Arafat / Barak?

[varwoche]

The excepted wisdom is that Arafat turned down a sweet deal from Barak. Yet I've never seen a news report that defined the offer precisely, which in and of itself strikes me as odd.

Are the details known to the public?

varwoche

 

[Mycroft]

The excepted wisdom is that Arafat turned down a sweet deal from Barak. Yet I've never seen a news report that defined the offer precisely, which in and of itself strikes me as odd.

Are the details known to the public?

There are actually quite a few variations of the deal floating around, just as there are various maps of the security fence and various interpretions and distortions of every other fact involved in this dispute.

Good luck figuring out the right one.

 

[demon]

There was quite a bit of discussion about this in some of the more recent threads on the ME if you are interested.
Good luck

 

[zenith-nadir]

The excepted wisdom is that Arafat turned down a sweet deal from Barak. Yet I've never seen a news report that defined the offer precisely, which in and of itself strikes me as odd.Are the details known to the public?varwoche

The Israeli side:
The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David


The Palestinian side:
Camp David Summary


The American side:
TRANSCRIPT: BROOKINGS BRIEFING ON CAMP DAVID II PEACE TALKS

 

[varwoche]

Thanks Z-N.

varwoche

 

[Cleopatra]

Greece is a tiny country in size and the modern Greek State was established in 1830 as an independant Kingdom ruled by Prince Otto of Bavaria with the London Protocol .

When the country was established it had half todays size and it didn't include any of the 1400 islands.The prognosis about the future of the state was really bad and yet we doubled the size of the country and in less than 150 the country was changed radically.

General Arafat goes to Camp David to negotiate the existence of his state and he leaves because they don't give him East Jerusalem as capital.

Go figure...

 

[demon]

"Greece is a tiny country in size and the modern Greek State was established in 1830 as an independant Kingdom ruled by Prince Otto of Bavaria with the London Protocol .

When the country was established it had half todays size and it didn't include any of the 1400 islands.The prognosis about the future of the state was really bad and yet we doubled the size of the country and in less than 150 the country was changed radically.

General Arafat goes to Camp David to negotiate the existence of his state and he leaves because they don't give him East Jerusalem as capital.

Go figure..."

And this drivel passes for the received version of events surrounding Oslo. Go figure.

 

[Cleopatra]

And this drivel passes for the received version of events surrounding Oslo. Go figure.

The man asks a question and he gets three versions of the story in reply, given that I have an opinion I posted a mild interpretation of what I think that it happened.

By the way I didn't post anything inaccuarate I just said that Palestinians started the negotiations of the existence of the state by the capital.

It makes you think that the capital is more important than the existence of the state.

 

[a_unique_person]

Greece is a tiny country in size and the modern Greek State was established in 1830 as an independant Kingdom ruled by Prince Otto of Bavaria with the London Protocol .

When the country was established it had half todays size and it didn't include any of the 1400 islands.The prognosis about the future of the state was really bad and yet we doubled the size of the country and in less than 150 the country was changed radically.

General Arafat goes to Camp David to negotiate the existence of his state and he leaves because they don't give him East Jerusalem as capital.

Go figure...

I don't know if that is quite true. Look at this.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/07/1078594235085.html

The Palestinians have lost control of their urban ghettos to violent gangs, writes Ed O'Loughlin in Nablus.

Colonel Rabih Khundaji's 1000 policemen are nominally in charge of the Palestinian city of Nablus, but their powers are subject to frequent and abrupt suspension.

"The Israelis have said they will shoot on sight any Palestinian security man who is carrying a weapon," the colonel says. "They have to run away whenever the Israeli forces invade the town."

On Thursday last week, the Israeli army raided the colonel's headquarters at dawn, looking for a Palestinian policeman suspected of involvement in militant attacks. During the raid the Israelis forced the police to hold their hands above their heads and parade with their own criminal prisoners.

"This coincided with the dawn call to prayer, and people were going to the mosque and seeing the police humiliated," Colonel Khundaji recalled bitterly. "They see that the police who are supposed to protect them can't even protect themselves."

Arafat knew that as much as he was promised much, it did not necessarily amount to a lot, IMHO. The country he would have established would have been riddled with basic absurdities and internal contradictions.

Now, I have said before I am not a fan of Arafat. Perhaps a better person could have negotiated a better deal or made it more clear just what he did want. I find the most puzzling part of Arafats negotiations is the lack of transparency, but then, from what I have seen of Likud, they don't really seem to be that upfront either. When the elected prime minister of Israel was prepared to offer more than they wanted, an extremist was obliging enough to assasinate the man.

When the road map was first put up by GWB, Likud had to have their arm twisted to accept it. Sharon knew that outright rejection would have been a disaster for Israel. Likud has not changed what it wants for the Palestinian/Israeli outcome, but it has managed to put up the appearance of accepting a compromise.

 

[Cleopatra]

Yes but they article explains why the Army had to do that

Israel points out that Palestinian policemen have been implicated in terrorist attacks: most recently a policeman from Bethlehem murdered 11 people when he blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus in January.

This is the problem of the Palestinians, they don't know where to stop. They are using ambulances to hide and now they are using the police force. Who can trust them afterwards?

The article continues:

The Israeli Government denies that in towns such as Nablus and Jenin its troops will shoot armed Palestinian policemen on sight. "There is no policy of either shooting or confiscating Palestinian police weapons just like that," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Pelled.

"Obviously if there is an operation and we go into Nablus and we run into a policemen who fires at us we shoot back and if we are lucky they get hit."

Whatever the truth, policing is becoming a crisis issue not just in Nablus but across the archipelago of urban ghettoes nominally under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

The article concludes in a rather interesting way but it has to do with the discussion about the Palestinian Civil War that' s why I don't quote it in this post.