[Editor's note: The author is an IDF intelligence officer. This is an abbreviated version of the article that first appeared in Ma'arakhot, the IDF magazine for military affairs (in Hebrew). It received the IDF Chief of Staff's prize for military affairs writing. A longer version, including the author's footnotes, is available from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs website, www.jcpa.org]
The second Camp David summit (July 2000) was the culmination of nearly ten years of political dialogue between Israel and the representatives of the Palestinian people, and of almost six years of interim agreements since the mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. Yet Camp David II did not result in the conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement to end the protracted conflict between the Palestinian national movement and the Jewish national (Zionist) movement. The negotiations between Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasser Arafat (who also heads the PLO and the Fatah movement), under the auspices of U.S. President Bill Clinton, rather highlighted the wide differences between the two sides on the fundamental issues of the conflict.
In spite of many ideas and suggestions which went a long way toward the Palestinian position (even by their own testimony), the Palestinian stance on basic issues remained uncompromising, namely: compliance with all UN decisions as the source of legitimacy for a solution to the "Palestine problem"; a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem; the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state; and the settlement of the Palestinian problem on the basis of UN Resolution 194, which, in the PLO interpretation, requires Israel to assume responsibility for the refugee problem, to allow the refugees and their descendants to return to Israel and repossess their homes and property within its territory, and to compensate them.
Even the Taba summit (January 2001) and the political initiative of President Clinton that took place under the shadow of and concurrently with the Palestinian "War of Independence and Return," and which represented a last effort by Israel's government and the U.S. administration to reach a solution on the eve of elections in both countries, did not lead to the moderation of the PA's fundamental political positions.
The politically unbridgeable gap between the PA and Israel, which was exposed in the negotiations on a permanent solution, is first and foremost the result of the fundamental contrast between the protagonists' perceptions of the essence of the conflict and the ultimate goal of the negotiations. From Israel's point of view, the issue was in essence a conflict between two political entities that were now prepared to reach a historic compromise that would in turn lead to a true coexistence between two independent states. The historic compromise was based, in Israel's perception, on the abandonment of dreams of "the whole land," namely, that of "the whole of Eretz Israel," on one side, and that of "the whole of Palestine," on the other.
According to this approach, the goal of the negotiation was to reach a formula that would equitably bridge the differences between the two sides (for example, Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state and a compromise in Jerusalem in return for a Palestinian concession on the refugee issue). In Israel's view, the ultimate goal of the entire process was the conclusion of a final agreement that meant the end of the conflict and the cessation of further Palestinian demands -- particularly such demands as might alter the entire premise of the agreement (such as the return of refugees to Israel, or the return of private and public Palestinian property in Israel).
The Palestinian approach differed fundamentally from that of Israel, both in its basic perception of the essence of the conflict and in the objectives of the negotiations. In the view of the PA (and in the view of Fatah and the PLO as well), the issue at hand is not a political confrontation between Palestinian and Israeli entities over a specific parcel of territory, but a struggle between two civilizations which oppose each other in their basic worldviews and national aspirations. The 100-year-long struggle between Zionism and the Palestinian national movement (Arafat designates the first Zionist Congress in Basle as the historical turning point) inflicted a "disaster" (nakba) upon the Palestinian people. That disaster, which entailed the "forced expulsion of the Palestinian people from its land" in 1948 and 1967, and its subjection since then to "the yoke of occupation," is "a historic wrong." According to this tenet, Israelis are "invaders" into a land that does not belong to them, where they have established an entity which is an alien implant within Arab and Muslim living space, and which serves as a bridgehead for "imperialism" and for Western civilization. The struggle, then, is an existential one between the Zionist enterprise and the Palestinian national enterprise.
Such a perception still serves as the foundation
[(Continued on p.4)]
December 2002 - 3 - Outpost