The luxury provided by a failed peace endeavor is that there is no shortage of mistakes available upon which to pin one's blame.  If an agreement were reached in 2000-01, there would be many accounts explaining the success - but not nearly as many as there are now given the decisive failure.  Carter, Begin, and Sadat are remembered as heroes in the West - the revisionists spoke softly and the orthodox could still claim that they achieved their objectives at the end of the first Camp David summit.  That same summit could easily have turned out differently.  A collection of books celebrating Camp David's success would turn into a library of accounts with accusing fingers extended.  No matter the topic, what went wrong remains a more appealing discussion than what went right.  After all, who would care about the Titanic if its maiden voyage ended safely at harbor in New York?

 

 

            Was the Palestinian position calling for Israel's acceptance of their interpretation of #194 a negotiating tactic - a card they held in a "nothing's agreed until everything is agreed upon" EOC debate that they would relinquish if satisfied on the other issues?  Alternatively, was the implementation of #194 a core Palestinian red line that they had no intention of abandoning?

            Israeli participants differ in their interpretations of Palestinian intentions.  Gilead Sher believes that no Palestinian leader truly believed that refugees would be allowed to return to Israel and that all discussion to the contrary is "empty propaganda and negotiating maneuvers."^[54]  Yossi Beilin concurs, saying the "Palestinians will keep the Right of Return as their last card, waiting for the right time to play it."^[55]  Dan Meridor disagrees.  He saw in Arafat and his negotiators "true dedication to this objective, much more than to many other subjects," and thus, the idea that it was merely a negotiating tactic was "not very likely."^[56]

 

 

            Given Akram Hanieh's Palestinian account, it rings clear that international legitimacy and justice were paramount - statehood involving compromise was secondary.  The Palestinian sense of national rights and justice differs from the American and Israeli perspective.  Past United Nations resolutions - which form the international basis of Palestinian legitimacy - are interpreted differently in Jerusalem and Washington.

            United Nations Security Council Resolution #242, adopted on 22 November 1967 in the wake of the June war, calls for the "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," ^[47] and "For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem."  America agrees with Israel's interpretation of the resolution - that in exchange for peace, Israel must withdraw from some territories, and not all territories.  Palestinians and the Arab states interpret the resolution as meaning Israel should withdraw from all of the territories.^[48] 

            What would the contours of an acceptable deal look like to Palestinians?  During the Camp David summit, Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi said on PBS television,  "It very much depends on what Barak is offering.  You say 90 percent of the West Bank.  If that includes sovereign access to the West Bank...real sovereignty in almost all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, some implementation of the right of return or compensation, then Palestinians will say, yes, this was an historic moment, and Arafat should have seized it."^[35]  If Khalidi represented Palestinian aspirations, they should have accepted either the Camp David proposals or the Clinton Parameters.  Regardless, Arafat turned down all Camp David offers and received a hero's welcome on the Palestinian street upon his return home.  At the time, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were not saying, "Arafat should have seized it."

 

            Even if the conflict had been ripe for resolution, the July summit was not going to produce an agreement because neither side knew their bottom line.  Armed with this lack of knowledge, the United States was denied negotiating leverage and the ability to apply pressure on the appropriate party during the summit.  Malley and Agha are correct when they argue that each Israeli offer was presented to the Americans as their red line.  In turn, America would reiterate the offer to the Palestinians - a flat "no" was the usual Palestinian reply.  The Americans would then return with a new and inevitably movable Israeli bottom line and thus, the cycle continued.  This helps to explain why throughout the summit the Palestinians perceived American and Israeli offers as the same and why the Palestinians felt that, "the American and Israeli delegations were melting into one."^[29]  A Barak-led Israeli approach to determine the minimum offer they could get away with should have remained separate from an honest and in-depth assessment of what they could eventually live with. 

 

      "If ever there was a regional conflict that has been sustained by mythologies, by avoiding the unpleasantness of reality, by ignoring to see the world as it is, it is the Middle East."[23]

            Dennis Ross, U.S. Special Middle East Coordinator, 1988-2000

 

            The clash of historical narratives is both a byproduct of, and has given rise to mythologies - a set of beliefs within each society that are held as sacred, whether or not the specific myth is true.  Mythology regarding what happened - either in antiquity or recently - and mythology regarding past promises and future possibilities helped to ensure the failure of any attempt to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2000-01.  Yet, here there is a sharp contrast between the Israeli and Palestinian approach to their own history 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]

 

            Perhaps no other event in recent history has been as contested on all fronts as what happened from Camp David in July 2000 through Taba in January 2001.  It is not only debated between the three protagonists, but also debated among them.  In question are the various conclusions reached following the summit, as are the interpretations of the facts used to guide the many accounts.   It should be a straightforward question:  Why did the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts in 2000-01 fail to end the conflict and achieve peace?  Each commentator, whether a participant or historian, brings their own frames of reference to bear on the above question.  As a result, the commentaries that spring forth are skewed, reflecting their origins.   Yet, neither Camp David nor the beginning of the Oslo years mark the starting point of disagreement.  It rests in each commentator's understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from its very beginning.