Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed
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The author discusses his groundbreaking book, which provides the most penetrating analysis yet as to why the Camp David peace negotiations failed.
Pluto Press, 2004
In an extensive literature on the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, effort has gone primarily into determining who was to blame. This book, while recognizing missed opportunities and many blunders on all sides, puts the failure down to a basic structural fault in the process, the neglect of international law.
Disparity of power most basically defines this conflict. Unless the conflict is approached according to law, before which the parties are equal, the only alternative is a procedure based on power relationships, and therefore determined by political and military superiority. That makes any agreement formed, even had it been signed by Arafat at Camp David or should be signed by Abbas or any other Palestinian leader, nothing other than a Diktat, which could not be binding on the Palestinians. That would be disaster for the Palestinians themselves, but just as unfortunate for the Israelis, who would not attain the one thing they most need and desire, namely peace.
A process based on law, however, would place the parties on an even plane. Contrary to the fears one might expect from some Israelis, it would not put Israel at a disadvantage, as the law would protect, equally, the rights and genuine interests of both sides. Neither would it predetermine the outcome of negotiations, but would leave the issues of conflict open to and even requiring free negotiation between the parties, both of whom would have to be satisfied with the fairness of the agreement. The law would not protect occupation, but it would protect Israeli rights as well as Palestinian.
Negotiating Outside the Law translates the prevailing reliance on a purely power-based process into these terms:
Ever since the Madrid Conference, it has been supposed that everything in Israel's possession is hers, by right of possession. That means that anything the Palestinians get will be free gift from the Israelis, which denies them any genuine entitlement in law.
A large Israeli peace movement was prepared for an agreement that gave substantial "concessions" to the Palestinians. Several Prime Ministers of Israel aimed for a peace agreement that would even be "generous" (that famous word!) to Palestinians. But the underlying supposition of Israel's "right of possession" meant that the negotiation was always between Israelis and other Israelis: Israelis who want to give something, Israelis who want to give more, Israelis who want to give little or nothing at all. In consequence, Palestinians were never actual parties to the negotiation, but have only been handed the outcome of this negotiation among Israelis and told to take it or leave it. Even President Clinton, who of all participants in the process clearly wanted more for the Palestinians rather than less, accepted this "right of possession" assumption, and that poisoned the entire process. The much-discussed "failure" of Camp David -- a failure only if it ended the possibilities of agreement – resulted from this basic structural fault in the process rather than from anyone's particular malice or sabotage.
The solution to this conflict is not difficult to discern: 1) a West-Bank/Gaza Palestinian state, its borders substantially on the 1949 Armistice line, with full territorial compensation for any changes freely agreed; 2) a sharing of Jerusalem such that it can be capital of both states; and 3) an agreed resolution of the Palestinian refugee situation that does not overturn the demographic character of Israel. That is what international law, enunciated most basically in the principle of non-acquisition of territory by force, to which all member nations of the United Nations have pledged themselves, Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, prescribes. Resolution of the conflict has evaded those who have sought it only because it has been grossly mishandled through neglect of law.
We can hardly expect the Sharon government will be prepared to act under the obligations of law of their own accord. It is, however, so beholden to the United States that, if the US were seriously to determine that this process should be pursued according to law, that is what would happen.
Is this a pipe-dream? Not if we look to the basic needs of the United States. The Bush Administration is in so much trouble over Iraq that it has really no good options remaining there. The best remedy available for it is to bring about, by insistence on law, the readily available solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would in fact win the applause of both peoples. At the same time, it would take much of the venom out of the situation in Iraq.
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