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May 15, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
May 10, 2002
Lisa Taraki
In Defense
of Sanctions
Against Israel
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United State
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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May
15, 2002
Revisiting Camp David
by Ahmad Faruqui
Ariel Sharon's visit has highlighted the difficulties
facing the US as it seeks to mediate a peace between the Israelis
and Palestinians. During the height of the Israeli military
incursion, President Bush called Sharon a "man of peace."
Last week, with Sharon at his side, Bush put the blame for the
violence on Yasser Arafat, saying that he "had let his people
down." He overlooked Israel's failure to comply with his
demands that it withdraw immediately from the West Bank, or to
allow UN inspectors into the ravaged refugee camp of Jenin.
Following up on Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the Capitol, in
which he said that Israel was being unfairly pressured to cut
short its campaign against Palestinian terror, the Congress and
the Senate passed resolutions with overwhelming margins supporting
the state of Israel, further alienating the Arab and Muslim world
from the US.
After the latest suicide attack near
Tel Aviv, Sharon responded with indignation to a reporter who
asked whether the US had counseled Israel to act with restraint.
Israel was an independent nation, he retorted, and was not obliged
to inform the US about what actions it might take. White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer echoed Sharon, and said the US could
not give directives to a sovereign state. Both sides overlooked
the $100 billion that US taxpayers have contributed to Israel's
economic and military security, most of it since the Six Day
War in 1967. Notwithstanding its poor track record on human
rights, and its possession of weapons of mass destruction, the
US continues to provide Israel with state of the art weaponry.
In January 2000, Israel signed a $2.5 billion contract for 50
F-16C/D fighters, with deliveries to begin in 2003. The contract
also included an option to buy another 60 fighters for an additional
$2 billion, which Israel is currently evaluating. Israel already
has 250 F-16s, the world's second largest inventory, and also
flies 100 F-15 air superiority fighters.
When the Saudis presented their peace
plan at the Arab League Summit, Israel responded by threatening
to exile Arafat. Having completed their incursion, they are
now talking about participating in a peace conference. At the
same time, they have reiterated that Israel will not retreat
to its pre-1967 boundaries, the sine qua non of the Saudi
plan. Such a stance in peace negotiations has long been a hallmark
of Israeli diplomacy, and it reached its apex at Camp David in
2000.
Ehud Barak made an offer that has since
become an icon of Israeli generosity. Policy wonks in the Bush
and Clinton administrations, writers on editorial pages, and
leaders of the American Jewish community have argued that Arafat's
failure to accept this offer betrays an underlying rejection
of Israel's right to exist.
But how generous was the Clinton-Barak
plan to the Palestinians? According to Ewen MacAskill of the
Guardian, Barak made more concessions in the deal than
any prior Israeli leader. However, contrary to media characterizations,
Barak did not offer to give up 96 percent of the West Bank.
With Clinton's full knowledge, he offered a dysfunctional state
to Arafat.
The Palestinian state, according to Israeli writer Gush Shalom,
would have consisted of five cantons. Four of these cantons
would have been located in the West Bank and one in the Gaza
strip. The two million Palestinians living in 200 scattered areas
around the West Bank would have been consolidated into three
cantons. The Israeli army would have controlling the eastern
border, the Jordan Valley. A fourth canton would have been created
around East Jerusalem but the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest
shrine in Islam, would have remained under Israeli control.
Robert Malley, a member of the American team at Camp David, feels
that neither Arafat nor any other leader of the Palestinians
could have justified a compromise of this magnitude to his people.
In the Clinton-Barak proposal, Israel would have annexed 69 of
the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, containing 85% of the
200,000 settlers that have stayed in the West Bank a violation
of the Oslo Accords. The settlement blocs would have continued
to intrude into the existing road network and this would have
severely disrupted Palestinian road traffic in the West Bank.
To compensate the Palestinians for the loss of prime agricultural
land, representing about nine percent of the West Bank, Israel
offered stretches of desert adjacent to the Gaza Strip that it
currently uses for dumping toxic wastes. Such a state would
have resembled the Bantustans of South Africa under apartheid.
Arafat may be inept as an administrator,
but he did sign the Oslo Accords in 1993, accepting Israel's
right to exist and conceding to Israel 78% of historic Palestine.
In February, he wrote in the New York Times that Palestinians
are ready to end the conflict, and to sit down with the Israelis
and discuss peace. "But we will only sit down as equals,"
he said, "not as supplicants; as partners, not as subjects;
not as a defeated nation grateful for whatever scraps are thrown
our way."
The Clinton-Barak plan was one such scrap, and no Palestinian
leader-even one who had been awarded the Noble Peace Prize--could
have accepted it. If it wants to succeed in the Middle East,
the Bush administration will have to bring forward a more realistic
plan at the upcoming peace conference, one that pressures both
sides equally to abjure violence and make peace.
Ahmad Faruqui
is a fellow with the American Institute of International Studies.
A native of Pakistan, Faruqui has lived most of his adult life
in the United States. He holds a Ph. D. in economics from the
University of California at Davis. He can be reached at: afaruqui@crai.com
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