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The Oslo Negotiations:
From the Clinton Initiative to the end of Taba.
by Arthur Bierman

This is the last of a series of five articles dealing with the final status negotiations of the Oslo Peace Process. Beginning with the Camp David summit of July 2000, and proceeding through the Al-Aqsa Intifada to Clinton's December 23rd "bridging proposal, " the first four studies demonstrated the crucial role played by a particular package of demands which the Palestinians repeatedly advanced as their non-negotiable objectives.

Citing UN resolutions 242 and 338, the Palestinians demanded the creation of a state occupying all of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Pointing to 242, they also demanded sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Western Wall complex.and citing UN resolution 194, they demanded Israel's agreement to the unlimited right of return of refugees. Of all these demands it is the last two which have proved to be most intractable.

As became apparent already at Camp David, the Palestinians not only rejected all Israeli and US attempts to limit Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount/ Western Wall complex but went so far as to deny any past Jewish connection to Jerusalem. This flagrant denial of history was illustrated by Arafat's repeated assertion that no Jewish temple had ever stood on the Temple Mount. While perhaps a laughably bizarre claim, it must be taken seriously for the same reason that other bizarre claims -- Jewish responsibility for 9/11; Jewish invention of the holocaust myth, Jewish attempt to dominate the world -- must be taken seriously. Such canards have shown to have significant and often frightening implications. In this particular case, the Palestinian denial of any Jewish connection to Jerusalem suggests a dangerous attempt to condemn the Jewish state as an illegitimate regional entity,.

This pessimistic reading of Palestinian intentions is reinforced by their demand for the unlimited right of return of refugees. Given the existence of between 3.5 and 5 million refugees, the implementation of this demand would have soon destroyed the Jewish character of a state already home to 1.2 million Arabs and 5.2 million Jews. I have argued in three of these studies that it was Palestinian refusal to compromise on these two demands which caused the failure of Camp David as well as Arafat's rejection of Clinton's December initiative. As to the fourth study-- it concluded that it was Arafat's recognition that the Oslo negotiations could never compel Israel's acceptance of his package of minimum demands which moved him to launch the second intifada -- in the not unreasonable hope that a combination of sustained violence and diplomatic pressure might force Israel to accept a settlement so contrary to its national interests.

Having brought our investigation of the Oslo negotiations up to January 2nd, 2001, the day Arafat effectively rejected the Clinton initiative, we now turn to examine the last period of the Oslo peace process . I am referring to those five weeks between January 3rd and Sharon's February 6th electoral victory during which Israel and the PA made a last, final attempt at resolving their long standing differences.

Arafat's response to Clinton's December proposal left unresolved the question whether Israel and the Palestinians should resume the final status negotiations the Intifada had so violently interrupted. There was no shortage of voices in both camps that counseled against such resumption. Among the Palestinians, Hamas and Islamic Jihad argued strongly against any compromise and for unrestrained warfare ; as to the the Israelis, Sharon ran against Barak on a platform that advocated an immediate end to all Oslo negotiations

Among the three main players, Arafat, Barak and Clinton, only the latter was a convinced proponent of continued negotiations. For not only did Clinton persist in encouraging the two protagonists to confront, and hopefully, to negotiate away their differences, but he also continued to make high ranking American officials available for assistance even during these final few weeks of his administration. His efforts were sustained by his conviction that his December proposal, though encountering serious objections from the Palestinians, and less serious reservations from the Israelis, was still the best compromise available to both sides. As he put the matter on January 7, 2001:

"Let me say, those who believe that my ideas can be altered to one's party's exclusive benefit are mistaken. I think to press for more will produce less. There can be no peace without compromise. Now, I don't ask Israelis or Palestinians to agree with everything I said. If they can come up with a completely different agreement, it would suit me just fine. But I doubt it." (1)

