During the entire Camp David II talks and at Taba. Every single concession was made by the Palestinians. Israel did not offer even one single concession.
Now if one defines everything Israel wants even if it is not entitled to it. Then I suppose Israel offered concessions.
But if ones' frame of reference is "what is Israel entitled to under international law"? All concession were offered by the Palestinians. And Israel offered exactly ZERO concessions.
Here is a one and a half-hour debate between Professor Norman Finkelstein and Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo-Ben-Ami - who was lead negotiator for Israel at Camp David and Taba. This was originally carried on Democracy Now in February 2007:
left click to listen online or right click and press "save target as" to download:
http://www.archive.org/download/dn-finkelstein-benami/dn-finkelstein-benami_64kb.mp3 .
The offers put forward By Prime Minister Barak where framed as "take it our leave it offer"
Debunking a Middle East myth: Yasser Arafat wasn't solely to blame for the collapse of Camp David II -- link:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/48512 "The Camp David offer that was put on the table as the most Israel would give provided for a continued Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, a lopsided land swap that left the major settlement blocs intact and cutting deep into the West Bank, virtually no accommodation on refugees and Israeli sovereignty in almost all of East Jerusalem. Although both Clinton and the Israeli negotiators would dramatically improve this offer, it was presented to Arafat as a final, take-it-or-leave-it offer.
So Arafat chose to "leave it." Subsequent events made it clear that Israel could have gone farther. The fact that Arafat didn't respond with any kind of counter-offer was a grave error on his part, and opened the door to Clinton and Barak going back on their word not to blame the failure on him. But in truth, the summit failed because of missteps by all the parties. No one comes out of an honest assessment of Camp David looking good.
But since then, this has been distorted into Arafat leaving Camp David and starting the second intifada. As if Ariel Sharon's deliberate provocation of going to the Temple Mount with an enormous entourage of armed police and soldiers had nothing to do with it. As if the Israeli soldiers' lethal response to stone-throwers the following day had nothing to do with it. On the other side, the myth that Arafat was trapped by the Israelis and Americans and was simply their helpless victim ignores Arafat's own role in creating false expectations. It ignores the years of weapons smuggling into the Occupied Territories in anticipation of a more violent uprising than the first intifada. And it ignores the widespread Palestinian disappointment and disillusionment in the Arafat-led PA and its corruption, cronyism and human rights abuses which worsened the already terrible Palestinian economic plight and helped to make the Territories a powder keg of rage and hopelessness.
Camp David has taught all the wrong lessons. What should have been learned from it was that the Israeli, Palestinian and American leadership have all failed to make a just peace possible. Until leaders weigh both sides equally, recognize that justice must be done for all, understand the political climates of both sides and deal with these difficult matters in a more realistic fashion, such failure will only be repeated.
____________
The Myth of the Generous Offer
Distorting the Camp David negotiations By Seth Ackerman
-- link:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1113 "The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic waste dump.
Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new “independent state” would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called “bypass roads” that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel"
snip:"In April 2002, the countries of the Arab League--from moderate Jordan to hardline Iraq--unanimously agreed on a Saudi peace plan centering around full peace, recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders as well as a "just resolution" to the refugee issue. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath declared himself "delighted" with the plan. "The proposal constitutes the best terms of reference for our political struggle," he told the Jordan Times (3/28/02)."
____________
It does appear however that progress was made a Taba, Egypt in January 2001. However, Israel unilateral broke off the talks on the Eve of their upcoming election.
link to the European Union notes which have been confirmed by the Israeli and Palestinian delegation and being an accurate record of what happened at Taba in January 2001:
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/papers/moratinos.html"This document, whose main points have been approved by the Taba negotiators as an accurate description of the discussions, casts additional doubts on the prevailing assumption that Ehud Barak "exposed Yasser Arafat's true face." It is true that on most of the issues discussed during that wintry week of negotiations, sizable gaps remain. Yet almost every line is redolent of the effort to find a compromise that would be acceptable to both sides. It is hard to escape the thought that if the negotiations at Camp David six months earlier had been conducted with equal seriousness, the intifada might never have erupted. And perhaps, if Barak had not waited until the final weeks before the election, and had instead sent his senior representatives to that southern hotel earlier, the violence might never have broken out."
link to European Union Notes.
link:
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/papers/moratinos.html---
At the time of the talks Ariel Sharon was at least 16 point ahead in all leading Israeli opinion polls to become the new Israeli Prime Minister. And the election was only days away. However, Mr. Sharon made it absolutely clear that he would not honor any such treaty witht he Palestinians:
Sharon calls peace talks a campaign ploy by Barak
Likud leader says he won't comply with latest agreements
January 28, 2001
Web posted at: 1:42 p.m. EST (1842 GMT)
"Sharon leads Barak by 16 to 20 percentage points in opinion polls that have changed little in recent weeks." links:
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/01/28/mideast.01/index.htmlhttp://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/01/27/mideast.01/index.html.
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