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Camp David 2000 Summit
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The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David of July 2000 took place between United States President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. It was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a "final status settlement" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ident Clinton announced his invitation to Barak and Arafat on July 5, 2000, to come to Camp David to continue their negotiations on the Middle East peace process.
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The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David of July 2000 took place between United States President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. It was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a "final status settlement" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The summit
President Clinton announced his invitation to Barak and Arafat on July 5, 2000, to come to Camp David to continue their negotiations on the Middle East peace process. Building on the positive steps towards peace of the earlier 1978 Camp David Accords where President Jimmy Carter was able to broker a peace agreement between Egypt, represented by President Anwar Sadat, and Israel represented by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The Oslo Accords of 1993 between the later assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat had provided that agreement should be reached on all outstanding issues between the Palestinians and Israeli sides - the so-called final status settlement - within five years of the implementation of Palestinian autonomy. However, the interim process put in place under Oslo had fulfilled neither Israeli nor Palestinian expectations, and Arafat argued that the summit was premature.
On July 11, the Camp David 2000 Summit convened. The summit ended on July 25, without an agreement being reached. At its conclusion, a Trilateral Statement was issued defining the agreed principles to guide future negotiations.
Trilateral statement (full text)
The negotiations
There were four principal obstacles to agreement:
- Territory
- Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
- Refugees and the 'right of return'
- Israeli security concerns
Territory
The Palestinian negotiators indicated they wanted full Palestinian sovereignty over all the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, although they would consider a one-to-one land swap with Israel. They maintained that Resolution 242 calls for full Israeli withdrawal from these territories, which were captured in the Six-Day War, as part of a final peace settlement, although Israel disputes this interpretation. In the 1993 Oslo Accords the Palestinian negotiators accepted the Green Line borders for the West Bank.
Barak offered to form a Palestinian State initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip. In 10 to 25 years the West Bank area would expand to 90-91% (94% excluding greater Jerusalem). As a result, "Israel would have withdrawn from 63 settlements." The West Bank would be separated by a road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, with free passage for Palestinians although Israel reserved the right to close the road for passage in case of emergency. The Palestinian position was that the annexations would block existing road networks between major Palestinian populations. In return, the Israelis would cede 1% of their territory in the Negev Desert to Palestine. The Palestinians rejected this proposal.
Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
A particularly virulent territorial dispute revolved around the final status of Jerusalem.
According to Prime Minister Barak, the Israeli team proposed "annexing to Jerusalem cities within the West Bank beyond the '67 border, like Maale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev and Gush Etzion, and in exchange for this to give to the Palestinians the sovereignty over certain villages or small cities that had been annexed to Jerusalem just after '67"
The Palestinian position, according to Mahmoud Abbas, at that time Arafat's chief negotiator: "All of East Jerusalem should be returned to Palestinian sovereignty. The Jewish quarter and Western Wall should be placed under Israeli authority, not Israeli sovereignty. An open city and cooperation on municipal services."
The Palestinians rejected a proposal for "custodianship," though not sovereignty, over the Temple Mount. They demanded complete sovereignty over East Jerusalem's Islamic holy sites, in particular, the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Refugees and the right of return
Due to the first Arab-Israeli war, a significant number of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes inside what is now Israel. These refugees, numbering over 700,000 at the time (and about four million today), comprise about half the Palestinian people. Since that time, the Palestinians have called for full implementation of the right of return, meaning that each refugee would be granted the option of returning to his or her home, with property restored, or accept compensation instead.
Israelis asserted that allowing a right of return to Israel proper, rather than to the newly created Palestinian state, would mean an influx of Palestinians that would fundamentally alter the demographics of Israel, jeopardizing Israel's Jewish character and its existence as a whole. The Israelis also argued that a larger number of Jewish refugees had fled or expelled from Arab countries since 1948, and were not compensated, and that most of them ended up in Israel.
At Camp David, the Palestinians maintained their traditional position that the right of return be implemented. To address Israel's demographic concerns, they promised that the right of return be implemented via a mechanism agreed upon by both sides, which would channel the majority of refugees against the option of returning to Israel. According to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, some of the Palestinian negotiators were willing to discuss privately a limit on the number of refugees who would be allowed to return to Israel.
