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- Monday, July 30, 2001


Not Arafat's Fault?

By WILLIAM SAFIRE



WASHINGTON -- The negotiators of the process that led to the
terrorist war against Israel have independently reached consensus
on how to protect their posteriors: because everybody was
responsible for last year's failure at Camp David, nobody can be
held accountable.

"Many Now Agree," read the front-page New York Times subhead,
"That All the Parties, Not Just Arafat, Were to Blame." As house
contrarian, count me among the many who do not agree that the blame
for the current hostilities can be so soothingly divvied up.

Certainly Ehud Barak's eagerness for a final peace led him to make
concessions far beyond what the people of Israel would have
accepted. And surely Bill Clinton's trust in his own persuasiveness
or desperation for a Nobel Peace Prize drove him to intercede too
aggressively. But it is absurd to buy an Arab spinmeister's notion
that the Camp David talks collapsed because Barak offended Arafat
by paying more attention to Chelsea Clinton at dinner, or President
Clinton was too solicitous of Arafat's ambitious younger aides.

The overriding reason for the war against Israel today is that
Yasir Arafat decided that war was the way to carry out the
often-avowed Palestinian plan. Its first stage is to create a West
Bank state from the Jordan River to the sea with Jerusalem as its
capital. Then, by flooding Israel with "returning" Palestinians,
the plan in its promised final phase would drive the hated Jews
from the Middle East.

Ah, but my distrustful judgment is simplistic, according to the
nuanced line being peddled by rejected Clinton negotiators,
shell-shocked Barak aides and a glad-to-be embattled Arafat. It is
in their common interest to portray the abrupt Arab rejection of
Barak's too-generous offer at Camp David a year ago as merely a
misunderstanding of each other's psychology, compounded by the
unfortunate pressures of democratic elections.

According to the tripartite instant revisionism, the underlying
reason for the failure of the Camp David meeting last July was the
visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount. That is a tricky point
to make because Sharon's visit did not take place until late
September. Here is how the imaginative bashers of the "simplistic
blame game" surmount their calendar problem:

The Oslo peace process did not come apart at Camp David at all,
say the revisionists. Contrary to every press report at the time,
Barak did not "offer the moon" to Arafat he offered only 93
percent of the West Bank, including the strategic Jordan Valley,
and a state with East Jerusalem as its capital. That may have been
more security risk than the Israeli public would have accepted, but
it fell short of "the moon" that Arafat sought.

Not until a meeting in December at the Taba Hilton, run by Israeli
superdove Yossi Beilin, with Arab terror attacks in full swing, did
Barak offer "the moon": 97 percent of the West Bank, air rights
that would lead to denial of Palestinian air space to Israeli
aircraft, and a payoff from the U.S. to Palestinian claimants who
agreed not to migrate to Israel. But that pie in the sky came too
late as the aroused Israeli electorate threw Barak out of office in
the most resounding landslide in its history.

In months to come, as Barak, U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk and the
Palestinian crew sell their books, we will be bombarded with the
revisionist if-onlys. If only Barak had offered the whole moon at
Camp David; if only Clinton had forced Barak to stop all building
within settlements; if only Barak had made Sharon the first Jew to
be barred by Israel from the Temple Mount; if only those foolish
Israeli voters understood the frustration motivating suicide
bombers and had re- elected Barak; if only Clinton could have had a
third term . . .

Do not swallow this speculative re- writing of recent events. By
arguing that peace can be made only by someday adopting Barak's
extreme concessions, revisionists send the unintended message:
struggle on, Palestinians! Violence will wear down the Israeli will
and the full "moon" will shine again. That empty promise invites
unending violence.

Blame is not a game; judgment is not to be avoided or disapproval
diluted by pointing fingers in every direction. Nor is conventional
wisdom always unwise. The leader predominantly to blame for the
campaign of killing was and is Yasir Arafat.