From Camp David to Taba, 2000-01: Narratives, Red Lines, Justice, and Mythology
Itamar Rabinovich offers a new paradigm by separating the accounts of what happened into four categories: orthodox, revisionist, deterministic, and eclectic.[18] The "orthodox" group is detail-oriented and lays the blame squarely on Arafat's shoulders. This was the most widely propagated version of events in the wake of the peace process. It holds that Barak made an unprecedented offer, Arafat rejected it and instead opted for violence. Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton, Dennis Ross, and Shlomo Ben-Ami are his examples. This group was later joined by Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan who revealed in a 2003 interview that Arafat's decision not to accept the 23 December Clinton Parameters was not only a tragedy for the Palestinians and the region, but a crime.[19]
The "revisionist" group, espoused by Robert Malley, Hussein Agha, Ron Pundak, and Uri Savir, seeks to reexamine and contradict the convictions held by the orthodox narrative. Most Palestinian commentators hold this narrative. While their accounts are rich in detail, they tend to inflate certain items at the expense of larger issues - a little like discussing the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg. Like an Avi Shlaim preface: "My aim in the present book is to offer a revisionist interpretation of Israel's policy...the emphasis throughout is on Israel - on Israeli perceptions, Israeli attitudes, and Israeli behavior in the conflict,"[20] Malley and Agha's article also begins with a statement of purpose, which is to debunk the orthodox narrative. Their article, "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," focuses on Israeli and American missteps and shines a positive light on Arafat and the Palestinians by acquiescing in the idea that Palestinians had already made their historic compromise by agreeing to only 22 percent of Mandate Palestine. They go on to reason and excuse the Palestinian delegation's lack of responses and counter-proposals as a result of Palestinians being "resigned" to a two-state solution as opposed to accepting Israel's right to exist. They explain that the war for all of Palestine was over because they lost and Oslo represented terms of surrender.[21]
A historical study that chooses to only focus on Israeli and American tactical mistakes while dismissing the Palestinians as influential actors is bound to skew to one direction. Furthermore, the writing of history should not be geared toward debunking a narrative, but rather to letting all the available sources guide one's conclusions.
The "deterministic" group holds that an 'end-of-conflict' solution between Israelis and Palestinians is essentially unachievable so to expect a summit to solve all remaining issues is not only foolish, but is sure to lead to a larger crisis. Many in the academic world belong to this category, as do many in Israel's security establishment and several former American secretaries of state such as Henry Kissinger. The "eclectic" viewpoints come from those who describe what happened at Camp David in detail, but "in a way that does not present a clear-cut thesis...there is no finger-pointing or over-arching themes"[22] and there's little attempt to assign responsibility. Yossi Beilin and Gilead Sher are his examples.
[18] Rabinovich. "The Failure of Camp David: Four Different Narratives." The Camp David Summit - What Went Wrong? pp. 14-17; For a more detailed explanation of the four narratives, See: Rabinovich, Itamar. Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948-2003. Updated and rev., 1st Princeton ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. pp. 160-176.
[19] Walsh, Elsa. "The Prince: How the Saudi Ambassador Became Washington's Indispensable Operator." The New Yorker.24 March (2003). Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030324fa_fact2. Accessed: 29 October 2005.
[20] Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall : Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. p. xiv.
[21] Agha, Hussein, and Robert Malley. "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors." The New York Review of Books 48.13 (2001). Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14380 Accessed: 18 November 2005; Malley and Agha later wrote, "The parties must be presented with a non-negotiable final agreement...Refugees should be given the choice to return to the general area where they lived before 1948." See: Agha, Hussein, and Robert Malley. "A Solution Is Possible Now." The Guardian 29 March 2002. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,675784,00.html Accessed: 19 November 2005; For a similar revisionist view See: Sontag, Deborah. "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed." The New York Times 26 July 2001: A1.
[22] Rabinovich. "The Failure of Camp David: Four Different Narratives." The Camp David Summit - What Went Wrong? p. 17.