Lately I blogged about Jerry Slater's important piece on Tom Friedman in Tikkun. Well now Ralph Seliger is going after it.
Why Slater resuscitates the issue of who was more at fault in the
breakdown of the peace process in 2000 is beyond me, but assessing
blame for 2000 is both complicated and besides the point.
My
read is that then Prime Minister Barak, Yasir Arafat and Bill Clinton
can all be faulted: I wish that Barak had been more sensitive to
Palestinian sensibilities and been willing to go further in his peace
proposals, that Arafat had been capable of swallowing his sense of
wounded pride and had totally rejected the option of violence which he
apparently embraced after their failed summit, and that Bill Clinton
had been a more balanced mediator.
breakdown of the peace process in 2000 is beyond me, but assessing
blame for 2000 is both complicated and besides the point.
My
read is that then Prime Minister Barak, Yasir Arafat and Bill Clinton
can all be faulted: I wish that Barak had been more sensitive to
Palestinian sensibilities and been willing to go further in his peace
proposals, that Arafat had been capable of swallowing his sense of
wounded pride and had totally rejected the option of violence which he
apparently embraced after their failed summit, and that Bill Clinton
had been a more balanced mediator.
Seliger contradicts himself. As soon as he bashes Slater for resuscitating Camp David, he resuscitates it himself. And the reason is obvious. The Clinton Parameters are going to be Obama's template before long. It is essential to try to understand what went wrong at Camp David if you are at all committed to the "peace process." I'm mixed on the peace process, because the great Henry Siegman tells me what to think, and I happen to be an American, and Lincoln was for intifada, but Slater's piece on the unfairness of Camp David remains essential reading if we are going to figure out a way out of this mess.
