A well-known Israeli theater critic once left the opening performance of a new play after thefirst five minutes and then wrote a withering review about it. When his colleagues said thatthis was unfair, he answered: “I don’t have to eat the whole egg in order to know that it isrotten.”
One does not have to read the whole long interview with Ehud Barak, published in The New YorkReview of Books (June 13, 2002), in order to know that he is – well, not exactly an enlightenedstatesman. It is enough to read the following words of his:
“They (the Palestinians, and especially Arafat) are the products of a culture in which to tella lie…creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists inJudeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category…The deputy director of theUS Federal Bureau of Investigation told me that there are societies in which lie detectortests don’t work, societies in which lies do not create cognitive dissonance (on which thetests are based).”
This passage speaks volumes.
First of all, the Israeli security services do use lie detectors extensively in theinterrogation of Palestinian militants. But it is useless to examine facts, because thestatement itself is monstrous. At one fell swoop, the Great Peace-Maker demonizes theculture of a billion living human beings as well as of 50 generations, a culture which in itsheyday bequeathed humanity some of its greatest scientific and philosophicalachievements.
The stereotyping of a whole culture, people, society or race is despicable. It lies at the baseof anti-Semitism. It is obnoxious coming from any politician, but when voiced by a politiciantrying to explain why he failed to make peace with these “products of a culture” it makesfurther study seem superfluous. It’s all there, the whole rotten egg. However, we shallpersevere.
By condemning Islam and identifying himself with Judeo-Christianity (a dubious concept initself, since Judaism is closer to Islam than to Christianity), Barak is trying to ride thewave of Islamophobia that is currently sweeping the US and the whole Western world. It remindsone of the words written some 108 years ago by Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, inhis book “Der Judenstaat”, the founding document of Zionism: “For Europe we would constitute(in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia, we would serve as an outpost of Culture againstBarbarism.”
By asserting that all Arabs lie at all times, Barak also constructs a beautiful defense.Whatever the Palestinians say to disprove his account can be dismissed in advance. Theyalways lie, don’t they?
Obviously feeling himself that such a sweeping statement needs some corroboration, Barakprovides an anecdote: At some meeting, Arafat agreed to tell his police commanders toimplement a truce…
“I interjected: “But these are not the people organizing the violence. If you are serious,then call Marwan Barghouri and Hussein al-Sheikh” (the West Bank Fatah leaders). Arafatlooked at me, with an expression of blank innocence, as if I had mentioned the names of two polarbears, and said: “Who? Who?” I repeated the names…and Arafat again said “Who? Who?” At this,some of his aides couldn’t stop themselves and burst out laughing. And Arafat, forced to dropthe pretense, agreed to call them later.”
Anybody who knows Arafat can reconstruct the scene easily. It is typical Arafat humor,designed to evoke laughter, as indeed it did. It was also designed to make a political point -both persons mentioned are prominent leaders, known by everyone to be close to Arafat, who isalso their party chief. In a way understandable to every Arab, Arafat was refusing toacknowledge their responsibility. By taking the joke at face value, Barak – himself ahumorless person – shows his complete ignorance of Arab discourse.
This monumental ignorance, coupled with monumental arrogance, created the mixture thatturned Barak into the most disastrous prime minister in Israel’s history, surpassing evenGolda Meir.
Before going into the details of the interview, one has to mention the interviewer. He is BennyMorris, the former “new historian”, who in one easy jump has turned from the idol of the leftinto the darling of the right, redeeming himself from the stigma of being a “post-Zionist”.
It was a clever choice on Barak’s part. Morris conducts the interview as a sycophanticdevotee, accepting unquestioningly Barak’s most hair-raising statements (such as theabove) and refraining from asking any embarrassing questions, obvious as they might appear.
Morris has been accused in the past of being a “revisionist” of Zionist history, because of hisbook revealing how the Palestinian refugees were driven out in 1948. It is rather hilarious toperceive how, in this interview, he freely levels the accusation of “revisionism” at anyonewho dares to doubt Barak’s assertions.
