When the July 2000 talks at Camp David collapsed, President Bill Clinton blamed Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat for the failure, while praising Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for offering “courageous concessions.” The US media uncritically echoed Clinton, ignoring the basic facts:
Palestinian made the major concession at Oslo in 1993 by accepting Israel, including West Jerusalem. This area constitutes 78 percent of British Mandatory Palestine. Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the Jewish State was to comprise 55 percent of Mandatory Palestine, and Jerusalem was to be internationalized.
Barak made no commitment to evacuate a single Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, settlements which violate the fourth Geneva Convention, signed by both the US and Israel.
Israel had no legal or moral authority to “give” Palestinians anything: it is obligated under UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 (the remaining 22 percent of Palestine), including all, not part, of East Jerusalem. Arafat has already made the major concession Jerusalem by recognizing Israeli control over West Jerusalem.
Barak rejected the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees, insisting that Arafat accept 50 years of Israeli ethnic cleansing, including terror campaigns in 1948, a major factor in the flight of 700,000 Palestinians.
The continuation of settlements, Israeli military control over by-pass roads connecting settlements with Israel, combined with Israel's insistence on “leasing” land in the Jordan River valley wold only lead to the creation of non-continuous area,s thus preventing a viable Palestinian state. Israel, not the Palestinians, would control the economy and the water resources of the Palestinian “state.” Israel would also control the borders of and even internal movement within that entity.
The Palestinians of Jerusalem suffer “dispossession and systematic discimination and a consistent assault on [their] civil rights." - B'Tselem -
Although Ariel Sharon's provocative September 28 visit to the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, hold to Jews and Muslims, triggered the violence, it was Barak who allowed Sharon to visit the area, accompanied by hundreds of police. Barak was ultimately responsible for the police whose indiscriminate firing in response to stone throwing Palestinians killed five and wounded over 200 Palestinians on September 29.
Sharon's visit, however, was probably just the catalyst for a Palestinian uprising in response to the collapse of the peace talks and decades of occupation and oppression. The 200,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims of Jerusalem, for example, have suffered “dispossession and systematic discrimination, and a consistent assault on [their] dignity and basic rights” according to a 2000 report("Jerusalem: Injustice in the Holy City") by B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization.
Israel's actions on September 29 and since have been condemned by human rights organizations, among them Amnesty International (www.amnesty-usa.org), Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org), B'Tselem (www.btselem.org) as well as the US State Department (www.state.gov). Their investigations found that Israel had used excessive, indiscriminate, lethal force against unarmed demonstrators who posed no threat of serious injury to Israelis. UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson said the Israeli violence had “a devastating effect on the civilian population.” B'Tselem criticized both Israel and the Palestinian Authority for allowing attacks on civilians by, respectively, Jewish settlers and Palestinian gunmen.
The bloodshed and tragedy of recent months, indeed, over the last 53 years, could have been prevented if the US had insisted on a settlement based on international law and human rights rather than giving Israel the military wherewithal to deny Palestinians their rights.
