Conclusion of "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why it Failed" from the New York Times of July 26, 2001

The Blame Game:
Why Did Talks End in Collapse?

Assuming the mantle of Mr. Rabin, Mr. Barak came to office in
July 1999 trumpeting his intent to end the conflict with the
Palestinians in short order. But then he chose to direct his
energy at seeking peace with the Syrians, and ignored the
Palestinians long enough to make them suspicious. He also brought
the settlers' representatives, the National Religious Party, into
his coalition and gave them the Housing Ministry, which led to a
significant expansion of the settlement enterprise.

Four years late by the original peacemaking timetable, the first
substantial final-status talks began secretly only in late March
2000, after the Israeli-Syrian talks died. "It all started too
late and on the wrong footing," said Mr. Larsen, the United
Nations envoy.

As a signal of his good faith, Mr. Barak promised to transfer to
the Palestinians three Jerusalem-area villages, a promise that
was relayed to Mr. Arafat by Mr. Clinton. Mr. Barak even won
Parliament's consent to do so. But, on the day of the vote, an
intense spasm of violence erupted in the West Bank, which seems
in retrospect a harbinger of what was to come.

Mr. Barak indefinitely deferred the transfer because of the
violence. Both Mr. Arafat and, according to Mr. Malley, Mr.
Clinton later said they felt burned by Mr. Barak's broken
promise.

Nonetheless, what became known as the "Stockholm track" consisted
of 15 substantive sessions, culminating in three long weekends,
two in Sweden and one in Israel. Israelis and Palestinians who
took part say now that the discussions were groundbreaking and
that the mood was positive. They made progress on the issues of
territory, borders, security and even refugees, although there
were both advances and retreats on every issue.

In mid-May, the fact and the substance of the talks were leaked
to Israeli newspapers, and what was printed about potential
concessions caused political problems for both Mr. Barak and Mr.
Arafat. That in effect brought the talks to a halt and led Mr.
Barak to seek a summit meeting before the Palestinians considered
the groundwork laid.

"Stockholm died once revealed," Mr. Indyk, the former American
ambassador, said in an interview in June. "If Stockholm had
continued, it might have laid a better foundation for Camp David.
But Barak felt the leaks would lead to the breakup of his
coalition and he'd never get to the endgame."

Mr. Ben-Ami said the negotiators had supported Mr. Barak's
decision to push for an American-led summit meeting at that
point.

"We didn't feel there was a purpose in eroding our positions
further before a summit where we'd have to give up more," he
said.

For other reasons, though, Mr. Ben-Ami said that in retrospect he
considered it a pity that the Stockholm track was aborted.
Referring to Abu Ala, he said: "The Palestinian negotiator there
was an extraordinarily talented and able man who had the trust of
the chairman. And he liked discreet channels. The moment they
collapsed, he became an enemy of the process. He thought Camp
David was a show."

The palpable displeasure of Mr. Abu Ala, whose given name is
Ahmed Qurei, at Camp David was considered by many to have
contributed to the talks' failure - just as his subsequent
leadership role at Taba was believed to have contributed to
greater success there.

Mr. Abu Ala himself said Mr. Barak had doomed Camp David by
cutting short the preparatory session. "We told him without
preparation it would be a catastrophe, and now we are living the
catastrophe," Mr. Abu Ala said in an interview in Abu Dis, his
village in the West Bank. "Two weeks before Camp David, Arafat
and I saw Clinton at the White House. Arafat told Clinton he
needed more time. Clinton said, 'Chairman Arafat, come try your
best. If it fails, I will not blame you.' But that is exactly
what he did."

The Palestinians went to Camp David so reluctantly that the
failure of the talks should have been foreseen, many now say.
"The failure of Camp David was a self-fulfilling prophesy, and it
wasn't because of Jerusalem or the right of return" of refugees,
said Mr. Beilin.

Mr. Larsen agreed: "It was a failure of psychology and of
process, not so much of substance."

The Palestinians felt that they were being dragged to the verdant
hills of Maryland to be put under joint pressure by an Israeli
prime minister and an American president who, because of their
separate political time tables and concerns about their legacies,
had a personal sense of urgency.