Barak does not expose himself to the questioning of a real, investigative journalist, likeDeborah Sontag of The New York Times, nor does he confront an objective eye-witness, likeRobert Malley, President Clinton’s assistant at Camp David. These are two of the”revisionists” who evoked the ire of the Barak-Morris team, as well as that of Clinton, who -Barak recounts – called him in Sardinia to rave at Sontag’s excellent and well-researchedarticle about Camp David. “What the hell is this?” Clinton demanded, according to Barak.
Let’s turn now to the interview itself.
According to Morris (who, of course, was not at Camp David and relies on what Barak told him), onJuly 18, in the middle of the conference, Clinton read to Arafat “a document, endorsed inadvance by Barak…”
Let’s stop right here. What does this mean? How come the President of the United States, thehonest broker, reaches advance agreement with one side, before even presenting a proposal tothe other? Does this not prove that the Palestinians were quite right when they asserted, atthe time, that this was in fact Barak’s proposal, wrapped by Clinton in the American flag?
As may be remembered, Arafat did not want to go to Camp David at all. He was afraid that he would befaced there with Clinton and Barak acting like the two arms of a nutcracker. (At the time, Imyself used this metaphor.) He had very little trust in Barak, since the Prime Minister hadalready broken Israel’s commitment under the Oslo agreements to implement the third stage ofits withdrawal from the West Bank, freeing all the territory except “specified militarylocations”.
To reinforce his arguments against a summit conference, Arafat protested that there had beenno preparatory work on the issues, as usual before summit conferences. Since Barak insisted,Clinton overcame Arafat’s objections by promising that, in the case of failure, neither ofthe parties would be blamed.
After the conference, Clinton cynically broke his promise and blamed Arafat exclusively – inorder, as he later explained, to help Barak get re-elected (and, one may add, to help hislong-suffering wife to win votes in the biggest Jewish city in the world.)
On this point Morris writes:
“As to the charge raised by the Palestinians, and in their wake, by Deborah Sontag, and Malleyand Agha, that the Palestinians had been dragooned into coming to Camp David ‘unprepared’ andprematurely, Barak is dismissive to the point of contempt. He observes that the Palestinianshad eight years, since 1993′ to prepare their positions…”
This is Barak-style obfuscation at its best (or worst). The “charge”, of course, is not thatthe Palestinians had no time to prepare their positions. In an interview on Israelitelevision, Barak asserted that he did not need to prepare himself, since he “knew every hill”on the West Bank. The “charge” is that there had been no preparatory done by joint committees toreach agreement on as many issues as possible and to demarcate the lines of disagreement wherethis was not possible, so that the leaders could grapple with the remaining bones ofcontention. This is the usual procedure at summit meetings.
The phrase “Barak is dismissive to the point of contempt” is highly indicative of the man. It’sall there: the overbearing arrogance, the conviction that the other side is vastly inferior,that their arguments need not be answered but can be “dismissed”.
So what was Barak’s proposal, as read out “slowly” to Arafat by Clinton? According to Morris,it included:
The establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state on 92% of the West Bank and 100% of theGaza Strip;
Some territorial compensation for the Palestinians from the pre-1967 Israeli territory;
Annexation of 8% of the West Bank to Israel;
Dismantling of most of the settlements and the concentration of the bulk of the settlers in the8% to be annexed;
The establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,
Some Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem to become sovereign Palestinian territories andothers to enjoy “functional autonomy”;
Palestinian sovereignty over half of the Old City of Jerusalem (the Muslim and Christianquarters, but not the Armenian and Jewish quarters);
“Custodianship,” though not sovereignty, over the Temple Mount;
A return of the refugees to the prospective Palestinian state, with no “right of return” toIsrael proper;
A massive aid program to facilitate the refugees’ rehabilitation.
It must be admitted that these proposals of Barak’s, disguised as American, do indeed gofurther than any made by previous Israeli prime ministers. One cannot blame Barak, beingquite ignorant of Palestinian affairs, for considering them extremely generous. However,in fact, they fall far short of the minimum Palestinian requirements.
