Walt & Mearsheimer Try Again

Walt & Mearsheimer have responded to some of their critics in a long reply published in the latest issue of the London Review of Books.  In their reply, they acknowledge not a single error in their paper.  Instead, they have repeated and compounded their factual mistakes.  So, unfortunately, here we go again.

In both their formal paper and their LRB abridgment, Walt & Mearsheimer asserted that:

“[N]o  Israeli  government  has  been  willing  to  offer  the  Palestinians  a  viable  state  of  their  own.   Even  Prime  Minister  Ehud  Barak’s  purportedly  generous  offer  at  Camp  David  in  July  2000  would  only  have  given  the  Palestinians a  disarmed  and  dismembered  set  of  ‘Bantustans’  under  de  facto  Israeli  control.”

In his formal response on the Harvard website, Dershowitz wrote that their description was “demonstrably false,” citing both Dennis Ross’s extensive account of Camp David and Ehud Barak’s 2002 interview in which he called the Bantustan accusation “one of the most embarrassing lies” Arafat told about Camp David.

Walt & Mearsheimer have responded to Dershowitz in the LRB as follows:

There are a number of competing accounts of what happened at Camp David, however, and many of them agree with our claim. Moreover, Barak himself acknowledges that ‘the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem . . . to the Jordan River.’ This wedge, which would bisect the West Bank, was essential to Israel’s plan to retain control of the Jordan River Valley for another six to twenty years. Finally, and contrary to Dershowitz’s claim, there was no ‘second map’ or map of a ‘final proposal at Camp David’.  Indeed, it is explicitly stated in a note beside the map published in Ross’s memoirs that ‘no map was presented during the final rounds at Camp David.’ Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak’s foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later admitted: ‘If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well.’

I’ve previously shown that Walt & Mearsheimer took the Barak quote egregiously out of context and that they completely ignored Ross’s day-by-day account of Camp David. Now Walt & Mearsheimer seek to rebut first person accounts of Camp David by the top U.S. and Israeli negotiators by asserting there are “a number of competing accounts” and that “many” of them allegedly support their point. 

Put aside the question of how many “many” of “a number” is, or who wrote the allegedly contrary accounts; the more important point is there are no eyewitness accounts of Camp David that support Walt & Mearsheimer’s assertion.  On the contrary, every one that has been published to date contradicts it -- especially including the one by Shlomo Ben-Ami.

It takes a special kind of scholarship to cite Shlomo Ben-Ami for the proposition that the Israelis did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state at Camp David.  Here is what Ben-Ami says in his book “Scars of War, Wounds of Peace” (Oxford University Press, 2006, at p.260):

“The Camp David proposals . . . might perhaps not have been the best deal the Palestinians could have expected.  But nor was this the humiliating deal of ‘Bantustans’ and ‘enclaves’ they kept saying it was.  How can a Palestinian state that includes the entire Gaza Strip, 92 per cent of the West Bank and a safe passage, under full and unconditional Palestinian control, to link them be defined as a state of Bantustans?”

In an extensive interview published in Haaretz in 2002 (which Walt & Mearsheimer have likewise ignored), Ben-Ami called the Bantustan allegation “ridiculous” and noted that Hosni Mubarak had concurred.

As for the “Map Reflecting Actual Proposal at Camp David” that Dennis Ross published in his book (which clearly shows no “dismembered set of ‘Bantustans’”), the full text of the note relied on by Walt & Mearsheimer reads as follows:

While no map was presented during the final rounds at Camp David, this map illustrates the parameters of what President Clinton proposed and Arafat rejected:  Palestinian control over 91% of the West Bank in continguous territory and an Israeli security presence along 15% of the border with Jordan.  This map actually understates the final Camp David proposal because it does not depict the additional territorial sway of 1% that was offered from Israeli territory.

Both Ross and Ben-Ami also published maps in their books illustrating the December 2000 “Clinton Parameters” that were accepted by Israel and then rejected by Arafat in a face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office:  100% of Gaza, 95% of the West Bank, and an additional 1-3% land swap from within Israel (for a total of 96-98%), including a safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank, with the entire area “clean of Jewish settlements” (in Ben-Ami’s phrase). 

Ben-Ami can understand why the Palestinians might not have been able to accept the deal at Camp David (it has nothing to do with “Bantustans”), although he faults them for making no counter-offer and leaving to start a war.  He cannot understand why they turned down the Clinton Parameters.  In his book, he concludes the reason the “peace process” failed lies in the difference between the ethos of Zionism and the Palestinian movement:

Though never abandoning wider territorial dreams, it would not have occurred to Ben-Gurion to delay the establishment of the Jewish state because he would not have access to the Western Wall or the Temple Mount.  The positive ethos of building a new society was supposed to compensate for the poverty of the territorial solution. . . .