The other two leaders were much less sanguine about continued negotiations. Barak had been reluctant to meet with Arafat ever since the outbreak of the second Intifada, and Arafat's rejection of Clinton's December initiative had only intensified his skepticism about Palestinian intentions. He therefore questioned the utility of further negotiations, and would probably have refused to resume them, had it not been for two countervailing pressures. The first came from the Clinton administration and the second from some members of Barak's own parliamentary faction, associates like Beilin and Ben-Ami, who wanted to explore every possible approach for a peace settlement before the government's term ended on February 6th. Not only did they appeal to the overriding importance of settling the century old dispute, but they also argued that only such a last minute agreement could prevent Sharon 's victory. Bowing to this combined pressure, Barak authorized the resumption of negotiations, a decision he publicly affirmed in his January 8th address to the Council on Foreign Relations. Announcing his commitment to the frameworks agreed to "in Madrid, Oslo and Sharm el-Sheikh" he told the Council that "we are determined to achieve agreement on all outstanding issues relating to the permanent status." (2)

How about the Palestinian leadership? It was under great pressure from domestic militant factions, certainly from opposition groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also from its own Fatah movement, to reject further negotiations and concentrate its energies upon winning the intifada. But pushing it in the opposite direction was the Clinton administration, which hoped, if no longer for a real peace settlement but at least for some "declaration of principles", which would summarize whatever partial agreement had been achieved during last year's negotiations. In fact, the White House was even willing at this late date to send Dennis Ross to the region to expedite such a development but the proposal encountered such a negative Palestinian response that it was soon abandoned.

Some of the Palestinian objections were personal --not only was Dennis Ross Jewish but he was also accused of being firmly committed to Israeli interests. The major objections, however, were ideological. The Palestinian leadership was still insisting upon that same package of demands which had led to Camp David's failure and inspired the second intifada. The barrage of criticism was led by PLO chief negotiator Abed Rabbo who charged Ross on January 6th with trying to "trick" the Palestinians into abandoning "the most important thing we possess, namely our rights, which are guaranteed by international legitimacy." And, lest there be any confusion as to which guaranteed "rights" he was referring to, Abed Rabbo listed them as "rights in Jerusalem, al-Haram, the right of the refugees, and our sovereignty over our land within the June 4, 1967 borders." He then dismissed Ross's mission by claiming that "any negotiations in the coming days, which will be conducted in this climate fraught with tricks and overt plotting, will not be serious at all."(3)

Abed Rabbo's harsh indictment of Ross's, and more generally, of the Clinton administration's, intentions were seconded the next day by Salim al-Za'nun, speaker of the Palestine National Council, who claimed that the "United States completely supports the Israeli position" and accused US Secretary of State Albright of having "contacted some 35 foreign ministers ...to place the blame on the Palestinians for not accepting the US proposals." (4) Like Abed Rabbo, he reaffirmed the "constant Palestinian stand that was expressed at the second Camp David summit and that was based on rejecting any concessions concerning the issue of the Palestinian refugees."

To be specific, the Palestinians were still insisting "on the need to implement UN Resolution 194, which affirms the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and to receive compensation." A very similar position was taken by the more moderate Jerusalem Al-Quds which published an editorial, accusing the Clinton administration of having harbored "unrealistic views and inaccurate calculations." Specifically, the editorial charged that "some US and Israeli quarters entertained the illusion that the issue of the refugees might be liquidated through offers of deficient sovereignty over the Arab quarters in Jerusalem or on the buildings of the al-Haram al-Sharif, not over what lies beneath them." (5)

Finally, on January 9, 2001 the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department issued a lengthy statement which presented the Palestinian position on future negotiations. What the PLO desired was "an unambiguous and comprehensive permanent status agreement with Israel that addresses each issue of contention in sufficient detail to facilitate immediate implementation without further negotiations." (My emphasis) As to the content of such a comprehensive agreement, the document pointed to UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and UN General Assembly Resolution 194, and then argued that "at this late stage in the process, what is required is the implementation of these resolutions, which can only be achieved through the conclusion of a detailed agreement that imposes clear obligations on the parties and sets out the mechanisms by which they will be implemented." (My emphasis) (6)

But since these three UN resolutions, at least as interpreted by the PLO, validated Arafat's package of minimum demands, the Palestinians were in fact demanding that all future peace negotiations be confined to implementing demands which were unacceptable to even the most accommodating Israeli government. The PLO had effectively repudiated the substance of Clinton's December 23rd proposals.