Morris’ description does not give a full picture. Some salient facts are obscured. Forexample:
The figure of 92 percent is highly debatable. It does not include the annexed territories ofEast Jerusalem, which had by then become Israeli neighborhoods, nor the Jordan valley, whichIsrael insisted on keeping under its control for some considerable time, cutting Palestineoff from neighboring Jordan. Palestinians may be excused for doubting that Israel will in thefuture relinquish territories it keeps “temporarily” under its control. Altogether,Palestinians believed that the real proposed annexation was closer to 20 percent. One has toremember, of course, that the whole West Bank and Gaza Strip amounts only to 22 percent of theland of Palestine, as it existed in 1947. (78 percent was conquered by the Israeli army in 1948and became Israel.)
It is not only a question of percentages, but also of location. The “settlement blocs” thatBarak wanted to annex to Israel are like daggers tearing into the flesh of the futurePalestinian state, cutting it up into what could easily be turned into disconnectedenclaves.
Territorial compensations were not to be on a 1-to-1 basis, as demanded by the Palestinians,but something like 1-to-9.
The Arab parts of East Jerusalem which Barak agreed to transfer to Palestinian sovereigntywere outlying suburbs (like Shuafat and Beith Hanina), while the central Arab neighborhoods(like Sheikh-Jarakh, Silwan and Ras-al-Amud) were accorded only “functional autonomy”under Israeli sovereignty. This was totally unacceptable.
Worse, the Palestinians were granted only “guardianship” over the compound of the holymosques (Haram ash-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, in Arabic and Har ha-Bayit, the TempleMount, in Hebrew), which meant that Israel would retain sovereignty. No leader in the Arabworld could have accepted that.
Palestinians could possibly have agreed to the annexation of the Jewish quarter of the OldCity, including the Western Wall, to Israel. Annexation of the Armenian quarter, which isclosely connected to the Christian quarter, is something else.
Barak’s insistence that “not one single refugee” could return to Israel proper is totallyunacceptable to the Palestinians, both symbolically and practically.
Morris does not mention in this connection the most important part of the proposal: that thePalestinians formally agree that this would be “the end of the conflict”. Barak’s proposalmight perhaps have been acceptable as another interim agreement – but it was quite impossiblefor the Palestinians to accept it, and especially the parts concerning the Temple Mount andthe refugees, as “the final settlement”.
As Morris, who was not there, described it graphically:
“Arafat said ‘No.’ Clinton, enraged, banged on the table…”
If Barak had been compelled to face some real investigative journalist, instead of a devoteedisguised as a historian, he would have been cross-examined about his own frame of mind. Whatdid he think of the Palestinians when he came to power? Did he have any preconceived ideas, anyprejudices that might have influenced his way of thinking?
Barak himself, in domestic discussions, often used a telling metaphor: Israel is “a villa inthe middle of a jungle”. Meaning: we are an island of civilization surrounded by savageanimals. This is remarkably similar to old-established colonial attitudes, and, indeed, avariation of Herzl’s metaphor of the “wall against barbarism”.
In his mind, Barak had a picture of the devious Arafat, forever plotting the overthrow ofIsrael. This, by the way, is a standard Israeli concept which has deep psychological roots. Itmay stem, partly, from unconscious guilt: we have driven half the Palestinian people fromtheir homes, how can they ever really accept us and make peace with us? According to Barak,quoted by Morris, Arafat was:
“Secretly planning Israel’s demise…What they [Arafat and his colleagues] want is aPalestinian state in all of Palestine…They are willing to agree to a temporary truce…Arafatsees himself as a reborn Saladin…(Arafat believes) that Israel has no right to exist, and heseeks it’s demise…”
Needless to say, there is not a shred of evidence for any of this. It says nothing about Arafat,but it says a lot about Barak. The famous general, the brilliant thinker (as he sees himself),is repeating the most hackneyed of stereotypes resorted to by the proverbial vendor ofpickled cucumbers in an Israeli market.
He even sets forth the way Arafat thinks Israel will disappear as a Jewish state: first Israelwill turn into a “state of all its citizens” (a basic democratic concept, based on the Americanconstitution, supported by quite a number of liberal Jewish Israelis), then there will be a”Muslim majority”, then the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. As these are all domesticIsraeli issues, it is not quite clear what they have to do with Arafat, Camp David andIsraeli-Palestinian relations.
An old Israeli myth, code-named “the plan of stages”, alleges that the Palestinians believein “Salami tactics” – accepting what they can get at any stage and then demanding more, untilthe Jewish state is destroyed. Barak repeats this. Morris:
“Barak today portrays Arafat’s behavior at Camp David as a “performance” geared to exactingfrom the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach apeace settlement or sign an “end to the conflict”.
