From David Brooks (copy / pasted)
Throughout this horrible week, my mind has repeatedly flashed back to Dec. 23, 2000. That was the day the Palestinians were offered a path to having their own nation on roughly 95 percent of the land in the West Bank and 100 percent of the land in the Gaza Strip. Under that outline, Israel would also swap some of its own land to compensate the Palestinians in exchange for maintaining 80 percent of its settler presence in the West Bank.
The Palestinians would control, in President Bill Clinton’s formulation, “Arab areas” of East Jerusalem. And on the most sensitive religious sites, there would have been divided sovereignty or jurisdiction, with Palestinians controlling the Haram al-Sharif (including Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) and Israel controlling the Western Wall and the holy space of which it is a part. There would also be a return of many refugees into the new Palestinian state (without the right of return to Israel itself).
There were a million complexities — and many errors made by the Israeli, Palestinian and American sides along the way. But this offer pointed the way to the sort of fair solution negotiators had been struggling their way toward for years. It is hard to see this kind of option ever being on the table again. And the Palestinians let it slip away.
This memory comes hauntingly back because the misery that Palestinians and Israelis are now enduring did not have to happen. They could have reached some kind of moderately effective arrangement, which would have given the two nations a chance to pursue their own destinies.
Another reason I think back on this history is the way a simplistic oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, “apartheid Israel” narrative has been imposed on this conflict.
The real history is much more complicated. It is the story of the Palestinians who were offered a state in 1947 that the Arab states opposed. More recently, it is the story of flawed human beings on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, who were confronted with a devilishly complicated situation. They worked doggedly to secure peace and made real, if stumbling, progress to that end. It is the story of how radicals on both sides undermined their efforts, leading to the bloodshed we see today. This is what happens when the center does not hold.
The drive toward that 2000 peace offering began at the Madrid peace conference of 1991. Throughout that decade, there were a series of major peace efforts: the Oslo process, the Cairo Agreement, Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Plantation meeting.
Along the way, the momentum was nearly derailed. An Israeli settler assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as he strode toward peace. There were cascades of bombings authored by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
But Israelis continued to support a two-state solution. On May 17, 1999, the Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, running on an aggressive peace platform, defeated Benjamin Netanyahu in the race for prime minister.
Bill Clinton hosted an Israeli/Palestinian summit at Camp David in July 2000. In many ways that summit was premature. But as the chief U.S. negotiator at the time, Dennis Ross, told me this week, Barak led “the most forthcoming government in Israel’s history,” and Clinton seized the opportunity.
The summit failed to reach an agreement and the enemies of peace struck back. Ariel Sharon took a stroll on the Temple Mount — where Haram al-Sharif stands and non-Muslim entry is restricted — that provoked Palestinian rage. The Palestinian leadership launched the second intifada, bringing a reign of terror to Israeli streets.
Still, Clinton and negotiators persisted with meetings at Sharm al-Sheik. By the end of the year, Clinton brought the two sides to the White House. At the pivotal meeting in December, he slowly read aloud the peace plan that would come to be known as the Clinton Parameters. It called for uncomfortable sacrifices from both parties but gave each side what the U.S. negotiators believed they needed.
A few days later, the Israeli cabinet voted to accept the plan. Yasir Arafat did what he generally did. He never said no, but he never said yes. The Saudi and Egyptian ambassadors in Washington strongly pressured him to agree to a deal, but perhaps feeling pressure from back home, or sensing where Palestinian public opinion was, or feeling that the provisions for the refugees were insufficient, Arafat dallied. Momentum frittered away. Just before Clinton left office, he had one of his final conversations with Arafat. Arafat told him he was a great man. According to his memoir, Clinton replied: “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.”
Arafat’s non-decision further discredited the peace camp in Israel, suggesting that if he wouldn’t go for this, he would never go for any negotiated settlement. Sharon soared to victory in the next elections. In “The Missing Peace,” Ross’s definitive 840-page history of this period, Ross concluded that Arafat never transformed himself from a guerrilla outsider to the kind of leader capable of forming and governing a nation. The Palestinians “surely were betrayed in the past, and they surely have suffered,” Ross wrote. “But they have also helped to ensure their status as victims. Never seizing opportunities when they presented themselves. Blaming others for their predicament. Declaring unmistakable defeats as victories.”
In the ensuing decades, Israel and its settlers have expanded their occupation of the Palestinian territories, Israeli politics have shifted sharply rightward, and the Hamas fundamentalist death cult has grown stronger and more satanically daring.