We mentioned earlier that the administration had planned to dispatch Dennis Ross to the region, but then delayed, and finally canceled his trip in response to the hostile Palestinian reaction. But Clinton did send CIA director George Tenet to the Mideast to revive Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. (7) On January 7, Tenet met in Cairo with Avi Dichter, director of Israel's military intelligence, and his Palestinian counterparts, Jibril Rajoub and Muhammad Dahlan. According to French journalist Charles Enderlin, the two sides agreed to a four point plan designed to reduce violence and, at the same time, ease Israeli restrictions upon Palestinian mobility. (8). But Palestinian adherence was soon thrown into doubt by Dahlan's comment that the PA "refused to renew security cooperation with Israel until it stopped its 'aggression'. " (9) In fact, this plan was never executed.

***

In the light of Palestinian insistence that future negotiations be limited to implementing the three UN "resolutions of international legitimacy", considering, furthermore, the ongoing intifada, with its daily quota of violent incidents and given also the not unreasonable argument that Barak's caretaker government had no moral authority to pursue significant negotiations, it would not have been surprising had Barak decided to abandon all further efforts to advance the peace process. He might well have done so, had it not been for the previously mentioned pressure from Washington and from some members of his own "peace cabinet," as well as for his own hope that such negotiations might, if not resolve the dispute, at least reduce the amount of violence afflicting the two communities. So, while refusing his personal participation, Barak did allow some leading members of his cabinet to begin negotiations with a small Palestinian delegation. It was even hoped that such talks, if they turned out to be productive, could evolve into more extensive marathon negotiations. (10)

The first session, which had been scheduled for the early morning hours of January 12th at the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel, got off to a bad start because of Abed Rabbo's demand, only a short time earlier, that Barak be indicted as war criminal. (11) Since Abed Rabbo was one of the Palestinian negotiators, the Israelis refused to begin the talks unless he retract his inflammatory demand -- a request the Palestinian official finally granted at the end of an hour long acrimonious session.

During the next few days the two delegations held three bilateral sessions, one in Gaza city, one in Jerusalem and one again at the Erez crossing, but made little progress -- except for confirming that the Palestinians wanted to implement the three U.N. resolutions while the Israelis preferred Clinton's parameters. (12) The impasse was broken on January 16, when Ben Ami, while meeting in Cairo with Arafat and Mubarak, proposed convening a marathon conference before Barak's term expired and Arafat, in agreement, suggested Taba as an appropriate setting. (13) It was to be a strictly bilateral conference, with no international, or even American presence. (The EU sent a representative, Miguel Moratinos, who, however, was not allowed into the working sessions..) Barak again refused to participate, but selected a delegation consisting largely of those of his associates most willing to compromise -- Shlomo Ben- Ami, Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid. He did, however, also announce three principles to guide his delegation: (14)

"(1) Israel will never allow the right of Palestinian refugees to return to inside the State of Israel."
"(2) Prime Minister Barak will not sign any document which transfers sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the Palestinians."

"(3) Israel insists that in any settlement 80% of the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza will be in settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty."

The first and third guideline echoed Clinton's December 23rd proposal --and the second would also have been in agreement if interpreted as stating that Israel rejected any unilateral Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Granting this last caveat, one can therefore view Barak's guidelines as consistent with Clinton's December proposal.

While there was no official Palestinian response to this Israeli document, two days later a Palestinian political scientist published an article which claimed that the three guidelines violated International Law, in particular UN resolutions 194, 242, 338 and 3236, the Fourth Geneva Convention and numerous other resolutions of the Security Council "condemning Israeli policies in Jerusalem." (15) Since this argument echoed the Palestinian package of minimum demands it can well be seen as the PA's response to Barak's guidelines.

***

The conference began on January 21st, was suspended by Barak on January 23rd because of the murder of two Israeli civilians in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, resumed late on January 24th, and adjourned on January 27th. The actual negotiations were carried out by four working groups, dealing respectively with borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security. As to Taba's outcome -- while the delegates were unable to reach an agreement on any of these four items, they did issue a closing statement, which announced that "they have never been closer to reaching an agreement ."(16) It was an extremely positive evaluation which, while cherished by many for its optimism, has also been criticized for exaggerating Taba's achievements. (17)

The rest of this study is devoted to a more detailed examination of the conference.

