Was Arafat right to reject the 2000 Camp David agreements?

[Poppytry]

I think its a difficult decision. A part of me thinks he should have just accepted (or at least produced a counter argument) and worked on giving the Palestinian state more freedom from Israel over time.

But another part of me believes that the whole process was heavily in favor of Israel. How the hell is a state independent if it is to have permanent foreign military outposts scattered around the country and that Israel holds the right to deploy full military personal in your streets if it feels threatened.

Arafat was also offered something like 94% of the West Bank yet the West Bank was going to be split in two with a sovereign Israeli road passing through giving Israeli citizens access to the Dead Sea.

The new Palestinian State would also be demilitarized, have no control over its own air space and effectively be treated as an Israeli colony. Arafat proposed that East Jerusalem except the quarter with the Israeli holy sites be under full Palestinian Sovereignty but this too was rejected.

However despite the sheer bias of the proposals I cannot help but think would Palestinians lives in the Gaza Strip and West Bank be better of than it is now? And I believe the answer to that is yes.

Whats your views?

[Dr Mindbender]

I'm not an expert on the situation, but Arafat was right to reject any deal that would greatly compromise the well being, dignity or national autonomy of the Palestinian people. If Israel was allowed to control it's airspace and resources, any Palestinian state would be irrelevant.

Unfortunately i'm not optimistic enough to see a resolution that involves Palestine being rightfully restored to the way it was before the 1946 British mandate.

[Steve_j]

It was not just the issue of airspace and border control but also (amongst other things) a demilitarized nation with hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in armed communities who are only answerable to the foreign law of which they originate.

Whilst it seems they would have been better off in many respects, it seems to me it was still a case of a racist occupation, just in another disguise.

[Absolut]

Whilst it seems they would have been better off in many respects, it seems to me it was still a case of a racist occupation, just in another disguise.

I dont think they wouldve been that much better off. The Palestinian state wouldve been completely under the control of the Israelis, something that really hasnt been that beneficial for the Palestinian people so far. Its not only the fact that the Israelis would maintain a constant military presence, for example the proposed Palestinian state wouldve been completely cut off from any water supplies (which in turn would be controlled by Israel). I dont think it wouldve been very different from what it is today, should he have accepted.

I think Arafat made the right choice when he turned down the proposal.

[Yehuda Stern]

Arafat was certainly right to reject that deal, for reasons people have already stated. But I would like to indicate that Arafat didn't reject it out of his own accord - he did so because of the massive pressure of the Palestinian masses. Left to its own devices, the Palestinian bourgeoisie sells out the struggle time and time again. Only the mass pressure forces it to pretend to really fight Israel. That is the reason for contradictory statements regarding peace that people like Arafat and Abu Mazen have made over the years - they find themselves forced to speak from both sides of their mouths.

[Andropov]

As was stated Arafat was perfectly right to reject the deal especially when the Matrix plan was in full swing in the West Bank.
But as Yehuda stated it wasnt out of concern for the Palestinians, it was pure self interest.
Arafat would have been lynched by the people if he came back with that humiliation of a "treaty".
Its hard to see the conflict ever being "resolved" in this current context until Israel has fully ethnically cleansed the Palestinian territories.
Every "peace deal" and farce of an agreement is just a charade for the west's public opinion on the road to Israels eventual eradication of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Its indeed a pessimistic outlook but unfortunately it is what I see as its only eventual outcome in the current context.

[benhur]

He was right to reject the deal. Look how much the Palestinian struggle has progressed now.

[Andropov]

He was right to reject the deal. Look how much the Palestinian struggle has progressed now.
So the Palestinian struggle would have been advanced from its current position if Arafat had accepted that deal?

[Yehuda Stern]

In 1984, the labor party, graveyard of most of Zionist 'socialism' and the party from which most of today's Zionist left sprang, had in its program these "four no's":


1) No to a Palestinian state, 2) No negotiation with the P.L.O., 3) No return to the 1967 borders, and 4) No removal of any settlements from the occupied territories.

Today, even the right-wing's rhetoric has to accept that there is an occupation and that the settlements will one day have to be removed. The Israeli army has been removed from Gaza. The old collaborationist conservative leaders have been overthrown; there are real political parties in Palestine now.

These are extremely limited democratic gains, as we in the ISL have indicated time and time again. However, what the Palestinians have gained by struggle is a thousand times better than the massacres wrought on Palestinians every time they listen to the advice of first world chauvinists to make peace with Israel.

[Hyacinth]

Interesting article (http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/12/myth-of-hamas-rejectionism.html) on the subject from Lenin's Tomb:



[As] [f]ormer Clinton aide Robert Malley pointed out (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15502) that far from Arafat rejecting a 'generous offer' from Israel (as has been alleged), "it could be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city's history [and] security guaranteed by a US-led international presence".