Israel, not Arafat, scuppered Clinton-led peace deal

The 23-year-old mystery over who was responsible for scuppering the so-called peace deal outlined by then US President Bill Clinton has been revealed in newly-released declassified documents from the Israeli state archive. The documents show that it was the Israelis who rejected the “Clinton Parameters” which led ultimately to the breakdown of the “Peace Process”. They were uncovered by Professor Norman Finkelstein.

The US academic is the author of several major books, including Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End. Finkelstein, along with many others, has long disputed the Israeli claim that the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat was responsible for spoiling the deal.

In fact, casting blame on the Palestinians for failed negotiations has been a stock in trade of Israeli propaganda since the creation of the apartheid state, and it was no different in 2000 when Clinton launched his failed bid to strike a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Finkelstein recollected his own position on the matter before revealing details of the Israeli documents which exposed the intransigence of the occupation state that led to the breakdown of Clinton’s peace deal. He said that he had tried to obtain the documents for decades without any success, while speculating about their content.

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The basis of a resolution between Israel and Palestine has been unambiguous since 1967, said the American professor, and are based on various UN Resolutions and international law. “However, on the core issues, the Clinton Parameters amended the international consensus such that all the concessions would have to come from the Palestinian side and none from Israel. Contrary to international law, a portion of the Palestinian West Bank, including much of East Jerusalem, would be forfeited to Israel; a portion of the Israeli settlements inside the Palestinian West Bank would be annexed to Israel; and only a token portion of Palestinian refugees would be permitted to exercise their [legitimate] right of return to Israel.”

According to Finkelstein’s account of the negotiations, the Palestinian team did not reject the Clinton Parameters but, rather, expressed in a detailed, professional memo reservations about them. The Israeli side likewise expressed reservations. In January 2001, Clinton formally announced that both sides had accepted his parameters “with some reservations.” However, when this round of negotiations collapsed at the end of January, both the Americans and Israelis blamed Arafat for the collapse.

“Clinton lied-and so did everyone else,” said Finkelstein, recounting the decade long campaign to pin the blame on Arafat. The documents from the Israeli state archive — “Response of the Government of Israel to the ideas raised by President Clinton regarding the outline of a Framework Agreement on Permanent Status” —show explicitly that Israeli reservations about the Clinton Parameters fell outside the plan that he presented.

The documents expose Israel’s refusal to concede territory to the Palestinians: “The permanent territorial arrangements would have to include annexation that exceeds the numerical territorial scope indicated by the President… The President’s ideas regarding the Old City and Har Habayit [in East Jerusalem] are different from Israel’s position… In the field of security, the Presidential ideas differ from the Israeli ones with regard to the Palestinian police and security force, the mandate of the international force and the monitoring of the non-militarisation of Palestine [etc.].”

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Clinton was called upon to remove any ambiguities in his parameters over the “Right of Return of the refugees”; that is, “any entry of refugees to Israel shall be a matter of sole sovereign Israeli discretion.” Every single Israeli demand exceeded not only what the occupation state was entitled to under international law but also what was offered in the Clinton parameters.

Israel’s culpability for the breakdown of the peace process is just one of many revelations that have come to light following the release of documents from its state archives. Last week, details of how Israel poisoned Palestinian land was uncovered and before that state documents exposed massacres carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinian Christians and Muslims.