This is strange. If Arafat (like every Arab) is indeed a “serial liar”, as Barak alleges, whyfor God’s sake did he not accept the proposal? The logical thing for him to do would have been toagree to all the wonderful concessions Barak was ready to make, sign everything demanded andthen, after a few years, come back and demand more.
Imprisoned by their own prejudices, Barak and Morris do not even see the contradiction.Indeed, Arafat’s behavior at Camp David, his stubborn refusal to sign an athat did not meet hisminimum demands, proves once and for all that “the plan of stages” is utter nonsense.
Barak and Morris say that Arafat “kept saying ‘no’ to every offer, never making anycounterproposals of his own.” The record does not bear this out.
While it is true that Arafat, coming to Camp David against his will, was in a defensive mood,ready to withstand the double onslaught of Barak and Clinton, he made concessions that werevery far-reaching from the Palestinian point of view. The fact that Israelis and Americanstook these in their stride, hardly even noticing them, only shows the immense gap between theperceptions of the parties. Palestinian propaganda could not have bragged about theseconcessions either, since they were inimical to the wishes of many Palestinians.
As a matter of fact, Arafat made the following explicit and implicit concessions at CampDavid, and later at Taba:
- He agreed to change the almost sacred Green Line by accepting the principle of land swaps;
- He accepted the concept of settlement blocs, which is anathema to all Palestinians;
- He ceded the Jewish neighborhoods built on Arab land in East Jerusalem, breaking another Palestinian taboo;
- He was ready to give up the Wailing Wall and the Jewish quarter of the Jerusalem Old City, which were parts of Arab East Jerusalem before 1967.
- He indicated his readiness to reach a compromise on the Right of Return, sacred to all Palestinians, by accepting that the implementation should be subject to Israeli agreement.
Barak ignores all these. According to Morris, he charged
“Arafat with ‘lacking the character or will’ to make a historic compromise, as did the lateEgyptian President, Anwar Sadat in 1977-1979, when he made peace with Israel…”
Barak would have been well advised to drop this comparison. Sadat got all his territory back,to the very last centimeter. Arafat would have easily agreed to the same terms – as would haveAssad.
Barak, so it seems, is furious with Arafat because the Palestinian leader denies Zionistaxioms, indeed, because Arafat is not an orthodox Zionist like himself.
“(Arafat) does not recognize the existence of a Jewish people or nation, only a Jewishreligion…This, Barak believes, underlay Arafat’s insistence at Camp David (and since) thatthe Palestinians have sole sovereignty over the Temple Mount compound…Arafat refused toaccept even the vague formulation proposed by Clinton (in December 2000) positing Israelisovereignty over the earth beneath the Temple Mount’s surface area.”
Arafat could easily turn the tables and claim that Barak does not recognize Islam by denyingPalestinian sovereignty over the holy Islamic shrines on the mount. As a matter of fact,Barak, obfuscating to the last, offered “guardianship” – but not sovereignty – over themosques. His abysmal ignorance of Islamic affairs made it impossible for him to comprehendthat no Muslim leader in the world could possibly agree to this. If Arafat had agreed, he wouldhave turned himself into a mortal enemy of every devout Muslim.
The quaint demand for Israeli sovereignty “beneath the surface” – a diplomatic curiosity,for sure – was the brainchild of Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami, two minions of Barak at thetime. Far from evoking laughter from the Palestinians, it caused panic among many of them.Being by then convinced that the Israelis had secret designs in everything they proposed,they believed that the Israelis intended to dig beneath the mosques in order to bare theremnants of their ancient temple, thus causing the mosques to collapse. They may be excusedfor believing this, because some years ago an armed Israeli terrorist organization indeedplanned to bomb the mosques.
Arafat countered by claiming that “there is nothing there”, enraging Barak and even Clinton,who responded that “not only the Jews but I, too, believe that under the surface there areremains of Solomon’s temple.” Clinton may not be aware of the fact that most contemporary(non-Jewish) experts believe that Solomon was not a historical figure and that the firstJudean temple on the site was nothing more than an insignificant local structure. In any case,if there are remains, they would not be of “Solomon’s temple”, but of the building erected byKing Herod nearly a millennium later.