The Israeli negotiators denied that Israel was responsible for the refugee problem. In the Israeli proposal, a limited number of refugees would be allowed to return to Israel on the basis of humanitarian considerations or family reunification. All other people currently classified as Palestinian refugees would be settled in their present place of inhabitance, the Palestinian state, or third-party countries. An international fund would be set up, to which Israel would contribute along with other countries, that would register claims for compensation of property and make payments within the limits of its resources.
Israeli security concerns
The Israeli negotiators wanted the following requirements to be part of the agreement: Early warning stations inside the Palestinian state; Israeli control of Palestinian airspace; the right of Israel to deploy troops in the Palestinian state in the event of an emergency; the stationing of an international force in the Jordan Valley. Furthermore the Palestinian state was to be demilitarized.
Reasons for impasse
Both sides blamed the other for the failure of the talks: the Palestinians claiming they were not offered enough, and the Israelis claiming that they could not reasonably offer more.
Ehud Barak offered Arafat an eventual 91% (after many years - see section on territory) of the West Bank, and all of the Gaza Strip, with Palestinian control over Eastern Jerusalem as the capital of the new Palestinian state; in addition, all refugees could apply for compensation of property from an international fund to which Israel would contribute along with other countries. The Palestinians wanted the immediate withdrawal of the Israelis from the occupied territories, and only subsequently the Palestinian authority would crush all Palestinian terror organizations. The Israeli response as stated by Shlomo Ben-Ami was "we can't accept the demand for a return to the borders of June 1967 as a pre-condition for the negotiation."
Clinton, who promised Arafat that no one would be blamed if the talks failed, did, in fact, blame Arafat after the failure of the talks, stating, "I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realized in a just and lasting peace." According to The Oslo Syndrome, "most of the European states followed Clinton in seeing the Israeli offers as very forthcoming and placing the onus for the summits's failure on Arafat .... Nor did [Arafat's] regime's post-Camp David complaints regarding Israel's not recognizing the Palestinian refugees' 'right of return' win over the Europeans or Americans." The failure to come to an agreement was widely attributed to Yasser Arafat, as he walked away from the table without making a concrete counter-offer and because Arafat did little to quell the series of Palestinian riots that began shortly after the summit. Arafat was also accused of scuttling the talks by Nabil Amr, a former minister in the Palestinian Authority.
In 2004, two books by American participants at the summit were published that placed the blame for the failure of the summit on Arafat. The books were The Missing Peace by longtime US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross and My Life by President Clinton. Clinton wrote that Arafat once complimented Clinton by telling him, "You are a great man." Clinton responded, "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one."
Clayton Swisher wrote a rebuttal to Clinton and Ross's accounts about the causes for the breakdown of the Camp David Summit in his 2004 book, "The Truth About Camp David." Swisher, the Director of Programs at the Middle East Institute, concluded that the Israelis and the Americans were at least as guilty as the Palestinians for the collapse. MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, a think-tank in Washington, praised the book: "Clayton Swisher's 'The Truth About Camp David,' based on interviews with [US negotiators] Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and [Aaron] Miller himself provides a comprehensive and acute account -- the best we're likely to see -- on the [one-sided diplomacy] Miller describes." Others condemned Swisher's work as neither objective nor accurate.
Professor of political science Norman Finkelstein published an article in the winter 2007 issue of Journal of Palestine Studies, excerpting from his longer essay called Subordinating Palestinian Rights to Israeli "Needs". The abstract for the article states: "In particular, it examines the assumptions informing Ross’s account of what happened during the negotiations and why, and the distortions that spring from these assumptions. The article demonstrates that, judged from the perspective of Palestinians’ and Israelis’ respective rights under international law, all the concessions at Camp David came from the Palestinian side, none from the Israeli side."
Alan Dershowitz a law professor at Harvard University said that the failure of the negotiations was due to "the refusal of the Palestinians and Arafat to give up the right of return. That was the sticking point. It wasn't Jerusalem. It wasn't borders. It was the right of return." He claims that President Clinton told this to him "directly and personally."
In 2006, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated on Democracy Now! that "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem" referring to his 2001 book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. .
