Is Arafat Capable of Peace?
In several columns I sneered at Mr. Arafat and reiterated the common view that he had rejected very generous peace deals proffered by Ehud Barak. That is a nearly universal understanding in the West, expressed by everybody from Henry Kissinger to the cocktail party set.

But, prompted by various readers, I've been investigating more closely and interviewing key players. This is what I found:

It is clear that in July 2000 at Camp David, Mr. Barak and President Clinton suggested a courageous, path-breaking peace plan permitting a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem. But, equally clearly, it still would have left the Palestinian state shorn of at least 9 percent of the West Bank, crippled by the loss of water and good land, and (even in the best version) nearly divided by an Israeli annexation running east from Jerusalem. It is reasonable to question whether it would have created a viable state.

The notion that the failure of Camp David was completely Mr. Arafat's fault arose when President Clinton publicly said as much, partly in an effort to boost Mr. Barak's re-election prospects.

"The mistake was to put all the blame on Arafat, not only because he did not deserve it," said Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli negotiator. "Maybe he deserved part and maybe it is true that the Palestinians did not initiate ideas, but it was a tactical mistake to put all the blame on one side."

Mr. Arafat foolishly never bothered to offer a counterproposal. But in a tactical sense he was right to say no, for the Israelis and Americans came back with much better proposals. In late December President Clinton offered new terms — a detailed peace plan that would have given the Palestinians a workable state with all of Gaza and (after a land swap) territory equivalent to about 97 percent of the West Bank.

Arafat was the way he always was — you can't pin him down — but he wanted to continue negotiating," recalled Robert Malley, a Clinton aide in the room. He adds: "There's a theme out there that because the Palestinians rejected Camp David and afterward didn't clearly accept the president's proposals, therefore they reject any peaceful two-state solution. I think that's an unfair and incorrect characterization."

Soon afterward, Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel's foreign minister, met Mr. Arafat in Cairo. He agrees that Mr. Arafat didn't exactly reject the Clinton plan — but didn't unequivocally accept it either. "The problem with Arafat is that he's never clear," Mr. Ben-Ami recalled. "He says things like, `If there's a will, there's a way.' All kinds of slogans that don't mean anything."

Talks continued at Taba, Egypt, and by all accounts made considerable progress. Mr. Ben-Ami says the Israelis even kept a helicopter standing by to rush the Palestinian negotiators to Gaza in case a deal was reached.

All in all, it is fair to fault Mr. Arafat for lacking the courage to strike a deal at Taba; for being a maddening, vacillating and passive negotiator; for condoning violence that unseated the best Israeli peace partner the Palestinians could have had. But the common view in the West that Mr. Arafat flatly rejected a reasonable peace deal, and that it is thus pointless to attempt a strategy of negotiation, is a myth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/opinion/17KRIS.html