usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/11248
What about 2000? What about the "offer" Arafat "rejected?" Can an offer be in good faith when it is not reduced to writing? Of course not. Should Arafat have accepted the "final offer" in Taba? A good case can be made he should have. Arafat was a great leader, but a lousy negotiator, and even worse administrator. Charismatic personalities usually are.
Israeli propaganda has created the myth that Arafat "rejected" a "dream offer" that is never to return. No one really believes that. The tragedy of Israel and Palestine is that they shed blood, and waste years, only to return eventually to Taba as the starting point.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palestinians/issues/1099279.stmThe former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently offered a token repatriation, allowing small scale "family reunifications" in the interests of peace.
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http://members.cox.net/indepundit/2002/06/to-victor-go-spoils-yasser-arafat-and.html2001: Taba - Israel proposal includes Palestinian state on 94% of the West Bank and Gaza. Talks break down without agreement
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/02/05/edignatius.2.t.php While Arafat Waits for Bush, Sharon Could Scrap Barak's Terms
By David Ignatius International Herald Tribune / The Washington Post
Monday, February 5, 2001
The modern history of the Middle East is a story of missed opportunities. Against that background, the negotiations at the Egyptian border town of Taba that finally collapsed on Jan. 27 deserve at least a minor footnote. They were the last gasp of President Bill Clinton's Mideast diplomacy, and a warning of the difficulties that now face President George W. Bush.
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Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met at Taba for one last try at a framework for peace. When the talks ended the two sides were near agreement on every item except one, the issue of Palestinian refugees.
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Negotiators issued a joint statement saying they had "never been closer to reaching" a final peace deal. But then it blew up, with a rant by Yasser Arafat that is sadly typical of his career of bellicose blunders. Less than 24 hours after his negotiators had achieved nearly every demand at Taba, he delivered an anti-Israel diatribe in Davos, Switzerland, denouncing the Jewish state as "fascist."
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That was enough for Ehud Barak, who announced a few hours later that he was suspending negotiations until after the Israeli election this Tuesday. Since he seems almost certain to lose, the Taba talks were probably his last hurrah.
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What accounted for Mr. Arafat's tirade? The suspicion among diplomats who have followed the talks closely is that he hopes to pocket Mr. Barak's final concessions under the Clinton peace process and then sweeten the deal later with help from the Bush administration.
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Why would Yasser wait for George? The simple answer is that the Arab world remains Bush-crazy. The name exerts an almost mystical power in the Middle East, conjuring up images of America that many princes and potentates find reassuring: big oil, Texas, the CIA, Desert Storm. The Clinton administration, in contrast, was seen in the Arab world as slavishly pro-Israel.
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Twenty years ago, when I first met Mr. Arafat in Beirut, the Palestinians liked to say that "the road to Jerusalem passes through Washington." The events surrounding Taba show that they have not given up this wrongheaded belief. They would still rather negotiate with an American president than with an Israeli prime minister — especially if that presidentis named Bush.
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The weird thing is that the Israelis have already offered the road to Jerusalem, if only the Palestinians would take it.
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To illustrate how far the two sides had come by the time the Taba talks ended, an official involved in the peace process leaked me a copy of the minutes of a meeting that President Clinton held on Dec. 23 with negotiators from both sides. The text lays out the ground that remained to be covered in the four basic areas of discussion: territory, security, Jerusalem and refugees.
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On the question of territory, Mr. Clinton advised: "I believe the solution should be in the mid-90 percent, between 94-96 percent of the West Bank territory." The Palestinians achieved that at Taba.
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On settlements, the Israelis agreed to cluster them around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and to incorporate 80 percent of the settlers into Israel.
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On security, Mr. Clinton said that "the key lies in an international presence that can only be withdrawn by mutual consent." Both sides agreed to accept an international force, along with three Israeli "early warning stations" in the West Bank.
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On Jerusalem, the two sides embraced Mr. Clinton's approach. He advised: "The general principle is that Arab areas are Palestinian and Jewish ones are Israeli. This would apply to the Old City as well." Both sides agreed that Jerusalem would become the capital for Israel and Palestine alike. And they worked out a tentative formula that would provide, in Mr. Clinton's words, "Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram
, and Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall."
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It was only on the right of return for Palestinian refugees that the two sides failed to reach a consensus. Mr. Clinton noted "how hard it will be for the Palestinian leadership to appear to be abandoning this principle." But he also cautioned: "The Israeli side could not accept any reference to a right of return that would imply a right to immigrate to Israel ... that would threaten the Jewish character of the state."
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Mr. Clinton suggested two deliberately vague formulas — "the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Historic Palestine" or "the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland" — and five possible final homes for the refugees. But this ambiguity failed to coax an agreement.
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"These are my ideas," reads the haunting conclusion of Mr. Clinton's Dec. 23 minutes. "If they are not accepted, they are not just off the table, they also go with me when I leave office."
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Mr. Arafat hopes to start the bargaining anew, with the Bush administration's help, at the point where Taba left off. In this he has probably made a tragic misjudgment, for it is doubtful that a Sharon government will offer the same terms.
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The burden now shifts to Mr. Bush. The magic of the Bush name gives him some leverage with the Palestinians. One can only hope that, by confounding Arabs' hopes that he will be their ally, he can put sense in Mr. Arafat's head and persuade him to take "yes" for an answer. The modern history of the Middle East is a story of missed opportunities. Against that background, the negotiations at the Egyptian border town of Taba that finally collapsed on Jan. 27 deserve at least a minor footnote. They were the last gasp of President Bill Clinton's Mideast diplomacy, and a warning of the difficulties that now face President George W. Bush.
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Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met at Taba for one last try at a framework for peace. When the talks ended the two sides were near agreement on every item except one, the issue of Palestinian refugees.
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The National Interest—Spring 2003
The diplomatic advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown
Prince Abdallah, Adel Al-Jubeir, claims
that at Taba “the Israelis and the
Palestinians came very close to an agree-
ment.”*1 Egyptian President HosniMubarak says that
the talkscould have led to a settlement, had an
additional chance of a few more months been
made available for negotiations.
*t.1 “Meet the Press”, NBC,
April 21, 2002. Makovsky 119-129 3/3/03 15:36
These pro-posals only needed some clarifications and Taba
some mutual concessions in order to crystal-
lize a final settlement had the Israeli govern-
ment had the intention to start serious negoti-
ations with the Palestinian Authority.
France’s former Foreign Minister,
Hubert Védrine, notes that a viable
Palestinian state needs to be created “not
on the basis of the Camp David accords,
which were not specific enough, but by
using the terms of the subsequent nego-
tiations at Sharm al-Sheikh and Taba.But
no deal was ever in prospect.Palestinian negotiators made only condi-
tional and tactical concessions at Taba, and
even these were never agreed to by the
Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat. While
some key Palestinian negotiators wanted a
deal, no evidence suggests that Arafat him-
self was willing to make any concessions of
real significance. Even the diplomat who
has put forth the rosiest assessment of the
Taba negotiations—EUMiddle East peace envoy
Miguel Moratinos—wrote in a doc-ument summarizing
those talks (published in the February 14, 2001 Ha‘aretz) that
“serious gaps remain.”