One of the most commonly held views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the Palestinians could have had peace many times, but they’ve always rejected it.
Let’s take a closer look.
This is a brief history of the Camp David Accords in July 2000, the Taba Summit in January 2001 and the Annapolis talks of 2007-8, three moments Israeli leaders came close to making peace offers to the Palestinians.
July 2000, Camp David
The 2000 Camp David Summit was the culmination of a seven year process known as the Oslo Accords, a series of agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. Standing on one foot, the agreements provided the PLO—and its child, the Palestinian Authority—authority over housing, policing, transportation, garbage collection, labor unions, etc., in urban areas of the West Bank and Gaza. The Oslo Accords also enshrined Israeli security needs as supreme and provided Israel authority over 60-80% of the West Bank (the rural West Bank) in which it could expand its occupation infrastructure of roads, closed military zones, national parks and settlements.
So, what happened at the July 2000 Camp David Summit? First, recall that no written records were produced during the negotiations. Everything was oral, which has led many analysts to conclude no offer was ever even presented to the Palestinians.
In any case, what was on the table? On the issue of borders & security—the Palestinians would eventually control 86% of the West Bank in 20 years time. Israel would retain control over much of the Jordan Valley and the Jordan river shoreline, multiple militant settler compounds and settlements in Hebron and Qiryat Arba, as well as the West Bank’s airspace & groundwater. Israel would retain major settlement blocs that effectively divide the West Bank into three sections. Israel would also reserve the right to deploy the Israeli army in the West Bank in case of an emergency. The word “emergency” was not defined.
There were many red flags to the Palestinians. Previous Israeli leaders insisted they alone had the right to define and interpret the meaning of the words of the agreements. Israel’s proposed twenty-year timeline to resolve all of the final status issues was peculiar. After all, Oslo’s five-year time horizon gave bad actors on both sides ample opportunity to spoil the agreement. A twenty-year time horizon would exacerbate that risk, almost comically so. The Palestinian entity would lack territorial contiguity within the West Bank and between Gaza and the West Bank. Barak’s proposal would enable Israel to easily divide the West Bank into three sections. What the Oslo years taught the Palestinians was that if Israel could encircle, confine and sever Palestinians from one another, destroying the fabric of life in Palestine, it would. In fact, that was standard operating occupation procedure for years during the 1990s: Israel imposed lockdowns on Palestinians in the occupied territories for 17 days in 1993, 64 days in 1994, 84 days in 1995, 90 days in 1996 and 57 days in 1997.