If it seems almost impossible to conceive how the Israelis and the Palestinians will progress further in their negotiations following the failure of Camp David, it gives some comfort to see how far they have come.
Less than a decade ago they didn't even talk to each other. Israel said it would never accept a Palestinian entity much less a state. As recently as early 1999, shortly before prime minister Ehud Barak was elected, deposing the rightist Benjamin Netanyahu who resisted even the tiniest compromise with the Palestinians, Yossi Beilin, a well-known dove of Barak's Labor party and Michael Eitan of the opposition Likud party drew up an informal cross-party proposal for a Palestinian state. At the time it was regarded as a stalking horse for Barak. It was considered as bold as it was stark. But Israel would retain all water resources, maintain complete sovereignty over Jerusalem and the settlements on the West Bank -- including the surrounding lands for "natural" growth. Israel would continue to hold responsibility for security along the Jordan river. Thus Israel would still control 50-70 percent of the West Bank and around 35 percent of the Gaza strip. The question of the return of the Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Israel, from whence they were evicted during and after the 1948 war was ignored.
As the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies commented at the time, "even if such a Palestinian `state' contained all of the Occupied Territories' Palestinian residents, it would be little more than an archipelago of isolated enclaves, with little prospect of developing the communication and economic structures necessary to operate as a real sovereign entity."
What happened at Camp David, by this light, was simply a miracle. Not only did Barak offer the Palestinians a real state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza, he put forward a sensible proposal for the solution of the Palestinian refugees and he broke the great Israeli taboo of discussing the future of Jerusalem with a proposal (albeit in mosaic form) of Palestinian administrative control and sovereignty over the Arab areas of Jerusalem and the Muslim Holy sites.
As we all now know Yasser Arafat did not consider Barak's offer on Jerusalem enough. "The Arab leader has not been born who would give up Jerusalem," he was reported as saying. A `special regime' or autonomy over Palestinian neighborhoods in the Old City is not sovereignty, say the Palestinians, but that's as far as Barak would go, although in international law Jerusalem is occupied territory. A week after Camp David, as the full impact of what was and was not achieved sinks in, what moment of truth, if any, is at hand?
It all depends on where you sit and who you are. There are Palestinians of influence who have said to Arafat, "close the deal." And it is more than a question to wonder if Arafat had said "yes" whether Barak would have been able to maintain the equilibrium of his government long enough to deliver on the deal. The voting down of Shimon Peres for president, Israel's heroic peacemaker, confirms that Barak walks on a knife edge.
There is, to be blunt, no point in considering the deal over Jerusalem -- the most sensitive part of the negotiations -- if it means another assassination in Israel and it means revolution in Palestine in a year or two's time when a new or outside generation comes to power determined to declare war on the Jewish state. There has to be a full peace that is manifestly acceptable to something over 80 percent of Israeli and Arab opinion (including good majorities of Arab opinion throughout the Middle East and the Maghrib).
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