***

What really happened at Taba?

It is difficult to answer this question with absolute certainty for the following reasons:

-- Taba's four work groups did not keep minutes of their proceedings.

-- Aside for the closing statement cited above, the two parties did not agree upon any other document.

-- Finally, since neither Arafat nor Barak participated in the Taba meeting, we will never know whether any of the concessions granted by individual negotiators during the course of the conference, would have been approved by the two leaders.

We must not conclude, however, that the Taba conference is therefore shrouded in mystery. In fact, we know a considerable amount about its proceedings, with some information derived from documents presented to the conference by one of the two parties, with some knowledge gained from post-conference reports by members of the two delegations and finally, from a lengthy report by EU representative Miguel Moratinos. This diplomat stayed at Taba during the whole conference, but did not participate in the working sessions. He did, however, interview the delegates after each session, and had the final document checked, and approved, by at least some Israeli and Palestinian delegates after the conference ended.

***

Let us begin with the territorial problem.

The Israeli delegation introduced a map at the very beginning of Taba which outlined its view of what the borders of the Palestinian state should look like. While never officially released, the map was published in the spring of 2001 by Gush Shalom, Israel's human rights and peace organization as well as by the Washington based Foundation for Middle East Peace.(FMEP) and can be viewed on these two websites. (18) Let me summarize its major features:

It granted the whole Gaza Strip and about 95% of the West Bank to the projected Palestinian state, the annexed territory to consist of three settlement blocks adjacent to the green line, and dropped also Israel's earlier demand for temporary (20 year) control of the Jordan Valley To compensate the Palestinians for the annexed territory, Israel proposed transferring to them an unspecified slice of Israeli territory amounting to between 1% and 2% of the West Bank. As can be seen from the map the proposed Palestinian West Bank would be completely contiguous. Finally, as to the number of abandoned settlements and displaced settlers, the FMEP analysis claimed that " more than one third of Israeli settlers, living in 87 West Bank settlements, would have to be evacuated."
It should be noted that this Israeli offer implemented Clinton's December proposal, with one notable exception --accepting the Foundation's analysis, the percent of Israeli settlers to be evacuated significantly exceeded Clinton's proposed 20% figure. I have no explanation for this violation of Barak's third guideline.

For the first time in the history of the Oslo negotiations, the Palestinians offered a map which presented their position on borders and settlements. Since, to my best knowledge, no public version of this map exists, I am reduced to citing two verbal descriptions. Here is a brief summary by the Foundation For Middle East Peace:

"The Abu Ala map illustrated three important Palestinian objectives: reducing the area to be annexed by Israel to twice the settlement's current built up areas; minimizing the number of West Bank Palestinians to be annexed by Israel from more than 20,000 projected by Israel's Taba map to practically zero; rejecting the annexation of any part of the Jerusalem area settlements of Ma'ale Adumim or Givat Ze'ev." (19)

A more negative description was given by Shlomo Ben-Ami, one of Israel's delegates to the Taba conference, in a September 2001 interview:(20)

"They (the Palestinians) presented a counter-map that totally eroded the three already shrunken (settlement) blocs and effectively they voided the whole bloc concept of content. According to their map, only a few settlements would remain, which would be dependent on thin strings of narrow access roads. A calculation we made showed that all they agreed to give us was 2.34%" (21)

As one might have expected. the Palestinian proposal would have had a large impact upon Jewish West Bank settlers and settlements. This point was stressed by Makovsky:

"According to this map, Israel was to evacuate 130 out of 146 settlements, which would displace 100,00 to 120,000 of the 180,000 West Bank settlers - three to four times the number contemplated by Clinton and Barak."(22)

Though willing to yield some West Bank territory, the Palestinians insisted that they be compensated for all such lost land by Israeli territory "equal in area and value. " This meant that their proposed Palestinian state would have occupied all of the Gaza Strip as well as territory amounting to 100% of the West Bank.

