A quote about the cycle of violence in the Middle East around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
"Occupation, violence and terror have produced a paralysing mindset. Israel argues that as long as there is violence there will be occupation. Palestinians counter that as long as there is occupation there will be violence. This refrain reverberates more loudly than ever. Even during the 1990s, when peace plans lay on the table, there was little respite from violence. Israelis and Palestinians killed the other and they killed their own." Peter Rogers, Herzl's Nightmare, p.75.
Gary
I think this is an accurate description of the mindset of the current situation. But I disagree about the assessment of the situation during the 1990's. When the PLO was empowered to run the West Bank and Gaza they did a reasonably good job of controlling violence from their side. If anything, many Palestinians complained that during this time the PLO was ruling with an iron fist, and in return Israel gave up very little. I would claim that it was that period of time, when the Isrealis had a viable "partner" in negotiations, that further contaminated an already difficult situation. If the Isrealis had seized the opportunity presented by Oslo, they may have avoided the current Intifada.
Alain,
those insights certainly correct the standard narrative, which state that the failure to achieve was all Arafat's fault.
He should have signed on the dotted line at the Camp David meetings in response to Israeli's (Ehud Barak) purported generosity. Arafat didn't sign because his real goal has been, and always was the destruction of the State of Israel.
It is hard to judge that narrative as there are no papers, nor is there an independent account of what went on at Camp David. Hence we are left with competing Palestinian, Israeli and US narratives.
The sad reality is that in Australia most discussions about Zionism presuppose that that all Arabs seek only to exterminate all Jews, and that there are no Arabs with whom to negotiate or live. It seems like we continually revisit 1948, and are unable to move on.
What I would add to your account is that during the 1990s Rubin gave the thumbs up to increased Israeli settlements, whilst Araft slipped on a blind fold when he wanted to ignore the terrorist attacks on Israel.
My understanding is that the intifada of September 2000 was not planned by Arafat. It was more a spontaneous eruption of Palestinian anger sparked by Sharon's calculatedly provocative visit in September of 2000 to the Temple Mount.
The other thing that I would add into the mix Arafat's disastrous failures at Palestinian democratic institution-building.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on November 25, 2004 08:08 AM