The Palestinians said they had been repeatedly told by the
Americans that the Israeli leader's coalition was unstable; after
a while, they said, the goal of the summit meeting seemed to be
as much about rescuing Mr. Barak as about making peace. At the
same time, they said, the Americans did not seem to take
seriously the pressures of the Palestinian public and the Muslim
world on Mr. Arafat. Like Mr. Barak, Mr. Arafat went to Camp
David dogged by plummeting domestic approval ratings.

Mr. Indyk, who is planning to write a book on the peace effort
called "Unintended Consequences," said Mr. Barak's requirement
that Camp David produce a formal end to the conflict had put too
much pressure on the summit meeting.

The discussions on some issues actually went backward during the
two weeks at Camp David, Mr. Sher and Mr. Ben-Ami said. Mr. Sher
said he believed that it was because Palestinian negotiators had
kept Mr. Arafat in the dark about key details of the Stockholm
talks, which they deny. He said he and Mr. Ben-Ami had traveled
to Nablus, in the West Bank, to see the Palestinian leader
shortly before Camp David and were stunned to discover that Mr.
Arafat did not know precisely what had been discussed.

The Israelis and the Americans describe a "bunker mentality" on
the part of the Palestinians at Camp David. In response, the
Palestinians say that at one point Mr. Barak did not come out of
his cabin, the Dogwood, for two days and that he refused to meet
with Mr. Arafat personally except for one tea.

"There was also one dinner in which Barak was on the right side
of Clinton and Arafat was on the left," said Mr. Shaath, the
Palestinian, adding in reference to Mr. Clinton's daughter: "But
Chelsea sat to the right of Barak all evening, and she received
his undivided attention. Why the hell did he insist on a summit
if he did not intend to meet his partner for a minute?"

Western diplomats here say the Palestinians believed that they
were being manipulated by the Americans. They said American
officials had made a crucial mistake in trying to nurture special
relationships with two younger-generation Palestinian officials
whom they thought were pragmatic: Muhammad Rashid, Mr. Arafat's
Kurdish economic adviser, and Muhammad Dahlan, the Gaza
preventive security chief. That angered the veteran Palestinian
negotiators, they said, who felt that the Americans were seeking
to divide and weaken them.

In the middle of Camp David, one of the negotiators, Abu Mazen,
flew back to the Middle East for his son's wedding. He was
furious about the American tactics, a European diplomat said, and
pledged that Camp David would never succeed if such games
continued and that he would use the refugee issue to foil it, if
need be.

Mr. Sher said the Palestinians had never put forward an
counterproposals to what the Israelis were suggesting. They just
said no, he said. Mr. Malley, who was at Camp David, wrote in an
op-ed piece in The New York Times in mid-July that the American
mediators were "frustrated almost to the point of despair by the
Palestinians' passivity and inability to seize the moment."

The two sides had discussed territorial swaps at Stockholm, in
which the Palestinians would cede a percentage of the West Bank
for settlement blocs in exchange for territory elsewhere. They
continued the conversation at Camp David. But Mr. Abu Ala said
the Israelis had talked of an unfair swap - annexing about 9
percent of the West Bank and giving the Palestinians the
equivalent of about 1 percent elsewhere.

"I said, Shlomo, I cannot loat the maps. Close them," Mr. Abu
Ala said, describing a conversation with Mr. Ben-Ami. He declared
that he would discuss only the 1967 borders. "Clinton was angry
at me and told me I was personally responsible for the failure of
the summit. I told him even if occupation continues for 500
years, we will not change."

But at Taba, the Palestinians were more than willing to look at
maps. Now the Israelis were talking about annexing 6 percent of
the West Bank in exchange for land else where that was equivalent
to 3 percent. That would have given the Palestinians some 97
percent of the total land mass of the West Bank, which is much
closer to their long-held goal that the Israelis should return
all the territories captured in 1967.

At Camp David, Mr. Ben-Ami said, the Israelis discovered very
late in the game how differently the two sides perceived the
final status talks.

"That the Palestinians would agree to less than 100 percent was
the axiom of Israeli politics since 1993," he said.

Mr. Sher said most members of the Palestinian leadership "knew
and agreed that this is a historic compromise that requires the
Palestinians yielding on some issues - all except one: Arafat."

