Soccer Dad

The way back machine and the israeli palestinian conflict

I've come up with different versions of the following hypothetical over the years. What if you could go back in time to 1993 and tell someone what ended up happening subsequent the signing of the Oslo Accords? You'd say something to the effect of

In July 2000 Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel offered Yasser Arafat 95% of all he demanded and Arafat still refused to make peace. Despite this, in 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel removed all Israelis living in Gaza and turned over the land in its entirety to the Palestinian Authority under the rule of Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas. And that in January of 2006, the Palestinians elected the rejectionist party Hamas to run its government. When Israel in March 2006 held its elections, the winning party's main stated program was to give more territory to the now Hamas run PA.

Back in 1993, if you had predicted our current state of affairs, what would someone with the knowledge of the situation told you? Or would he/she have dispensed with pleasantries and simply shipped you off to the nearest state institution without saying another word?

Accurately predicting what would be 12 1/2 years ago would have been a pretty hazardous exercise.

You would have been predicting that Israel's main right wing party would be adopting what was then the program of the far left wing Peace Now organization. And you would have been predicting that what was at that time Arafat's rejection of terror for moderation would be shown to be a sham.

Of course history usually is gradual not dramatic. So over the course of time there are incremental changes that affect premises individually ever so slightly, but over the long term have a huge cumulative effect. And the huge cumulative change has been on the Israeli side. The Arab side has not changed.

I bring up this hypothetical because of something I noted in "The Lobby."

In order to cast Israel as the reason there is no peace in the Middle East between Arab and Jew, one would have to deny the importance of the change that Israeli has undergone. And that is something that Walt and Mearsheimer do.

but no Israeli government has been willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state of their own. Even Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David in July 2000 would only have given the Palestinians a disarmed and dismembered set of “Bantustans” under de facto Israeli control.40

To Walt and Mearsheimer, Barak's offer wasn't viable. Why to follow it, Israel would be the moral equivalent of South Africa. (These guys didn't use the term "Bantustan" carelessly. They knew exactly what they were doing.

But then go, follow the footnote

40 Charles Enderlein, Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995 - 2002, trans. Susan Fairfield (NY: Other Press, 2003), pp. 201, 207 - 208; Jeremy Pressman, “Visions in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba? International Security, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Fall 2003), p. 17; Deborah Sontag, “Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed,” New York Times, July 26, 2001; Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Peace Process (NY: Nation Books, 2004), pp. 284, 318, 325. Barak himself said after Camp David that “the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem through from Maale Adumim to the Jordan River,” which effectively would have been under Israel’s control. Benny Morris, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)”, New York Review of Books, Vol. 49, No. 10 (June 13, 2002), p. 44. Also see the map Israeli negotiators presented to the Palestinians at Camp David, a copy of which can be found in Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (London: Verso, 2001), p. 36.

I'm not going to comment on all of these sources but two stick right out at me.
Charles Enderlein (or Enderlin) is perhaps best known as the reporter who introduced the world to Mohammed al-Dura. CAMERA provides a handy recounting of the al-Dura affair and catches Enderlin in a lie

Luc Rosenzweig believes Charles Enderlin and Talal Abu Rahma to have repeatedly lied in order to cover up the original lie.

"Charles Enderlin has lied about the Al Dura case multiple times. He lied when he stated that he cut the images of the child’s agony because it was unbearable. "These images do not exist, as I can certify having viewed on October 22, 2004 the raw footage provided by Enderlin under the orders of the network. Could it be that these images exist but remain hidden? It is highly improbable because in this case, Charles Enderlin and France 2 would not have failed to show them in order to silence those people who...have pointed out this anomaly...

Talal Abu Rahma lied multiple times and told German filmmaker Esther Shapira that he did not divulge all the secrets of the affair, implying that he was keeping quiet about other elements that proved the guilt of the Israeli army." ["Charles Enderlin, menteur en toutes les langues (info # 010302/5)" analysis by Luc Rosenzweig © Metula News Agency, February 3, 2005]

Enderlin, of course, claimed to the victim of a right wing smear campaign. (Yes, CAMERA, included Enderlin's self defense.)

Then there's the matter of Deborah Sontag's "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed". (The article has been debunked by Daniel Pipes and Robert Satloff. I have already commented on this article (toward the end). Sontag's credibility has to be questioned when she tells us

Mr. Arafat said in an interview that he huddled on the balcony with Mr. Barak and implored him to block Mr. Sharon's plans. But Mr. Barak's government perceived the planned visit by Mr. Sharon, then the opposition leader, as solely an internal Israeli political matter, specifically as an attempt to divert attention from the expected return to political life by a right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.

While the meeting between Barak and Arafat did take place, there's no evidence that Arafat ever made the appeal Sontag described. There is evidence from a number of places that the intifada was started on Arafat's orders. For example David Samuels' "In A Ruined Country" tells us

The second intifada also began with the intention of provoking the Israelis and subjecting them to diplomatic pressure. Only this time Arafat went for broke. As a member of the High Security Council of Fatah, the key decision-making and organizational body that dealt with military questions at the beginning of the intifada, Nofal has first-hand knowledge of Arafat's intentions and decisions during the months before and after Camp David. "He told us, 'Now we are going to the fight, so we must be ready,'" Nofal remembers. Nofal says that when Barak did not prevent Ariel Sharon from making his controversial visit to the plaza in front of al-Aqsa, the mosque that was built on the site of the ancient Jewish temples, Arafat said, "Okay, it's time to work."

Additionally It's Almost Supernatural brings excerpts from Dennis Ross's "The Missing Peace" telling us

Ironically, there was an incident on the 27th, the day before the visit. But this involved the killing of an Israeli soldier in an ambush in Gaza, an event the Israelis claim marked the real beginning of the Intifada. On the 28th, when Sharon went to the Haram [Temple Mount], everything was quiet. All hell was to break loose on the 29th.

But on the 28th, the last day of our discussions, no one on either delegation acted if this was a potentially catastrophic development. No one even raised it, even though Sharon - given the 7 hour time difference-had already completed his visit to the Haram before we began our last day's discussions.

Neither Enderlin nor Sontag are reliable. They provide stories that Walt and Mearsheimer accept at face value. But isn't it the job of academics to investigate their sources instead of simply looking for sources to support their conclusions.

Additionally, Walt and Mearsheimer's "proof" in the footnote that connecting Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim would undermine the viability of a future Palestinian state is nonsense. Backspin just addressed the issue

The reality is that the Palestinians would still have territorial contiguity to the east of Maale Adumim. A helpful map published by our CAMERA colleagues last year dispels The Guardian’s claims. At its narrowest point, the channel of land available to the Palestinians would be 9 miles (15 km) wide, which happens to be t he same size as Israel’s “waistline” for the past 50 years.

It's Almost Supernatural has more here.

The transformation of Israel's political landscape since the signing of the Oslo Accords has been revolutionary. (I think it's ill-advised, but that is a different issue.) Walt and Mearsheimer, of course, reject that. They use dubious sources to make their argument and deny the change in Israel. In their mind there is only one obstacle to peace in the Middle East and it isn't the ideology that insists that Jews have no right to any land in the Middle East. Unfortunately, they are not alone in their view.

Technorati tags: John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, the Lobby, Israel, AIPAC.

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Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 31, 2006 4:14 AM | TrackBack