Be that as it may, this whole intermezzo shows the utter lack of seriousness of the Camp Daviddiscussions.
Morris, the ex-revisionist historian, asserts that
“One senses that Barak feels on less firm ground when he responds to the ‘revisionist’ chargethat it was the continued Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories during the yearbefore Camp David and under his premiership, that had so stirred Palestinian passions as tomake the intifada inevitable.”
This is an understatement. The fact is that furious settlement activity continued unabatedall through the weeks Barak was talking about peace at Camp David. When asked to explain this,Barak says:
“Immediately after I took office I promised Arafat: No new settlements – but I also told himthat we would continue to honor the previous government’s commitments and contracts in thepipeline, concerning the expansion of existing settlements…”
This is vintage Barak. With his parliamentary majority, he could have easily passed a lawterminating all contracts, with fair compensations. There was talk of this at the time.”Existing commitments” served as a pretext for the ongoing activity all over theterritories, which every Palestinian saw daily with his own eyes. It helped to convince thesettlers that Barak did not intend to really give back any territory – in fact, the settlerskept ominously quiet while news from Camp David seemed to foreshadow an agreement providingfor the evacuation of dozens of settlements. It seems that they knew better.
Understandably, the Palestinians were far more impressed by the action on the ground that bythe diplomatic double-talk. They saw the new settlements springing up and the new by-passroads cutting through their land, and were not deceived by the fact that they were alwaysdisguised as “extensions” of existing ones. (I myself have taken part in a demonstration infront of Barak’s private home in Kochav Ya’ir, hard on the Green Line, protesting against a newsettlement disguised this way going up just a few miles away.)
Palestinians also noticed that the new settlements followed a plan cutting theirterritories to pieces. Barak denies this:
“I ask myself why he [Arafat} is lying. To put it simply, any proposal that offers 92 percent ofthe West Bank cannot, almost by definition, break up the territory into noncontiguouscantons…”
This is simply not true. And, indeed, Barak hastens to correct:
“…except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem thorough Maaleh Adumim to theJordan River. Here, Palestinian territorial continuity would have been assured by a tunnelor bridge.”
All the “settlement blocs” were planned in advance – mostly by Ariel Sharon – precisely forthis purpose: to create several such wedges, secured by settlements, by-pass-roads and armyinstallations. Their effectiveness is being proved these days by the operations of theIsrael Defense Forces. Based on the settlements, the army cuts the Palestinian territoriesinto ribbons, creating disconnected cantons everywhere.
An effective wedge does not have to go all the way from the Green Line to the Jordan river in orderto create cantons or “Bantustans”. Three-quarters, or even half the way is enough to allow theIsraeli army to complete the wedge within minutes. Such a situation would leave all thePalestinian territory at the mercy of the Israeli army at all times.
One salient fact overshadows this dispute: at no time aCamp David did Barak produce a map of hisfamous “92 percent”. No such official map exists to this very day.
Why?
Camp David was not the end. Both Clinton and Barak shifted their positions a lot during thefollowing months. In December 2000, Clinton made another proposal that came much closer tothe Palestinian position, and in January 2001, at Taba, Barak’s emissaries, too, movedforward a great deal.
However, a lot of things had changed in the meantime. The failure of Camp David created anupsurge of rage and frustration on the Palestinian side, leading to the almost unanimouspopular conclusion that “the Israelis understand only the language of force”. (This, by theway, is precisely what the Israelis say about the Palestinians – “they only understandforce”.) Following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, seen by many in the Arabworld as an Arab military victory, this mood led to the outbreak of the second Intifada.
The immediate cause – the match thrown into the barrel of oil – was Sharon’s visit to thecompound of the mosques on the Temple Mount. This “visit” was approved by Barak. His policeminister, Shlomo Ben-Ami (who at the time doubled as foreign minister), sent more than athousand police officers to accompany him.
His clear responsibility for the most calamitous act of the year induces Barak to deny theundeniable. According to Morris, Barak says that
“We know, from hard intelligence, that Arafat intended to unleash a violent confrontation,terrorism. [Sharon’s visit and the riots that followed] fell into his hand like an excellentexcuse, a pretext.”
