Soccer Dad

Clnton's faulty memory - part ii

Treppenwitz and Elder of Ziyon have recently critiqued a recent statement by former President Clinton:

"...[not] a single week's gone by [since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination] in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East."

Treppenwitz comments:

In his last speech to the Knesset before his assassination (presumably his last verifiable policy statement), Rabin categorically rejected the idea of a full fledged Palestinian State... rejected the idea of dividing Jerusalem... and rejected the idea of Israel returning to the pre-Six Day War borders.

Elder of Ziyon sums it up:

Rabin is often being remembered as a dove like Peres or Livni, and it simply was not true.

But that's only part of the story. Sure the terms for peace were much different in 1995. But what actually happened. Did the "peace process" slow down or go off track after Rabin was assassinated?

In the summer of 1995 there was a push for a second agreement with the Palestinians or Oslo II as it was known.

The agreement was finalized at the end of September and Foreign Minister Peres and Chairman Arafat spoke:

Mr. Peres, his voice breaking at moments, said at the ceremony today: "Ladies and gentlemen, let's face it, what we are doing today is not a normal political or economic enterprise; it is history in the real meaning of the word.

"On our side there are many mothers and fathers and children who suffered tremendously, and on the Palestinian side, too, there are many people who paid with their lives, their fortunes, their freedom, and I really feel the Lord has offered us a real opportunity to change the course of hopelessness and desperation and bloodshed into something more promising, more noble, more humane."

Mr. Arafat was somewhat less conciliatory, saying: "On this occasion and from this place I would like to speak to our prisoners, to those who were injured, with greetings, and I assure them that the dawn of freedom is coming. I also greet the families of our martyrs."

His comments were certain to raise the hackles of the Israeli right, since the people the Palestinians call "martyrs" the Israelis call "terrorists."

The points of this agreement included:

Within 10 days of the signing, the Israeli Army will begin withdrawing from the population centers of the West Bank -- Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as 450 towns and villages -- and turning security over to a 12,000-member Palestinian police force.

Arrangements for Hebron, the only West Bank city with Israeli settlements, proved to be the most difficult. The Palestinians demanded that it be treated like all the other cities, while Israel insisted on provisions to protect the 450 Israeli settlers, who believe their presence is biblically ordained.

The compromise was an elaborate plan dividing the city into three zones: one patrolled by Israelis, a second patrolled jointly and the third patrolled by Palestinians, but with Palestinians in overall control of security.

The arrangement also calls for the construction of a special road connecting the Jewish enclaves in the city to a larger settlement outside Hebron.

After Rabin was assassinated some doubts were raised whether the scheduled withdrawals would take place:

The latest treaty meant a huge change. Gaza had a few miles of mostly north-south roads and 4,000 Jewish settlers. The West Bank is a virtual spider's web of communities holding more than one million Palestinians and 130,000 Israeli settlers.

Israeli troops started to leave the West Bank town of Jenin last month. They are due to be out of it and the major population centers of Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem by Christmas and eventually out of a 450 towns and hamlets.

Palestinians have scheduled elections for Jan. 20 for an 82-member council to run their affairs -- with Mr. Arafat assured of winning a leadership vote held at the same time.

Under the patchwork arrangements, Palestinians will be in charge of security and civic affairs in their population centers. Palestinians will control civic matters but maintain joint security patrols with Israel in largely rural areas. Only Israeli troops will control security around Jewish settlements and military installations. By the end of the 18-month redeployment period the Palestinians will hold sway over about 30 percent of the territory.

However under Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres they took place as scheduled:

Israeli soldiers withdrew today from a third West Bank city under a self-rule accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, turning over Tulkarm to a Palestinian police force and touching off daylong celebrations by thousands of jubilant residents.

The pullout from this city of 45,000 on the West Bank's border with Israel was the first of a quick succession of planned withdrawals this month that are expected to leave wide areas of the West Bank under Palestinian self-rule by January.

The pace of the withdrawals has accelerated despite the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last month and a surge of violence in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers have killed two Palestinians during street clashes in Nablus this month, and six Israelis, four of them soldiers, have been wounded in recent shootings by Arab militants.

At the end of December Israel withdrew from Ramallah:

Under a final cascade of stones, Israeli troops withdrew today from Ramallah, completing a pullout from six West Bank cities and their neighboring villages in preparation for Palestinian elections next month.

