Last week, President Trump unveiled his proposed peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The deal, which gives the Palestinians the majority of the West Bank, a capital in East Jerusalem, and a connecting line between the West Bank and Gaza, is very generous. But that didn’t stop Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from immediately rejecting it and calling the plan “the slap of the century.”
Sadly, Abbas’s recalcitrance is not a fluke, but the natural expression of the Palestinian leadership’s long-standing refusal to accept any peace that doesn’t completely destroy Israel. In fact, Trump’s plan is remarkably similar to another generous peace deal previously proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak — a proposal that was met not just with refusal, but with violence.
Two decades ago, Barak gambled his political career to try to achieve peace with Palestine. At the Camp David Peace Summit of 2000, he offered PLO leader Yasser Arafat the best peace deal that the Palestinians would ever receive in the history of the conflict — 97% of the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza Strip, a land-link connecting the two territories, an Arab capital in East Jerusalem, a $30 billion international fund to compensate Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian control of Islamic holy sites.
Barak’s offer was unprecedented; before 2000, the idea of dividing Jerusalem was anathema to most Israelis. He staked his entire career on the hope that Arafat would lay down the sword and say yes. Arafat said no.
Not only did Arafat refuse the magnanimous terms, but he also set in motion the Second Intifada, one of the most destructive terrorist campaigns in Israel’s history. The five-year-long campaign of suicide bombings resulted in over 1,000 dead Israelis (most of them civilians), and over 3,000 dead Palestinians. I grew up in Israel during that time period, and I still remember that hardly a week passed by without the news reporting yet another major suicide bombing.
Historical revisionists claim the Second Intifada was started because Ariel Sharon, who became prime minister after Barak, made a “provocative” visit to the Temple Mount, a holy site of tremendous importance to both Jews and Muslims. This claim flies in the face of the evidence. Arafat’s communications minister, Imad Faluji, admitted that that Second Intifada “had been planned since Chairman Arafat’s return from Camp David.” Even Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat, confirmed that her husband “had made a decision [in advance] to launch the intifada. Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations] … he said to me: ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because I am going to start an intifada.’” Sharon’s Temple Mount visit merely provided Arafat with an excuse to start the bloodbath.
Arafat’s refusal of Barak’s peace offer and his subsequent launch of the Second Intifada demonstrate the dilemma facing Palestinian leaders. Arafat claimed he wanted an end to the struggle, but he knew that any lasting peace with Israel would make him irrelevant. He was a warlord, not a statesman. He presented himself as a heroic “freedom fighter” who would never cease fighting the evil Zionists; what place would such an avowed terrorist have in a peaceful Middle East?
Arafat’s rejection was a tragedy both for Israel and for Palestine, but it wasn’t the first, nor the last time the Palestinian leadership would refuse a peace deal. The Palestinians could have had their own state in 1948 when the United Nations partitioned the Holy Land into two states, Arab and Jewish; they could have had it in 2000 by saying yes to Barak’s offer, and they could have said yes again in 2008 when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert again offered the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem to Palestine.
Instead, Palestinian leaders have responded to every offer with abject refusal. They continue to satisfy their own megalomaniacal needs by sacrificing thousands of their own people as cannon fodder in a pointless, hopeless campaign. As Golda Meir famously said, they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Elad Vaida is a writer in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Harvard University’s program in Middle Eastern Studies.
