“If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed.” – Joseph Goebbels
Former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison deconstructs the myth of the “generous offer” that Arafat rejected to supposedly sink the Camp David summit in July 2000.
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This failure of understanding is the primary reason the peace process collapsed at the Camp David summit in July 2000. The myth of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” has created the widespread misapprehension that Yasir Arafat rejected out of hand, without even offering a counterproposal, an extremely good deal that he should clearly have accepted. Arafat’s rejection supposedly proved, according to the prevailing wisdom, that the Palestinians were unwilling to conclude any deal that would allow Israel to live in peace and that they were still irreconcilably opposed to Israel existence.
According to the myth, Barak’s proposal would have given the Palestinians, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is fond of repeating, “95 percent of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem, with all the settlements gone”. In fact, what Barak actually offered at Camp David was to withdraw from 89-90 percent of the West Bank, not 95 percent; to give the Palestinians sovereignty in a few non-contiguous neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, not half of Jerusalem; and, far from assuring that all the settlements would be gone, to annex to Israel settlements housing fully 80 percent of the 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and 100 percent of the 170,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.
The resulting Palestinian “state” would have been broken up in the West Bank into three almost completely non-contiguous sections, each connected only by a narrow thread of land and each surrounded by Israeli territory, plus Gaza. This so-called state would have been a colony, not a state–with no real independence, no ability to defend itself, no control over its borders, no control over its water resources, no easy way even for its citizens to reach one section from another, and a capital made up of separate neighborhoods not contiguous to each other or to the rest of the state. Israel would never have agreed to live in a disjointed, indefensible state like this, but Israel and the United States thought it fine to offer this to the Palestinians. This Israeli offer, made with U.S. support and participation, turned the promise of Resolution 242 on its head.
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Related
- German Propaganda Archive Very interesting reading.
- A PALESTINIAN “HOLOCAUST?” Clearly by someone unsupportive of the Palestinian cause. Brings up the point about who gets to claim to be the biggest victim of history. Who holds claim to the word ‘holocaust’? Almost 6 million European jews were killed during WWII, but then a similar number of Slavs were killed as well. How come we never hear about the Slavic holocaust? 20 million Soviet Russians died, 3-15 million Chinese, 4.5 million Germans, 2 million Japanese, 1.5 million Bengalese, 1.3 million Yugoslavians, 500,000 Italians, 500,000 French, less than 500,000 British, and 300,000 Americans. Can any one group claim to be the principal victim?? There was no Schindler’s List made for the 15 million Chinese who were killed as a result of WWII.
- Turning Points and Casualties of WW2