“Hard intelligence” is a convenient excuse for everything in Israel. It is secret, cannot bedisproved and needs no further proof. However, this does not relieve Barak and Ben-Ami oftheir responsibility. Quite the contrary. If such intelligence really existed, it shouldhave prevented Barak from handing Arafat such an excellent “pretext”.
Barak says that the visit was coordinated with the Palestinian security chief, JibrilRajoub, who was recently dismissed, partly because some Palestinians believed that he hadtoo close a relationship with people like Barak. Morris does not mention a far more importantfact: On the eve of Sharon’s visit, Arafat met Barak and personally warned him that the visitwould lead to disaster.
Clinton’s December 2000 proposals came much closer to a solution. On the eve of leavingoffice, his wife by now securely installed as junior Senator from New-York after winning a bigmajority of Jewish votes, Clinton could think of his last remaining ambition: to win the Nobelpeace price. However, his standing amongst the Palestinians had been severely eroded by hiscynical breach of trust when, contrary to his solemn promise, he placed the soleresponsibility for the Camp David failure on Arafat.
As Morris puts it,
“Arafat dragged his feet for a fortnight and then responded to the Clinton proposals with a‘Yes, but…’ that, with hundreds of objections, reservations and qualifications wastantamount to a resounding ‘No”.
This is sheer demagoguery. Such a response is a normal negotiating stance. Morris calls onDennis Ross, Clinton’s special envoy, to corroborate his statement, but Ross, one of the manyJewish officials who constituted Clinton’s team, has since turned out to be too staunch anadvocate of Israeli policies to be a reliable witness.
As a matter of fact, there was no perceptible difference between the answers of the twoparties. Israel also responded, as usual, with a “Yes, but…” Who is to judge where “Yes, but…”means Yes or No? Morris? Barak?
After this new – and positive – Clinton proposal of December 2000, the Taba talks took place inJanuary 2001. Morris:
“The ‘revisionists’, Barak implies, completely ignored the shift – under the prodding of theintifada – in the Israeli (and American) positions between July and the end of 2000. ByDecember and January, Israel had agreed to Washington’s proposal that it withdraw from 95percent of the West Bank with substantial territorial compensation for the Palestiniansfrom Israel proper, and that the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would become sovereignPalestinian territory. The Israelis also agreed to an international force at leasttemporarily controlling the Jordan river line between the West Bank and the Kingdom of Jordaninstead of the IDF.”
Remarkable. Why did Barak not make these “concessions” at Camp David, when the whole world waslooking on and where they could have done the power of good? Why only “under the prodding of theintifada”?
Morris concedes grudgingly that “at Taba, the Palestinians seemed to soften a little.” (Awonderful word, “seemed”.) “For the first time they produced a map.” (Since Barak neverproduced a map at all, this is sheer Chutzpah.) “Seemingly,” (again this word) “conceding 2percent of the West Bank. But on the refugees they, too, stuck to their guns, insisting onIsraeli acceptance of ‘the right of return’…”
This is flatly contradicted by two of Barak’s emissaries at Taba. Yossi Beilin, the chief ofthe delegation, asserts unequivocally that at Taba the two sides were close on all issues -including the refugees. The Palestinians indeed insisted on the recognition of the “right ofreturn” in principle, and on Israel assuming responsibility for its part in creating theproblem. But they also agreed that the practical implementation – the number of refugees to beallowed to return to Israel proper – would be subject to agreement by Israel.
This was an historic breakthrough. For the first time, numbers were mentioned, and while thegap remained large, the very fact that the terrible problem had boiled down to haggling overnumbers is extremely important.
Barak would have nothing of this:
“We cannot allow even one refugee back on the basis of the ‘right of return’…and we cannotaccept historical responsibility for the creation of the problem.”
This is rather ironical, considering that it was precisely Morris, in his former incarnationas a “revisionist” and “new historian”, who, in his one important book, “The Birth of thePalestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949”, proves that a substantial number of refugees weredriven out under a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. A pragmatic compromise ispossible, but only after Israel accepts responsibility for its part in creating the problemand recognizes the right of return “in principle”.