At the end of Camp David, the three parties agreed that the
chemistry had been bad. That was about all they agreed on. The
Americans were dejected, although months later Mr. Clinton
described Camp David as a "transformative event" because it
forced the two sides to confront each other's core needs and
allowed them to glimpse the potential contours of a final peace.

At the close of July 2000, however, the Israelis felt that their
generosity had been rebuffed. And the Palestinians felt that they
were being offered a state that would not be viable - "less than
a bantustan, for your information," Mr. Arafat said in a recent
interview.

"They have to control the Jordan Valley, with five early warning
stations there," Mr. Arafat said. "They have to control the air
above, the water aquifers below, the sea and the borders. They
have to divide the West Bank in three cantons. They keep 10
percent of it for settlements and roads and their forces. No
sovereignty over Haram al Sharif. And refugees, we didn't have a
serious discussion about."

Mr. Ben-Ami said he spent considerable time after Camp David
trying to explain to Israelis that the Palestinians indeed did
make significant concessions from their vantage point. "They
agreed to Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East
Jerusalem, 11 of them," he said. "They agreed to the idea that
three blocs of the settlements they so oppose could remain in
place and that the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter could be under
Israeli sovereignty."

Mr. Malley added that the Palestinians had agreed to negotiate a
solution to the refugee issue that would not end up threatening
Israel's Jewish majority. "No other Arab party that has
negotiated with Israel - not Anwar el-Sadat's Egypt, not King
Hussein's Jordan, let alone Hafez al-Assad's Syria - ever came
close to even considering such compromises," he said.

In the public analysis, the summit meeting fell apart in bitter
disagreement over how to share or divide Jerusalem. Mr. Clinton
recently said it was the refugee issue that did it in. But Mr.
Malley and others who took part said there were gaps on every
issue.

But at the end, Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Barak's courage and
vision and said Mr. Arafat had not made an equivalent effort.

Mr. Shaath said: "I personally pleaded with President Clinton:
'Please do not put on a sad face and tell the world it failed.
Please say we broke down taboos, dealt with the heart of the
matter and will continue.' "

"But then the president started the blame game, and he backed
Arafat into a corner," he added

Mr. Ben-Ami expressed a similar sentiment. "At the end of Camp
David, we had the feeling that the package as such contained
ingredients and needed to go on," he said. "But Clinton left us
to our own devices after he started the blame game. He was trying
to give Barak a boost knowing he had political problems going
home empty handed but with his concessions revealed. But in doing
so he created problems with the other side."

Mr. Arafat "rode home on a white horse," Mr. Shaath said, because
he showed Palestinians that he "still cared about Jerusalem and
the refugees." He was perceived as having stood strong in the
face of incredible pressure from the Americans and the Israelis.

Nonetheless, Mr. Erekat said he had traveled from Bethlehem to
Gaza preaching that "Camp David was good, Camp David was
progress." He also said Mr. Arafat had made such comments, but if
he did, they were very quiet.

But after Camp David, negotiators plunged back into their work at
the King David Hotel. And the results were positive enough that
Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat held their upbeat dinner meeting, and
the Clinton administration summoned negotiators to Washington on
Sept. 27. On Sept. 28, Mr. Sharon visited the Temple Mount. On
Sept. 29, the situation began disintegrating with a rapidity that
shocked everyone.

Each side blamed the other. The Israeli government has said the
Palestinians initiated the uprising to force the Israelis to give
them what they could not get at Camp David. Mr. Arafat said in an
interview that Mr. Barak in effect conspired with Mr. Sharon "to
destroy the peace process" once he could not get the Palestinians
to accept his offer. Mr. Arafat called Mr. Sharon's visit to the
Temple Mount "a vehicle for what they had decided on: the
military plan."

An international fact-finding committee headed by former Senator
George J. Mitchell did not hold either side solely responsible
for the breakdown and described a lethal dynamic on the ground
that grew from the behavior of both sides and took on a
destructive life of its own. More than 650 people have been
killed since Sept. 29, the over whelming majority of them
Palestinians.

