Speaker unverified: commitment

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…Even though I agree, I’ve thought about it a lot and I agree with Marine’s analysis. I’m not really in the business of punditry. I’d rather look at the historical record where I feel more comfortable and I feel on terra firma. So I’d like to just go through that. I don’t quite, I agree and I disagree with Mouin on the ’73 issue. After the 1973 war, it was clear that Israel was surprised by what happened during the war, and it took a big hit. The estimates are… I don’t know what numbers you used, but I hear between two and 3000 Israeli soldiers were killed during the 19- It was 2,500. Yeah, 27. Yeah. Okay, so I got it right. I read different numbers. That’s a very large number of Israelis who were killed. There were moments at the beginning of the war where there was a fear that this might be it. There wasn’t. No. The Israelis fear- This is nonsense. Everybody forgets Israel’s atomic weaponry. I know, but- So how could they have been defeated? Because Dayan expressed- Didn’t Dayan talk about the collapse of the third temple? He did, but it was hysterical and silly because Israel had weapons. They wanted to stop the Syrians or the Egyptians. But we’re talking about perceptions. I can’t tell you if he was hysterical or not. No. He was. For a day, he was hysterical. I wasn’t in the same room with him. For a day, he was hysterical. But I’m just saying, let’s not bog down on that. The war is over and when President Carter comes into power… Carter was an extremely smart guy. Jimmy Carter, extremely smart guy, and he was very fixed on details. He was probably the most impressive of modern American presidents, in my opinion, by a wide margin. And he was determined to resolve the conflict on a big scale, on the Arab-Israeli scale. On the Palestinian issue, he wouldn’t go past what he called a Palestinian homeland. He wouldn’t accept- Palestinian national home. On the Palestinian national home. He wouldn’t go as far as a Palestinian state. I’m not going to go into the details of that. I don’t think realistically, given the political balance of forces that was going to happen, but that’s a separate issue. Let’s get to the issue at hand, namely, what is the obstacle or what has been the obstacle since the early 1970s? Since roughly 1974, the Palestinians have accepted the two states settlement and the June 1967 border. Now as more pressure was exerted on Israel because the Palestinians seemed reasonable, the Israelis, to quote the Israeli political scientist, Avner Yaniv, he since passed from the scene. He said… Yaniv in his book, Dilemmas of Security, he said that the big Israeli fear was what he called the Palestinian peace offensive. olitical scientist, Avner Yaniv, he since passed from the scene. He said… Yaniv in his book, Dilemmas of Security, he said that the big Israeli fear was what he called the Palestinian peace offensive. That was their worry that the Palestinians were becoming too moderate. And unless you understand that, you can’t understand the June 1982 Lebanon war. The purpose of the June 1982 Lebanon war was to liquidate the PLO in Southern Lebanon because they were too moderate the Palestinian peace offensive. I’m going to have to fast-forward. There are many events. There was the First Intifada, then there’s the Oslo Accord, and let’s now go to the heart of the issue, namely the 2000-2001 negotiations. Well, the negotiations are divided into three parts for the sake of listeners. There’s Camp David in July 2000, there are the Clinton parameters in December 2000, and then there are negotiations in Taba in Egypt in 2001. Those are the three phases. Now, I have studied the record probably to the point of insanity because there are so many details you have to master. I’ll vouch for that, the insanity part, yeah. Actually, I will vouch for it. I will personally vouch for it. There is one extensive record from that whole period, from 2000 to you could say 2007, and that is what came to be called the Palestine Papers, which were about 15,000 pages of all the records of the negotiations. I have read through all of them, every single page, and this is what I find. If you look at Shlomo Ben-Ami’s book, which I have with me, Prophets Without Honor, it’s his last book. He says, “Going into Camp David…” That means July, going into Camp David, July 2000, he said the Israelis were willing to return about… Not return. But will withdraw from- Relinquish. Relinquish. 92% of the West Bank. Ben-Ami was at Camp David. Yeah. Then he was at Taba. Oh, yeah. He was also at Camp David. Israel wanted to keep all the major settlement blocks. It wanted to keep roughly 8% of the West Bank. They were allowing for… You put it at 84 to 90% in your books. They put it at roughly 92%. Israel was willing to give up. It also depends how you calculate. It depends what stage at Camp David because there were two weeks. I’ll get to that. The proposals changed during those two weeks. So Israel wants to keep all the major settlement blocks. Means the border area of the West Bank. Well, not the border. We have Ari’el, we have Ma’ale Adumim. We have, as Condoleezza Rice called Ari’el, she said it was a dagger into the heart of the West Bank. So they want to keep 8% of the land. They want to keep the settlement blocks. They want to keep 80% of the settlers. They will not budge an inch on the question of refugees. To quote Ehud Barak in the article he co-authored with you in the New York review of books, “We will accept…” And I think the quote’s accurate. “No moral, legal or historical responsibility for what happened to the refugees.” So forget about even allowing refugees to return. We accept no moral, legal or historical responsibility for the refugees. And on Jerusalem, they wanted to keep large parts of Jerusalem. Now, how do we judge who is reasonable and who is not? return. We accept no moral, legal or historical responsibility for the refugees. And on Jerusalem, they wanted to keep large parts of Jerusalem. Now, how do we judge who is reasonable and who is not? Ben-Ami says, “I think the Israeli offer was reasonable.” That’s how he sees it. But what is the standard of reasonable? My standard is what does international law say? International law says the settlements are illegal. Israel wants to keep all the settlement blocks. 15 judges, all 15 in the wall decision in July 2004, all 15 judges, including the American judge, Buergenthal ruled the settlements are illegal under international law. They want to keep 80% of the settlers under international law. All the settlers are illegal in the West Bank. They want to keep large parts of East Jerusalem. But under international law, East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. That’s what the international- Well, not Palestinian, because there was no Palestine. Excuse me. Okay. There’s never been a Palestinian state. How could it be Palestinian? I listened patiently to you. Sorry. Under international law, if you read the decision, all territory, the 2004 wall decision, all territory beyond the green line, which includes East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. With the exception of the Golan Heights. According to the International Court of Justice, the designated unit for Palestinian self-determination, and they deny any right whatsoever on the right of return. I don’t want to go into the details now. The maximum formal offer was by Ehud Omar in 2008. He offered 5,000 refugees could return under what was called family reunification, 5,000, in the course of five years, and no recognition of any Israeli responsibility. So if you use as the baseline what the UN General Assembly has said and what the International Court of Justice has said, if you use that baseline, international law, by that baseline, all the concessions came from the Palestinian side. Every single concession came from the Palestinian side. None came from the Israeli side. They may have accepted less than what they wanted, but it was still beyond what international law allocated to them. Now you say- Allocated to the Palestinians. Allocated to Palestinians, yes. Thank you for the clarification. Now about Arafat, like the Mufti, never liked the guy. I think that was one of the only disagreements Mouin and I had. When Arafat passed, you were a little sentimental. I was not. I never liked the guy. But politics, you don’t have to like the guy. There was no question. Nobody argues it that whenever the negotiation started up, the Palestinians just kept saying the same things. No. No. They kept saying no.…

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