Barak postpones any compromise until the year 2048. A typical passage – the style is the man -says:
“(Barak) hesitatingly predicts that only ‘eighty years’ after 1948 will the Palestinians behistorically ready for a compromise. By then, most of the generation that experienced thecatastrophe of 1948 at first hand will have died; there will be ‘very few ‘salmons’ around whostill want to return to their birthplaces to die.’ Barak speaks of a ‘salmon syndrome’ amongthe Palestinians – and says that Israel, to a degree, was willing to accommodate it, throughthe family reunion scheme, allowing elderly refugees to return to be with their familiesbefore they die.”
The cynicism belongs to Barak, who, at the time, mentioned the absurdly low number of 4000refugees who would be allowed to return every year in the framework of family reunions. But ishas always been Zionist dogma that at some time in the future the Palestinians will be ready fora “compromise” (meaning accepting Israeli terms) while in the meantime Israel goes ondispossessing them by creating “facts on the ground”.
The Taba talks came to an end when Barak unilaterally ordered his delegation to break them off.The pretext, this time: elections were too near. One wonders if Barak could have avoided hismonumental election defeat if he had come to the voters, even at the very last moment, with adraft agreement in his hands.
Beyond these issues lurks the mystery of Barak’s peculiar behavior at Camp David. Afterinsisting on holding the summit conference without any preparations by sub-committees, heassiduously avoided any real contact with Arafat, neither visiting him at his near-by cabin,nor inviting him to his own cabin for informal conversations.
His closest adviser, foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, recounts that during a state dinnerBarak sat “like a pillar of salt”, not exchanging a word with Arafat, who was seated next to him.At another, similar occasion, when Barak was seated between Arafat and young ChelseaClinton, Barak demonstratively talked only with the teenager, ignoring the Palestinianleader. Says Morris:
“Barak appears uncomfortable with the “revisionist” charge that his body language towardArafat had been unfriendly and that he had, almost consistently during Camp David, avoidedmeeting the Palestinian leader…Barak says that they met ‘almost every day’ at Camp David atmealtimes…Did Nixon meet Ho Chi Minh…or did De Gaulle ever speak to Ben-Bellah? The right timefor a meeting between us was when things were ready for a decision by the leaders…”
Here, In a nutshell, is the whole argument against having the conference at all, exactly as putforward by Arafat when he refused to come.
But in the circumstances, after the conference had started, this argument is specious.Everybody familiar with Arafat’s style, and indeed with Arab culture in general, knows thatpersonal contact and gestures play a big part. Avoiding any real contact with Arafat, even “atmealtimes”, shows that even before the conference Barak could not abide Arafat and wasconvinced, as he tells Morris, that there could be no peace “so long as Arafat and like-mindedleaders are at the helm on the Arab side.” It seems that this is not his conclusion from the CampDavid failure, but rather a reason for the failure.
Neither Morris nor Barak mention the most curious incident of the conference. As attested byall his own people, Barak “freaked out” during the conference for two whole days, not shaving,not talking with anyone and refusing to see even his closest assistants.
Why?
I believe that this brings us close to the heart of the enigma called Barak. Even today manyIsraelis are puzzled by the question: What did Barak really want? Did he really intend toachieve peace, failing only because of his ignorance and arrogance, or did he intend rightfrom the outset to bring about the failure in order to put the blame on the Palestinians? Quitepossibly, he had both aims in mind, intending to discard one or the other as politicalexpediency dictated.
Barak himself has publicly boasted of both. Speaking to left-wingers, he asserted that he hasoffered the Palestinians the most generous terms, which were rejected. Speaking toright-wingers, he made the point that he gave the Palestinians absolutely nothing, not oneinch of territory, contrary to the Likud-leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who gave thePalestinians most of the town of Hebron and several bits of territory.
Recently, Barak bragged in an interview on Israeli TVs that by making his generous offers tothe Palestinians and the Syrians he unmasked both Arafat and Assad, who rejected them.Together with his withdrawal from South Lebanon, these are – to his mind – the three majorachievements of his short term in office.
So where does Barak stand now?
