Note: This morning the Chicago Sun-Times published my response to columnist Steve Huntley's piece discussing the current diplomatic paralysis between Israel and Palestine. Below is the original version I wrote, which I then condensed by 75 percent for submission. I thought I would offer the full version for blog readers seeking more detail. Also, I suggest Huntley's article, which is a good specimen of bad history and misinformation. It's the kind that has dominated discussion of the topic in the United States, but in my view is improving daily. Nevertheless, the myths are still prevalent, easily packed into a few sentences, and are therefore easily promoted, easily reinforced, and easily adopted.
Huntley fails to work within history
Gregory Harms
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley, in his May 11 article "Palestinians fail to work for peace" gives history a wide berth. Setting the tenor for his piece is the following sentence:
"Unfortunately but predictably, the Palestinians show no signs of abandoning the Arab rejectionism that has for decades foreclosed every realistic option to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
A quick look at the diplomatic history reveals a very different story.
In the years after the June 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, three diplomatic proposals were produced: one by the US secretary of state (William Rogers), one by a Swedish diplomat, and one by Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat. Israel rejected all three proposals.
During the Jimmy Carter administration, there were three noteworthy initiatives prior to the Camp David accords (which excluded the Palestinians). In 1976, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian PLO authored a proposal that was sent to the UN Security Council. It met with singular US rejection. The following year, the White House and Moscow issued a joint communique in an attempt to convene a peace conference. Israel rejected the communique. In 1978, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat proposed a two-state peace plan which was conveyed by Illinois congressman Paul Findley. The proposal was instead ignored by the Carter White House.
During the Ronald Reagan years, the White House offered up a meager peace plan in the context of Israel’s operations in Lebanon. Following the Reagan Plan (1982), two more plans were submitted soon after: one by Moscow, and one based on a proposal authored by Saudi Arabia. Israel rejected all three. The US secretary of state (George Shultz) issued another meager plan in 1988. While unpopular with the Palestinians, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir not only rejected it, but voiced rejection of the very concept of "territory for peace."
Throughout that year, the PLO advanced a number of proposals, statements, and documents supporting a two-state solution based on the 1967 boundaries. This flurry of diplomatic activity was dismissed by the Reagan and Bush I White Houses.
Israel did present its own initiative in 1989. Authored by Shamir, the plan suggested continued Israeli occupation, with the Palestinians running their own affairs under Israeli control. While the Palestinians naturally rejected this idea, they were receptive to two subsequent plans based on Shamir’s: one by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one by US secretary of state James Baker. Israel rejected both initiatives - and then scuttled the original.
The Olso cycle from 1993-95 left most of the West Bank ("Area C") to be negotiated later, which explains the continuation of the occupation. It should be pointed out that the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, played a key role in obstructing post-Oslo diplomacy during his 1996-99 tenure.
Finally, at Camp David II in 2000, what was "offered" to Arafat by Prime Minister Ehud Barak was the West Bank broken into separate cantons, leaving the Palestinians with roughly three-fourths of the territory. (The Palestinians had deemed this a nonstarter prior to the talks.) Though Arafat was blamed by Barak and Bill Clinton for the summit’s failure, the US president later admitted that "If [former Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin were alive, I would have gotten an agreement out of Camp David." That Arafat rejected the talks and went home to "wage a terror war" does not stand up to the slightest historical scrutiny.
There is little in Huntley’s essay that is accurate. For example, the Palestinian territories are not "disputed," but illegally occupied. Also, Israel’s alleged 10-month "moratorium" on settlement activity (under Netanyahu in 2010) was exposed as a fraud by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Huntley’s reductive statement that "Hamas terrorists still rule the Gaza Strip" leaves out so much context that it functions as a lie; the grave conditions in Gaza have been architected by Israel, supported by Washington, and should be taken quite seriously. And there is no evidence whatsoever of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Limited space here, however, disallows a more thorough analysis and correction of Huntley’s piece. What is important is to get the history right. When we do, we won’t have to, as Huntley says, "wait for the Palestinians to at long last embrace peace." The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have both affirmed the two-state solution. On the contrary, the wait has been on US-Israeli rejection for 45 years.
Be that as it may, the point here isn’t to assign blame. The point is to move toward resolution of the conflict, which in turn will benefit all involved: Palestine, Israel, and the United States.
There is cause for optimism. We know what a solution will look like. There have been a number of reasonable, workable initiatives put forward in the last decade, all bearing a great deal of similarity with one another. And a majority of Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans - along with the international community - are in favor of a two-state solution. The path forward is clear. Reiterating the standard fallacies and fictions only moves the situation backwards.
