showed
Asad and the others on March 26, 2000, was more than ten meters from
the Sea. Thus, it appears
that the offer the United
States presented to Syria on March 26, 2000, was a withdrawal to the
June 4, 1967, line in name only. The United States and Israel hoped
to call it that and then get Syria to agree to a demarcation that was
not actually the June 4 line. While Ross had heard several Syrians
suggest that Syria could accept a new line that was not on the water,
he never heard it from Asad, the Syrian leader who held Syria’s
cards. What does this all
mean? Barak probably did not agree to a
withdrawal to a genuine June 4 line. He allowed the United States to
use the terminology that Asad wanted as long as the actual
demarcation protected Barak on the Sea of Galilee’s shoreline. No
wonder, then, that Hafez al-Asad cried foul. We do not have
a complete understanding of why American and Israeli negotiators
thought this proposal would be sufficient for Asad’s Syria. As
mentioned, Ross himself had heard several statements of flexibility
as part of previous American–Israeli–Syrian talks. Or maybe it
was simply Barak’s hubris or his belief that he and the Americans
could outsmart Asad. In either case, the end result was the same: no
deal. Three months later, Hafez al-Asad was dead. * * * On both
fronts, Israeli–Palestinian and Israeli–Syrian, the future may
actually be brighter than Ross’s book suggests. Despite past
failures, the parties now know what it will take to come to an
agreement if they are ever willing to re-engage. The Clinton plan
sets out a reasonable framework for a two-state solution to the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the exact definition of the June
4 border is known to be the major sticking point for Israel with
Syria. Moreover, it is easy
to forget the importance of the
earlier process that began in Oslo. Since 2001 Oslo has commonly been
thought of as a failure, and it certainly was in the sense that it
did not conclude with a resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict. Without Oslo, however, the two populations would not have
been as committed to a two-state solution as they are today. It is
telling that one of the central critiques today of the Oslo process
is that it was too gradual and allowed too much time for
procrastination, bickering, violence, and suspicion. The two sides
should have moved to resolve core issues like Jerusalem and
Palestinian statehood much earlier. Such a claim, as Ross’s
narrative of 12 years of attempted peacemaking reminds us, is only
possible in a post-Oslo world. Before Oslo, in 1993, Israel had not
even recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization. Even the baby
steps of 1993–1995 seemed novel and far-reaching. The wreckage of
Oslo is strewn all over the streets of Tel Aviv and Ramallah, but a
silver lining remains for the next negotiating team able to restart
high-level Israeli–Palestinian talks.
Right now such talks
seem distant.
But a different—and more
accurate—understanding of the
past, with a deeper appreciation of joint
responsibility for failure
and correspondingly for success, might itself contribute to a
different and better future. <
Jeremy Pressman
is an assistant professor of political science at the
University
of Connecticut.
Originally published in the December
2004/January 2005 issue of Boston Review |
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