did not relate to Camp David and he has no fundamental disagreement with Mr. Arafat until after the release of the Clinton Parameters on December 23, 2000 and at Taba.
http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml Before any of this Barak is already publicly denouncing Arafat.
If the standard is everything Israel wants whether Israel is entitled to it or not, Israel made a number of concessions. If the standard is what Israel is entitled to under international law and what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law; Only the Palestinians made concessions and Israel made exactly ZERO concessions.
And in spite of what has been said, the only reliable record of discussions at Taba are the European Union notes known as the "Moratinos Document". Both sides agree that this is an accurate picture of what happened. No one disputes this. And as Akiva Eldar of Haaretz points out in the very first release of the E.U. notes on 14 February 2002, "It is true that on most of the issues discussed during that wintry week of negotiations, sizable gaps remain. Yet almost every line is redolent of the effort to find a compromise that would be acceptable to both sides. It is hard to escape the thought that if the negotiations at Camp David six months earlier had been conducted with equal seriousness, the intifada might never have erupted. And perhaps, if Barak had not waited until the final weeks before the election, and had instead sent his senior representatives to that southern hotel earlier, the violence might never have broken out." link to Moratnos documents:
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/papers/moratinos.html______-
The whole impression that somehow Arafat and the Palestinian delegation are to blame simply does not hold up to the record. Here is a link to very long 43 page pdf file summary. The article is neutral and dispassionate and nonpartisan. It gives a very calm and rational critique of all sides:
Visions in Collisions: What Happened at Camp David and Taba
by Dr. Jeremy Pressman, University of Connecticut:
http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/BCSIA_content/documents/pressman.pdfFor a somewhat less dispassionate but highly erudite and fastidiously documented record of what happened here is Norman Finkelstein's critique of the Dennis Ross account:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=989"It is not immediately obvious why a standard of rights reached by broad international consensus and codified in international law is more "subjective" than a standard of needs on which there is neither consensus nor codification. On the issues at hand at Camp David, the standard of rights was notably uncontroversial in international law. Although Ross asserts as a flaw of the rights standard that the respective parties typically disagree on it, this was not the problem during these negotiations. Clinton did not want to hear about UN resolutions and international law, but not because they lacked clarity. Israeli and U.S. negotiators fumed at any mention of rights because they knew exactly where such talk would lead.
What is most peculiar about Ross's argument is his apparent belief that his personal adjudication is less arbitrary than reference to a consensual body of laws. Leaving aside the strange premise that the transitory opinion of one should count for more than the received opinion of many, it is unclear what qualifies Ross for the role of philosopher-king.<19> On a professional level, his insights on the art of diplomacy will probably not make their way into a textbook,<20> while his lengthy affiliation with a think-tank created by the Israel lobby would seem to cast doubt on his claim to objectivity.
It is his wholesale dismissal of Palestinian needs that ultimately enables Ross to prove Palestinian culpability for Camp David's failure. Regarding the Palestinian state's eastern border, Ross delineated on day one of the Camp David summit that Palestinians had only "symbolic needs" whereas Israel had "very real and legitimate . . . concerns about security" (p. 655).<21> Regarding Jerusalem, Ross reasoned on day six of Camp David that, basically, Palestinians needed a token to recoup their losses, such as having an American embassy in a village abutting the city, so that they could pretend Jerusalem was their capital: "That would be a big symbol for Arafat. I said in addition the President could lead an international delegation that Arafat could host and take to the Haram, again symbolizing for the world, especially the Arab world, Palestinian control" (pp. 681–82). Regarding land, Palestinians did not need full compensation for the territory Israel coveted. Inasmuch as Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, and inasmuch as one aspect of the solution to the refugee problem was that Palestinians would return to the Palestinian state (but not Israel), one might have supposed that Palestinians might need, at a bare minimum, full territorial compensation. But Ross decided otherwise when formulating the Clinton Parameters: "I felt strongly about 6 to 7 percent annexation
and I was not prepared to lower the ceiling. Nor was I prepared to introduce the idea of an equivalent swap" (p. 726).<22> When even Israeli negotiators proposed a smaller percentage of Israeli annexation, Ross reports being "furious"—which gives some sense of his nonpartisan tallying of Palestinian needs (pp. 748–9).<23> On the specific matter of land swaps, Ross had proposed on the eve of the Camp David summit that Israel "symbolically" exchange territory "as a way to provide the Palestinians with an explanation for the modification of borders" (p. 639). Regarding the refugees, too, Ross consistently maintained that Palestinians had only "symbolic needs" as against "Israel's practical needs" (pp. 655, 726).<24>
Judging from Ross's account, Camp David failed because Palestinians stubbornly clung to the illusion that they had real needs. Had they understood that all they really needed was symbols, Palestinians would have leapt at the generous Israeli offer.<25> The root of the problem, again, appears to be that Palestinian "sense of entitlement": Camp David might have succeeded if only Palestinians grasped that they aren't real, actual human beings. "
link to full article:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=989
.