As I went back and revisited all these events, I was struck by how negotiators on both sides were immersed in resolving practical issues. Now politics is mostly theater and psychodrama. Hamas and its followers cultivate the fantasy that Israel, a permanent Middle Eastern nation, will magically cease to exist. Its terrorists seek to avenge the wounds of injustice and humiliation with mass murder, without anything remotely resembling a firm plan to improve the quality of Palestinian lives.
And in the United States some students and activists create rally posters with paragliders to celebrate the murderers who descended on the Israeli music festival. It’s all vicious posturing, to make people feel avant-garde and self-righteous, no matter how many decades of real human suffering lie ahead.
IMO.... THERE WILL NEVER BE PEACE ON EARTH ~ NEVER, UNTIL EARTH IS NO MORE
SADLY, SO MANY "BEINGS" THRIVE ON MAKING OTHERS, MISERABLE... THE LIES, THE DECEITFUL ACTIONS, ETC.. THEY WORK FOR THE DEVIL & COME IN ALL SHAPES, SIZES & COLORS.
Great additional, insightful thoughts.
I didn't know any of that.
The world is getting more and more divisive even as many stand for principles of becoming more civilized.
One of the best things that we can do to apply that mentality in the real world is to try to understand the views of people that we disagree with and respect them.
And be willing to sacrifice and share some of the political pie with them for the sake of peace for everybody.
Joj,
You mentioned something at the start of this.
That in 3 days people would be condemning Israel for their actions.
I'm seeing good reason for why some people are starting to do that, who have been pro Israel from the get go and I’m leaning that way myself after watching CNN all evening and seeing all the innocent people, many thousands being indiscriminately harmed and killed by Israel.
The death toll caused by Israel is approaching double the number who were killed In their country. They’re killing a lot of children too!
Support for Israel will weaken as this continues and hatred will increase for them because of the OVER reaction.
What do you think?
What do I think? I wish that cooler heads would prevail. But as I've stated before, that is easy from the comfort of my home in America.
I feel compelled to reply: What exactly should Israel do? Hamas hides behind civilians. What would America do if 40,000 (proportionate figure to Israel's loss) men women and children were slaughtered in 24 hours by an enemy that then goes and hides behind their own civilians?
Nobody has given me a reasonable answer to that question. I don't know the answer either.
joj and others,
Not that I know the best way to handle this, but I don’t at all like what is going on in Gaza as retaliation. Do you think that if Barak, Peres, Rabin, or Meir were in power today in this situation after the terrible terrorist attacks by Hamas that any of them would be striking back in Gaza as hard as or in the way that Bibi has? Is this a two wrongs don’t make a right situation?
After wondering about that, I just saw this interview of Barak (when I started this post I hadn’t seen it):
Are Barak’s remarks reasonable? Is he holding back on saying what he really thinks?
Thanks for the great comments.
I agree that this is a tough situation that has 2 very compelling sides and these are just my opinions at the moment as somebody that has no skin in the game.........other than being driven by ethics and humanity that we all share.
The major failure of Israels sophisticated defense technology was an embarrassment that may be adding additional fuel to their incentives for seeking retribution against Hamas.
At the same time, on the other side of the coin(being used by Israel's leaders right now) one can use that to justify just how sophisticated and dangerous Hamas really is and the need to eradicate them at any cost.
I see both sides but also, objectively ask.
Are the events right now and going forward going to make things better overall in the long run or worse?
It seems clear that we've turned a corner and this is making things much worse. And I greatly sympathize with Israel and want the best for their future in saying that.
If they pull back, they can maintain the extremely strong support indefinitely, even from sources that did not support them before because of what Hamas did to Israel.
If they keep going, that will NOT be the case for people that watched what CNN showed last night in Gaza.
My humanity and sympathy, while watching shifted strongly for the poor, completely innocent people in Gaza being subjected to what Israel had happen to them and is using as justification for striking back.
Hamas started this with their mentality to hurt Israel, using their civilians for a political cause.
Israel's objective has better justification because there's a powerful DEFENSIVE element to it but it still boils down to hurting civilians not as the MAIN objective but still KNOWINGLY as part of the political plan.
So this is how I see it in the end.
1. Israel loses X amount of Jewish civilians because of Hamas
2. Gaza loses X+Y amount of Palestinian civilians in the response by Israel.
3. Will Hamas be dead forever?
4. Will this, instead cause many more Palestinians and others in the Middle East to be even more inspired to eliminate Israel because of their OVER reaction ?