Clearly, Barak shares the deep Jewish paranoia and existential angst. While he was primeminister, he saw himself in command of the Titanic, “headed for the Iceberg”. He spoke in termsof terrible dangers approaching, Iran and/or Iraq obtaining nuclear weapons, Islamicfundamentalists taking over states bordering on Israel. This should have led Barak to makepeace in time, and to call upon the nation even now to pay the necessary price.
Instead, according to Morris, he supports Sharon’s massive incursions into the Palestinianterritories, which have almost destroyed the last vestiges of the Oslo agreement andre-instituted the Israeli occupation in a much more brutal form. He supports Sharon’s policyof assassinating Palestinian militants – called “targeted liquidations” – that had alreadystarted during his premiership. He does not believe in peace as long as Arafat is around, abasic Sharon premise. He believes that Israel should “begin” to “prepare” for a pullout from”some 75 percent” of the West Bank, while allowing a Palestinian state to emerge there and talkabout the other 25 percent later. Meanwhile Israel should begin constructing a “solid,impermeable fence around the evacuated parts of the West Bank”. In practice, all this is veryclose to Sharon, who has turned peace into some vague dream for the very remote future, and isalready building the fence as a substitute to peace.
At the beginning of the second intifada, after the failure of Camp David, Barak’s police,under the control of Shlomo Ben-Ami, killed 13 Arab citizens of Israel during solidaritydemonstrations with the Palestinians. Barak does not express any regrets, but, quite to thecontrary, says that
“Israeli Arabs will serve as [the Palestinians’] spear point…This may necessitate changesin the rules of the democratic game…in order to assure Israel’s Jewish character.”
This approximates to an apartheid mentality, as does his obsession with “demographic sense”and “demographic threats”.
One positive result of all this is that at least in retrospect he bemoans the fact the Israel didnot give up the occupied territories for peace immediately after the 1967 war. Since, at thetime, I was the only member of the Knesset who demanded that Israel should leave theterritories and turn them over to the Palestinians, I am glad to hear this – even if I have neverheard it from Barak before.
In a recent biography of Barak, entitled “Hara-kiri”, Raviv Drucker, a reporter for the armyradio station, gives a detailed, thoroughly researched account of Barak’s reign. Theoverall picture is of a severely disturbed human being, whose mindset and emotionallimitations have caused him to fail in so many of his relationships and endeavors. Accordingto this account, his failure to establish contact with Arafat was no different from hisfailure in his dealings with everybody else, including his closest assistants.
My own theory – which, of course, cannot be proved is that on assuming power, Barak believedthat he had the right formula for ending the historic conflict. Knowing absolutely nothingabout the Palestinians, indeed, never having had a serious discussion with Palestinians, hebelieved that if he offered them a state, they would accept all his conditions and gratefullykiss his hands. When this did not happen, he was furious and accused them of all possiblecrimes. The prejudices and stereotypes, born of 120 years of conflict and which exist in theconscious or unconscious mind of almost every Israeli, came to the fore and determined hisreactions.
At Camp David he got to the point were the real terms of the solution became apparent to him.These conflicted with all his traditional Zionist convictions, causing a severe case ofcognitive dissonance. Consequently, like a person looking into an abyss, he drew back inpanic at the last moment. This is the cause of his “freaking out” incident in Camp David. This isalso the reason for his calling off the Taba talks unilaterally, on the eve of the finalbreakthrough.
The same thing had already happened to him before, when he came very close to a final deal withSyria. At the eleventh hour, when he realized that he was about to sign an agreement under whichhe would have to evacuate the powerful settlers on the Golan heights and to return theterritory that had already officially become a part of Israel, he drew back. The pretext wasthat he would not let the Syrians reachthe waters of the Sea of Tiberias – a distance of a fewhundred yards from the line he had agreed to – in spite of the Syrians’ undertaking not to use thewater. Also, as he told Morris, “had we made the required concessions, we would have been seenas weak, inviting depredation.”
In order to hide his catastrophic character weaknesses, Barak invented the historic lie ofArafat’s rejectionism, now accepted by almost all Israelis and the world at large. By doingso, he paved the way to the premiership for Sharon and also caused most Israelis to despair ofpeace.
A wise old Hebrew adage says: “He who finds fault (with others) finds his own fault.” Bybranding the Arabs as habitual liars, this self-appointed paragon of Judeo-Christianculture is actually branding himself.