Aftermath
Soon after the collapse of the 2000 summit, Sept. 28th, Ariel Sharon and a delegation of Likud politicians took a tour of the Temple Mount to demonstrate the right of Jews to visit the holiest site in Judaism, though still religiously Islamic. This tour, although it did not include the Al-Aqsa Mosque that currently occupies a small part of the Temple Mount, was still seen as a provocation by many Palestinians. The next day, September 29, 2000, a stone-throwing demonstration by a Palestinian crowd broke out of control and Israeli police opened fire and killed 4 of the protesters . From this point, an escalation in violence culminated in an uprising called the al-Aqsa Intifada, which continues to this day (see Shattered Dreams, Charles Enderlin). There were running street battles in the West Bank and Gaza, and many were killed . There was also rioting by Arab-Israelis, and some of them were killed. On October 7, 2000, a Palestinian mob demolished Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish holy site near the West Bank city of Nablus. On October 8 the BBC reported on the death toll up to that point, "At least 80 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed during the unrest." On Oct. 12, two Israeli reservists were lynched in Ramallah. Starting with the June 1, 2001 Dolphinarium suicide bombing a wave of suicide bombings was unleashed by Palestinian extremist movements on Israeli civilians. Some claim they were in retaliation for the Israeli killings of civilians. Others claimed they were carried out by groups dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. In reprisal Israel sent in the Israel Defence Force to seal off the Gaza Strip and re-occupy the West Bank, which were brought under strict military rule. The leaders of Palestinian militant organizations were targeted for assassinations by Israel. Since September 29, 2000 over 1,000 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, and over 4,800 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis.
Calls for peace
In a last attempt to bring Middle East peace before his second term ended in January 2001, Clinton wrote a proposal to Barak and Arafat, laying down the parameters for future negotiations. Barak accepted the parameters (with some reservations that were within those parameters)by Clinton's deadline. Arafat, after a delay that went beyond the Clinton deadline, accepted, but with questions and reservations that went outside the parameters, according to Ambassador Dennis Ross, the special Mideast envoy.
Clinton's initiative led to the Taba negotiations in January 2001, where the two sides published a statement saying they had never been closer to agreement (though such issues as Jerusalem, the status of Gaza, and the Palestinian demand for compensation for refugees and their descendants remained unresolved), but Barak, facing elections, resuspended the talks. The increased violence led to a sharp swing to the right in Israeli politics; Ehud Barak was defeated by Ariel Sharon in 2001.
See also
By the participants
Israeli
- Ehud Barak.
- Shlomo Ben-Ami. . Excerpts from an April 6,2001 article in Ma'ariv
- Gilead Sher (2006). The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999-2001. Routledge. A first hand account from the chief negotiator for the Israeli team
Palestinian
- Mahmoud Abbas, Reports of the Camp David Summit, 9 September 2000 Excerpts published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. XXX, No. 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 168-170
- Akram Haniyah, The Camp David Papers, first hand account by a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, originally published in the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam. English translation in Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. XXX, No. 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 75-97
American
- Madeleine Albright (2003). Madame Secretary. New York: Hyperion (especially chapter 28)
- Bill Clinton, My Life: The Presidential Years (especially chapter 25)
- Dennis Ross The Missing Peace : The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
Non-participants
- Kenneth Levin. The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. Hanover: Smith and Kraus, 2005.
Footnotes
See the previous section for the full details on some of the references listed below.
External links
General
- Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Maps
-
- .
- Foundation for Middle East Peace.
- Peres Center for Peace.
- December 2000 English article in Le Monde diplomatique refers to some of the above-linked French-language maps.
The New York Review of Books series
The following links reference an extended exchange in the pages of the New York Review of Books on Camp David 2000. Presented here in chronological order.
- New York Review of Books, 9 August 2001
- New York Review of Books, 20 September 2001
- , by Benny Morris, in response to "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors") 13 June 2002
- By Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, 13 June 2002
- Benny Morris, Ehud Barak, Reply by Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, 27 June 2002
Views and Analysis
- , Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, Emory University
- . Sept. 15, 2001 article, by Uri Avnery, a founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom. More of their articles about Camp David are
-
- , Dr. Jeremy Pressman, 2003.
Further reading
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