We are talking the Middle East now. I'm strongly compelled by number 4 and the nature of human beings to interpret events so they line up with what they want to believe. The opposition to Israel in the Middle East is viewing their reaction in Gaza as one that is greatly increasing hatred and greatly decreasing future chances of peace. Inspiring additional justification to eliminate Israel vs negotiating peace with Israel.
The events of the last week are the quintessential example of 2 diametrically opposed sides that hate each other and will do anything to eliminate the other side and will interpret all events to justify that.
Larry,
With regards to Barak:
I don't think that we are trying to block this kind of element of humanitarian basics.
I watched CNN in Gaza last night. He knows exactly what's going on. That's disingenuous at best.
And let's not forget what 9-11-01 was all about.
Extremists that believe in a political ideology that use events in the Middle East for inspiration.
In this case, Zionists are the mortal enemy and terrorism is the most effective tactic to fight it because that's the only realm where the terrorists have a huge advantage over the technologically superior enemy.
Israel's over reaction is inspiration for the enemies and the US is also a target because of our relationship with Israel.
It's good that we are out of Iraq and Afghanistan but there are HIGHLY motivated terrorists, at this moment that live in the US who are plotting.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism
Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisraʾel, “the Land of Israel”). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.
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Sadly, the technological advancements in weapons and technologies over the last several decades, also means they can effectively kill more people and cause more destruction than anything imagined a century ago.
And that's even without nuclear weapons )-:
It’s killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. And its future lies in its past. We break it down.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide
Here's the other side telling us something that describes a completely different narrative:
https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Maps/Pages/Jewish%20Communities%20Lost%20in%20the%20War%20of%20Independence.aspx
With both sides so extraordinarily far apart, it makes me appreciate the Peace Accord in 1978/79 that much more!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_peace_treaty
See also: Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula
The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed 16 months after Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel in 1977, after intense negotiations. The main features of the treaty were mutual recognition, cessation of the state of war that had existed since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, normalization of relations and the withdrawal by Israel of its armed forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. Egypt agreed to leave the Sinai Peninsula demilitarized. The agreement provided for free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal, and recognition of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways, which had been blockaded by Egypt in 1967. The agreement also called for an end to Israeli military rule over the Israeli-occupied territories and the establishment of full autonomy for the Palestinian inhabitants of the territories, terms that were not implemented but which became the basis for the Oslo Accords.
The agreement notably made Egypt the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel,[1] although it has been described as a "cold peace"
WxFollower,
It is difficult to know how previous Israeli prime ministers would react to Hamas's recent invasion and barbarism.
The reason is because this is so unprecedented. Uncharted territory. Probably, Netanyahu will be prone to more aggressive measures.
Ehud Barak spent all his political capital on making the most concessions to the Palestinians that he could. His approval ratings in Israel dropped to the mid-20s for excessive compromises.
The current curriculum for students that Hamas enforces in Gaza is full of lies and propaganda. Such as the Torah and the Talmud are fabrications. Zionists want to take over Syria, Iraq, Jordan ect... They no longer learn about the Oslo Accords. This was a breakthrough that among other things showcased both the Israelis and the Palestinians recognizing each other's right to exist. They conduct plays for 4-year-olds where they brandish cardboard swords and kill Jews.
Now, Hamas has been in power for 17 years in Gaza. The statistic I heard was that 50% of the Gazan population is 18 years old and younger. You do the math. Those youth may be innocent victims, but they have been brainwashed to HATE, and it is hard for me to imagine a path to peace with the cancer that is well-developed in Gaza.
But of course, I don't want to see a humanitarian disaster.
Lots of protests today in NYC in support of the Palestinian cause, but no violence.
This is not a war between Palestinians and Israelis: IDF soldier
LESS THAN 3 MINUTES
Is the US NAVY STEPPING IN During the Hamas Attack on Israel?
Why is the United States sending the USS Gerald R. Ford to this conflict zone,
Great links and information, Jean!
Thanks much!
Thanks much, Jean!
I listened to the entire video. Extremely enlightening about the conflict going back over a century.
Earlier this month I was pretty ignorant but can't get my eyes/ears on enough information to learn about this amazing, complicated history. With sadness, contemplating the impossible to resolve dynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions
The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions, most notably Judaism, Christianity and Islam, centered around the worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch, is extensively mentioned in the religious scriptures of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and the Quran.[1]