What happened at Camp David in 2000?

The August 2001 New York Review Of Books article Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors by Robert Malley & Hussein Agha not only offers a nuanced and clarifying explanation of why the talks in Camp David sponsored by Clinton broke down, it also kicks off the discussion with everyone’s favorite rhetorical device, the Holy Roman Empire essay question.

In accounts of what happened at the July 2000 Camp David summit and the following months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we often hear about Ehud Barak’s unprecedented offer and Yasser Arafat’s uncompromising no. Israel is said to have made a historic, generous proposal, which the Palestinians, once again seizing the opportunity to miss an opportunity, turned down. In short, the failure to reach a final agreement is attributed, without notable dissent, to Yasser Arafat.

As orthodoxies go, this is a dangerous one. For it has larger ripple effects. Broader conclusions take hold. That there is no peace partner is one. That there is no possible end to the conflict with Arafat is another.

For a process of such complexity, the diagnosis is remarkably shallow. It ignores history, the dynamics of the negotiations, and the relationships among the three parties. In so doing, it fails to capture why what so many viewed as a generous Israeli offer, the Palestinians viewed as neither generous, nor Israeli, nor, indeed, as an offer. Worse, it acts as a harmful constraint on American policy by offering up a single, convenient culprit — Arafat — rather than a more nuanced and realistic analysis.

2024 update

I am expanding this post because the article has been immensely valuable to me not just in explaining that moment but as a clarifying exemplar of the the tragic dynamics characteristic of the conflict for decades both before and after. So I want to emphasize how the article is long and well worth your time.

And for the impatient, I have discovered a pair of letters about the article by Gidi Grinstein & Ambassador Dennis Ross, published by NYRB. It includes a long reply by the authors of the article which nicely summarizes its key observations and adds some telling particulars:

Our article does not assign blame or catalog each side’s respective mistakes. Rather, it shows how the historical context and conduct of the negotiations shaped the parties’ attitudes and effectively undermined the possibility of a deal. Dennis wishes to treat Arafat’s behavior at Camp David in a vacuum — divorced from what had occurred during the seven years since Oslo and the twelve months since Barak had become prime minister; and divorced, too, from political dynamics on the Palestinian side. But it is no more possible to do this than it is to divorce Barak’s behavior from Israel’s parallel experience or from its own political realities.

Years of accumulated mistrust and loss of faith in the peace process, political circumstances in Israel and among the Palestinians, the history of prior agreements, perceptions of the United States’ role, the relationship (or lack thereof) between Barak and Arafat, the mechanics of the negotiations — all these contributed to a situation in which each side’s actions were interpreted by the other in the most damaging way. For instance, Barak’s decisions not to implement some of the interim commitments made at Oslo and afterward, and not to turn over three Jerusalem-area neighborhoods to the Palestinians, were consistent with his desire to seek a comprehensive deal and therefore entirely logical from his point of view; but those decisions were seen by the Palestinians merely as further examples of Israel’s ignoring its obligations and seeking to maximize the pressure it was bringing to bear on them.

To say that these steps undermined the prospects for a deal is not to engage in a post hoc attempt to absolve Arafat. Indeed, as Dennis well knows, the US administration’s concern at the time about their potential negative impact was such (given the frailty of the process and the already highly suspicious mood on the Palestinian side) that US negotiators repeatedly sought to persuade Barak to modify his approach. Nothing in what Dennis writes demonstrates that Arafat’s alleged inability to reach a deal, rather than the overall context and the clash of opposing mindsets, was responsible for the failure to achieve an agreement.

Dennis fears that our article will reinforce the Palestinians’ belief that it is “never their fault.” But it surely is symptomatic of the skewed nature of today’s debate that our article, which describes how the Palestinians’ actions — and inaction — contributed to the breakdown in the negotiations, can be characterized as absolving the Palestinians of blame. There also is considerable irony in worrying that the Palestinians will avoid responsibility when, to date, they are the only ones to have been held accountable for the failure to reach a deal. In reality, the predominant view that Arafat alone is to blame has spared both Israel and the United States from the necessity of self-critical analysis.

Of course, the Palestinians made serious mistakes. As Gidi Grinstein observes in his letter, we mention quite a few of them; and Dennis adds others. (In particular, Dennis points to their claim that the Jewish Temple was not in Jerusalem — an offensive position that cannot be excused.) But the question is not whether Arafat made mistakes, or whether these were justified. The question is whether his behavior can be explained by factors other than his presumed inability to put an an end to the conflict. A close scrutiny of events, we believe, shows that it can.

One of the more unsettling consequences of the notion that the failure of the negotiations was caused by Arafat’s incapacity to reach a deal is that it obscures the significant substantive progress that was made. Dennis notes that Barak was prepared to “do what was necessary” to reach an agreement and we, too, noted that he broke many taboos. But Dennis refers only in passing to the Palestinians’ “concessions,” attributing them to “negotiators” as if they had nothing to do with Arafat.

The fact is that Camp David and the talks that followed demonstrated that, at their core, Israeli and Palestinian interests are compatible. For Israel those interests include its continued existence as a Jewish state; genuine security; Jewish Jerusalem as its recognized capital; respect and acknowledgment of its connection to holy Jewish sites. For the Palestinians they include a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital and sovereignty over its Muslim and Christian holy sites; meaningful sovereignty; and a just settlement of the refugee issue. In short, both sides share a fundamental interest in realizing their national right of self-determination within internationally recognized borders on the basis of the two-state solution.

This may not suggest that a deal was readily at hand. But can we, on this record, maintain that it was out of reach? And that, on the basis of a hurried, unsuccessful six-month effort, we are better off giving up on the current Palestinian leadership and placing our hopes on a gamble that as yet unknown but presumably more flexible leaders will somehow emerge?

To solve a one-hundred-year conflict in a matter of months is a daunting task even under the best of circumstances — without the miscalculations, missteps, and mismatched timetables that occurred before and during Camp David. In this sense, paradoxically, this tragedy of errors contains a message of hope. For it points to the possibility that things can turn out differently if they are done differently.

I added this long quote shortly after the 1-year anniversary of Hamas’ 7 Oct 2023 attack and the dawn of Israel’s genocidal attack in response, a moment when it is hard not to despair over the horrors in front of us and the cycle of both bad faith and honest mistakes which brought us here.

But. That last note of hope — “at their core, Israeli and Palestinian interests are compatible” and “things can turn out differently if they are done differently” — does still stand, in the long run which is all too far off.