A comparison of the Israeli and Palestinian proposals yields the following: The Israeli map proposed to annex three contiguous settlement blocks amounting to about 5% of the West Bank, while the Palestinian map allowed for an Israeli annexation of about 2.5% of the West Bank, the annexed territory consisting of Jewish settlements in only two of the blocks, but not of the land between the settlements except for narrow access roads. In compensation for the annexed territory, the Israelis proposed granting the Palestinians unspecified Israeli territory amounting to between 1% to 2% of the West Bank area, while the Palestinians wanted to receive Israeli territory amounting to 2.5% of the West Bank and equal in value to that annexed by Israel.

These then were the two territorial proposals at the opening of the Taba conference. Was there any movement by either side during the negotiations? As far as I am able to tell from all post-conference accounts, there was none. Nor, for that matter, was either side particularly enthusiastic about the final outcome of the territorial negotiations. Thus Ben-Ami, in his September 2001 interview, invidiously compared the significant concessions Israel had offered since Camp David with the Palestinian refusal to grant anything but one minor territorial concession. As to the Palestinians, Abu Ala, in an equally unenthusiastic report to his constituency, summarized the territorial negotiations as follows:

"The Land: There was bickering and clashes in the negotiations more than in the past. Perhaps some progress was made on the Israeli position from the positions they used to raise in the past." (23)

***

Consider next the question of East Jerusalem. Here three issues had to be considered: The first concerned the disposition of the Temple Mount/ Western Wall complex; the second concerned control over other East Jerusalem sites sacred to one or more of the monotheistic faiths , and the third concerned sovereignty over the various residential neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

The Israeli delegation entered the Taba conference advocating implementation of the relevant provisions of Clinton's December 23rd initiative. This meant , granting Israel sovereignty over the Jewish and Armenian quarters of East Jerusalem and granting the Palestinians sovereignty over the Arab quarter, with the latter becoming Al-Quds, the capital of their new state. As for the holy sites, the Israelis proposed various possible forms of shared sovereignty, some involving only Israel and the Palestinians, others involving the United Nations or some other groups of nations. Finally, concerning the highly charged issue of the Temple Mount and Western Wall, Clinton had proposed, and the Israelis had accepted, that the Palestinians acquire sovereignty over the surface structures, i.e. the Plaza and the Al-Aqsa mosque, but that the Israelis acquire rights of ownership underneath the Plaza - where the two Jewish temples had stood - as well as over the exposed portion of the Western Wall, also called the Wailing Wall.

As expected, the Palestinian delegation based its opening position upon UN resolution 242 which, at least according to its interpretation, required an Israeli withdrawal to its June 4, 1967 borders -- and would therefore have given the Palestinian sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including over all of its holy sites. Was there any movement by the end of the negotiations? Let me summarize the outcome, at least as extracted from the Moratinos document (24)

On East Jerusalem neighborhoods: Both sides accepted the principle that the Palestinians would have sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods and Israel would have sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods - both those in the Old City as well as new ones established in East Jerusalem proper, "but not Jebal Abu Ghneim and Ras al-Amud."

On the Temple Mount/Western Wall complex: Israel continued to insist upon some manner of shared sovereignty or, or some kind of international control, either via the United Nations or some other consortium of governments. At the least, it wanted "vertically shared sovereignty" as mentioned above. The Palestinians continued to reject any such shared sovereignty over the Temple Mount and as to the Western Wall, the most they were willing to concede was possible Jewish sovereignty over the Wailing Wall.

Concerning other sacred sites: Israel continued to demand some "special regime," involving either international supervision or joint sovereignty, while the Palestinians persisted in demanding total sovereignty over these parts of East Jerusalem.
In short, by the end of Taba the Palestinians were willing to concede Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and, perhaps, over the Wailing Wall. This conclusion, drawn from the Moratinos document, is supported by Palestinian negotiator Hasan Asfour who, nine months after the conference, in an indignant reply to Ben Ami's claim of Palestinian rejectionism at Taba, asked the following rhetorical question:

"Maybe you [Ben Ami] saw our agreement to transfer to you sovereignty of the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall (Sur al-Buraq) in East Jerusalem, occupied since 1967, as a sign of the Palestinian lust for expansion and a renunciation of partnership." (25)

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