There is a "ferocious battle" going on between Israel and the Palestinians, said Robert Malley at a 7 March 2001 Center briefing. Malley, former special assistant to the president for Arab-Israeli affairs, was not referring to the recent violence in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Instead, he was addressing the "conflicting interpretations of what happened" during the past seven years, and even six months, of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. His discussion focused on U.S. failures in the Oslo process and the weak strategy of the Palestinian negotiators.
Malley began by addressing how Palestinians and Israelis view the recent period of negotiations. For Palestinians, "it was the culmination of seven long years during which Israel never accepted the legitimacy of their demands and the necessity to undo a historic wrong." From the Israeli point of view, the Palestinians "never accepted the necessity of reconciliation, of partition, even of the existence of the Israeli state itself." Malley fears that both groups "will view their interpretation as truth and as fact, and [these interpretations] will soon become unassailable." These viewpoints are problematic considering that "the gloss . . . Palestinians and Israelis put on the past... matters deeply" because it will affect "how they decide to act" now and in the future.
For its part, the U.S. must set the record of its role "if not straight, at least straighter," because ideas of why negotiations failed are perceived as fact rather than as "mere interpretation." Malley noted seven mistakes not an all-inclusive list made by the U.S.
- "We relied... far too heavily on Barak's timetables and tactics," he began. In this case, "the enabler has to stand as guilty as the enabled" because Israel would not have been able to follow through on its ideas "without a green light" from the United States.
- Barak's offers on Jerusalem, settlements, and other sticky issues were "greeted by the U.S. team too often with unwarranted enthusiasm." The U.S. based this on the distance Israel had gone, rather than "the distance that remained . . . to reach an acceptable compromise." By December, the groups came closer to an agreement than ever before, but by then most of Barak's and the United States' "credibility had been wasted."
- The U.S. should have applied more pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians.
- "We were overly distrustful" of the idea of having third parties involved, whether Arab or European. The U.S. insisted on being the only mediator, rather than the main one.
- "We neglected what was happening on the ground." This included Israel's home demolitions and settlement expansion and the Palestinians' promotion of "intolerance." If negotiations were based on land for peace, how could it be achieved when one side took land "on a daily basis" and the other daily "maligned" peace?
- "We were dragged" into inter-Palestinian politics.
- "We allowed the process gradually to become presidentialized" meaning that the decision makers belonged to a small, insular group, with former President Bill Clinton at the helm. Although Clinton understood both sides better than anyone else in the administration, he was vulnerable "to domestic political considerations [and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak's ability to influence the process through his direct and then routinized contacts with President Clinton."
Mistakes were numerous on both sides, yet Malley focused on Palestinian errors considering his audience. He emphasized the Palestine Liberation Organization's decision to "negotiate its way out of occupation" through the involvement of the U.S. and the Israeli peace camp. A number of Palestinian intellectuals and politicians criticized this decision, yet "once that choice was made, . . . the least one would expect is that the Palestinians would develop a strategy that befits that choice." One would hope they would create a "strategy that understands how the United States operates, how it functions, how decisions are made, how it can help in the negotiations." This ability was "sorely lacking" among the Palestinian negotiators.
An example of this failure, Malley said, was the belief that the U.S. is "hopelessly pro-Israeli." There are different ways of "being sympathetic to Israel theres coordination and there is conspiracy." In recent years, there was "much of the former, but . . . far less of the latter." The Palestinians, Malley contended, did not differentiate between these two approaches and took a "bunker mentality," thus isolating themselves. Their "primary objective at Camp David . . . was to survive, not to take advantage" of possible opportunities.
"Clinton has a special relationship with Prime Minister Barak and with Israel," yet "he was equally determined to reach an agreement that both sides could accept" or he would accomplish nothing. The Palestinian negotiators would have achieved more by "wad[ing] their way through the contradictions between those two goals" and by making "the most out of their inner tension." They should have provided logical, concise "counter-offers; this would have been turning the tables on us and on the entire process, and it would have made it hard for us to dismiss, harder still to ignore, the ideas they offered." Instead, they were suspicious of what should have at least received their "distant interest." Malley referred to Clinton's December proposal which "may not have been enough," but it was a "failure of vision not to appreciate the evolution this stance represented." Perhaps the game was "rigged" from the start, yet when "agreeing to play the game, the rigged game, [it would be] better to do it skillfully and to make the most of it. Instead, the Palestinian leadership at times seems to have operated without a strategy."
Through negotiations, the groups "were able to break some taboos" which may help in the future, yet "we failed." The U.S. "must assume both the burden and . . . the lessons of that failure." The Israelis, the Palestinians, and the United States "ought to have done better than this." Now, Malley contended, "no responsibility is greater than to rid ourselves of those comforting certainties that are beginning to creep upŅand in which we are so desperately and separately trying to seek refugeŅin the wake of our collective failure."