"Out!," shouted youths as a column of Israeli jeeps moved away from a police station downtown, trailed by scores of cheering Palestinians. As stones pitched by the crowd arched toward the receding vehicles, Palestinian officers entered the station, raised a flag and greeted the throng from the roof, waving their rifles.

The scene was similar to others played out this month across the West Bank, and it set the stage for Palestinian elections planned for January 20.

On the ground then, there was no slowdown in the peace process from the Israeli side after Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated.

So what happened?

In early 1996, during a period of nine days there were four suicide bombings in Israel, killing at least 61 Israelis.

The fourth in a series of savage suicide bomb attacks in Israel struck in the heart of Tel Aviv today, bringing the nine-day death toll to 61.

Its own power threatened by mounting public rage, the Government met in emergency session and declared that it was taking the all-out war against the new terrorism into areas under Palestinian control.

And note this:

Soon after the blast, an anonymous caller speaking Arabic phoned the Israel radio's Arabic service and said the attack was the work of Hamas. He identified the bomber as Abdel-Rahim Ishaq, 24, a resident of Ramallah, a West Bank city under Palestinian rule.

While there were many efforts to attribute a motive to the terror - the killing by Israel of "the engineer," Yihye Ayyash, there was little scrutiny played to the new opportunities made available to the terrorists by Israel's withdrawals. Another one of the suicide bombers reportedly trained in Jenin.

I have little doubt that Yitzchak Rabin would have reacted much differently to the series of bombings than his successor Peres did. However, the bombings gave Israel a feeling of insecurity. Agreements followed by concrete Israeli actions had failed to bring the promised peace. Meanwhile Arafat failed to control Hamas. (He did crack down on Hamas after these bombings, but that was only due to pressure.) It was impossible not to conclude that Arafat was quite happy to allow Hamas to operate freely despite his obligation to fight terror.

In the 1996 campaign, Binyamin Netanyahu started out way behind incumbent Shimon Peres in theh polls due to a backlash that associated him with the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin.

The first broadside was fired by the conservative opposition with full-page ads charging, "Peres Will Divide Jerusalem."

The blow was crude but clear. Trailing badly in the polls, the tough head of the Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, seized the most sensitive issue in Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians -- the future of Jerusalem -- and threw it right into Mr. Peres's face.

"The election will be a referendum on Jerusalem," declared Mr. Netanyahu, charging further that Mr. Peres had already sanctioned secret meetings with the Palestinians on the future of Jerusalem, much as Mr. Peres had done in opening a secret channel to the P.L.O. that led to the 1993 peace agreement.

In a matter of days the campaign changed from the success of the peace process to its failure. It was the terror bombings of early 1996 that changed Israeli perceptions of the peace process and allowed Netanyahu to eke out a narrow win. Had Arafat abided by his signed agreements and fought rather than abetted terror, Israelis would have had the confidence to elect Shimon Peres to a term on his own. Netanyahu - despite what his critics claimed - continued the peace process too, though he tried to impose accountability on Arafat. His efforts were met with scorn by the Clinton administration, which saw signed agreements as accomplishments regardless of the cost.

So in mis-remembering what happened in 1995 and subsequently, Clinton not only distorted Rabin's positions, he also absolved Arafat for his terror and responsibility for undermining the peace process. Ironically Clinton once recognized this. After Arafat torpedoed the Camp David meetings in 2000, Clinton lashed out at him.

I was told by a knowledgeable, worried Israeli that Arafat believed that--like his father, the former president--Bush 43 would be more pro-Arab than Clinton. The Bush staff sent no signal to disabuse Arafat of that notion or to encourage him to sign the deal. To the contrary, Bush offered the curious public critique that the United States was too involved in the peace process and should step back. Whether this was an early sign of Bush's colossal incompetence or merely an effort to deny Clinton credit for what would have been an historic achievement, I don't know. In any case, Arafat walked away from the deal. The Palestinian leader called Clinton just before the president left office and told him he was a great man. "I am not a great man," Clinton replied. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."

The recognition was four years too late. And now nearly a decade later, Clinton has forgotten the truth he exclaimed at the end of his presidency.

Posted by SoccerDad at November 24, 2009 5:03 AM