The Erickson Report, Page 5: "Deal of the Century" - An Old Game

The Erickson Report, Page 5: "Deal of the Century" - An Old Game

[A note about sources: Pages 1-6 were originally to be one long piece and I usually only cite a reference the first time I use it. Which means some things in this page may be based on references cited on an earlier page.]

Could that be true? Could it have been intended to be rejected? Absolutely - because we've seen this game before.

The year was 2000. Seven years earlier, 1993, Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin had agreed on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel's right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Now, with limited movement toward greater Palestinian self-rule, the relative peace that had existed for those seven years was at risk.

Bill Clinton wanted to meet with then-Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Arafat. Arafat was reluctant, thinking nothing would come of it and a failure would be worse than not doing it at all. But Clinton convinced Arafat to come by promising him that there would be no recriminations.

At that meeting, Barak made a supposedly "generous offer" to Arafat, involving a Palestinian state in Gaza and something like 90% of the West Bank. Arafat refused. The talks broke down and Clinton returned to Washington and despite his promise, denounced Arafat for the talks' failure. Thus, it was said, Arafat's "true face" was exposed, that of a man determined not to make peace with Israel.

There was just one problem: It wasn't true. The deal that Barak proposed was one that the Israelis knew in advance Arafat would not, could not, accept. For one thing, the 10% of the West Bank not part of this Palestinian state would be occupied by Israeli "security corridors" connecting settlements and outposts, which would have sliced the West Bank into a bunch of disconnected pieces, just like this time, with Palestinians needing the permission of the Israeli military to get from one part of their country to another. And it required relinquishing any "right of return."

It was nothing but a propaganda ploy designed to head off the possibility of a settlement. As subsequent events have shown, it was one of the most successful PR coups of modern times.

And now we're seeing a re-run: a supposedly "generous" offer known to be unacceptable, intending to use its rejection as justification for continued oppression.

One person said that "The real threat to peace is not whether the Trump plan will fail but whether it will succeed." The truth is, I'm not sure which is worse.

But I say this, knowing that it is not my life on the line and not my choice to make, but I still have to say that it seems to me that if you're going to go down either way, better to do it as the bull in the ring than the pig in the abattoir.

I'm going to stop here except for one revealing footnote, which I'll get to in a second. Next time I intend to spend some time looking at US media reactions to this Ripoff of the Century, reactions which tell us a lot about the way the political and media establishment view the world.