'Too Late' at Taba:
Some Still Look to Eventual Peace

Both sides, in recent interviews, wondered aloud why Mr. Clinton
could not have presented his peace proposal at Camp David or
immediately afterward. In late December, when he finally did so,
the timing was very tight. Mr. Clinton was due to leave the
presidency on Jan. 20, and Mr. Barak faced elections on Feb. 6.

The proposal offered more to the Palestinians than what was on
the table at Camp David, but they initially responded with
skepticism. The plan was too vague, they said. In the midst once
more of a violent relationship with Israel, they were not
emotionally poised to abide by the political timetables of others
and to rush into a fuzzy deal, they said.

A European diplomat said the Palestinians did not understand the
imminence and implications of a victory by Mr. Sharon; another
said they did not want to waste their time with Mr. Barak, who
was predicted to lose.

Still, in early January, Mr. Arafat visited Mr. Clinton at the
White House. In a subsequent interview, he said he had suggested
that the president summon Israeli and Palestinian negotiators
immediately for marathon talks. Mr. Arafat said he had told Mr.
Clinton that he believed a deal was possible in 14 days.

Instead, the negotiators met later that month without the
Americans and without their leaders at the Taba Hilton on the Red
Sea. With the exception of Mr. Sher, who said Taba was little
more than "good ambience," most of the Israelis and Palestinians
whotook part felt that it was a very successful session.

"Peace seemed very possible at Taba," Mr. Ben-Ami said. And Mr.
Abu Ala said, "In Taba, we achieved real tangible steps toward a
final agreement."

In Taba, the Israelis for the first time accepted the Palestinian
principle of a return to 1967 borders, the Palestinians said. The
Palestinians therefore agreed to settlement blocs, provided there
would be a swap of equivalent land. Mr. Shaath said they were to
end up with 10 percent more territory than they were offered at
Camp David.

The Israelis also agreed for the first time to give the
Palestinians full sovereignty over all Arab neighborhoods in
Jerusalem, both sides said, and to give the Palestinians air
rights over their land. The two sides werestill grappling with
the precise terms under which Israel could retain small bases and
radar posts in the Jordan Valley, at least transitionally.

Many Israelis believe that throughout the final-status talks, the
Palestinians were inflexible in their demand that all refugees be
given the right of return to their former homes, which raises
existential fears in Israel. But Mr. Beilin, the Israeli who ran
the negotiations on refugees at Taba, said the two sides were
exploring an "agreed narrative" that would defuse the explosive
nature of this issue and protect the Jewish identity of Israel.
They noted that about 200,000 Palestinians living in East
Jerusalem would drop off the Israeli demographic rolls, and they
devised a mechanism giving refugees more financial incentive to
settle outside Israel.

Mr. Abu Ala said: "When other issues move, this will move. It's
not a deal breaker."

The negotiations at Taba were interrupted by Mr. Barak after two
Israelis were killed in the West Bank. The talks resumed and then
halted again with the agreement to pick up after the elections.
They never did.

"If Camp David was too little, Taba was too late," Mr. Shaath
said.

Mr. Larsen, the United Nations envoy, said he believed that a
final peace deal could have been hammered out after Taba if both
Mr. Barak and Mr. Clinton had remained in office.

But that is a big if. Mr. Sher noted, for instance, that the
status of Jerusalem's holy sites -- always a potential deal-
breaker -- was barely touched during the Taba sessions.

In any case, on leaving office, Mr. Barak declared that his
successor would not be bound by the negotiations that began with
Stockholm and ended with Taba. Similarly, Mr. Clinton said his
peace plan would expire when he stepped down.

Yet a year after Camp David, with the reality on the ground so
transformed by bloodshed, most of those who took part in or
observed the negotiations still believe that a permanent peace
agreement is possible.

Although they acknowledge little likelihood of final-status talks
under Mr. Sharon, they still believe in the inevitability of a
future agreement that is very near to what they were designing.

"Even at this darkest of hours, I believe that peace is
achievable," Mr. Erekat said in an interview in his Jericho
office. "Clinton took us on a futuristic voyage. We have seen the
endgame. It's just a matter of time."

Mr. Sher agreed. "I still think that peace is doable, feasible
and reasonable," he said in his Jerusalem office, which is
decorated with photographs from Camp David. "That's the tragedy,
because the basis of the agreement is lying there in arm's
reach."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company