The Palestinian national movement has been more about vindication and justice than about finding a solution.  It therefore never possessed the capacity to make a positive decision. . . .  The Palestinians have consistently fought for the solutions of yesterday, those they had rejected a generation or two earlier.  This persistent attempt to turn back the clock of history lies at the root of many of the misfortunes that have befallen the peoples of the region.

Ironically, the result has been no Palestinian state (despite offers in 1937, 1947, 1978, and 2000) and expanded Israeli territorial claims instead.  On the last night at Camp David, in the presence of Bill Clinton and the entire U.S. team, Shlomo Ben-Ami addressed his Palestinian counterpart, Saab Erakat, about the Palestinian refusal to accept the historic deal then on offer (reported on page 283 of his book):

“We are going from here into a catastrophe.  You will forge an alliance with Hamas and we shall go into a paralyzing national unity government with the Israeli Right.  When we meet again this will be with the West Bank replete with settlements.”

The West Bank “replete with settlements” consists of 250,000 Jews wishing to live in their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria -- a number that is a very small percentage of the total population there.   The Palestinian national movement has never explained why one million Arabs can live safely in Israel but not a single Jew can live in a putative Palestinian state.  But the answer seems obvious:  the Palestinians have a higher priority -- a much higher priority -- than simply a state on contiguous territory. 

The Palestinians’ priorities have repeatedly prevented them from accepting a contiguous state, even when it has been formally offered multiple times.  To explain their latest decision, they resorted to a big lie about “Bantustans.”  It is a position refuted by every first-person account of Camp David, but one that still lives in the hearts of “scholars” unable to read primary sources. 

Once again, Walt & Mearsheimer’s reply on this point is indicative of the rest of their reply.  As Jeff Weintraub (a self-described “democratic socialist” who teaches at the University of Pnnsylvania) indicates, the entire Walt& Mearsheimer response is “surprisingly thin” and “does not actually offer any significant or convincing responses to the most serious criticisms of their analysis.”

See also Ivan Koridornih’s  “Florscheimer und Walt” at the Middle East Discussion Board. 

Comments

[S Silverstein]

Rick,

You correctly observe "It takes a special kind of scholarship to cite Shlomo Ben-Ami for the proposition that the Israelis did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state at Camp David."

It takes a "special" kind of scholarship to write a paper like Walt and Mearsheimer's "Lobby" paper, indeed. Special in the sense of "good enough for the Jews."

See my brief posts at http://informaticsmd.blogspot.com/2006/05/ivy-academia-and-differential.html

and

http://informaticsmd.blogspot.com/2006/05/gut-genug-fr-die-juden.html

[Ed]

Again, excellent and detailed scholarship by you, quite in contrast to that of Walt and Mearsheimer. They practice a variation of Agenda Driven Journalism, perfected by the NY Times and the TV networks. They start with an agenda (in this case, Israel and the Jews are to blame for ...) and only use information that is consistent with it. Facts and logic are not primary, especially when as in this case they are in conflict with their agenda.

[David in DC]

I read their paper in its entirety, but each time I take another look in depth at various sections I am astounded all over again at the brazen intellectual dishonesty exhibited by W&M.

The only redeeming thing that can be said about the paper is that it highlights just how poor the "anti-Lobby's" case really is, to have to rely on bad logic, quotes taken egregiously out of context, falsehoods and historical revisionism to make a case.

I guess it also highlights that rather than trying to suppress debate, "the Lobby" will vigorously debate the facts(/lack thereof) in the public eye, showing one of W&M's main recycled canards to be utterly false.

[Daniel in Brookline]

Many thanks for your legwork and clear explanations of this, Rick!

W&M's work needs refutation... because if they are the only ones talking, they will be the only ones believed.

Jerry Pournelle once pointed out that you can "prove" anything you want, if you allow yourself to use fraudulent data -- and that, if you restrict yourself to the established facts, but permit yourself to throw away data you don't like, you can still "prove" almost anything. (The only assertions W&M could not prove, with their twisted logic and selective memory for facts, are the assertions that aren't backed up by any facts at all, e.g. "Yasser Arafat was Chinese".)

And clearly, a system of logic -- or scholarship -- that can "prove" almost anything, is one that produces worthless results.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

[lincoln]

Rick,
An underlying theme of W and M is that Americans ,in the main ,are too ignorant of knowing they are being manipulated,or they asre members of "fringe groups".Since Jews at least those "in the know" can't be in the manipulable mass,let's look at those who are.
Christians(meaning evangelical/fundamentalist ones),who are stupid and asily manipulable.
Neocons-which may be a code word for Jewa,anyway
Republicans,who are narrow minded,and anti Arabic.(let's not forget they've always been against civil rights .
Now let's look at this as a Man from Mars.What's more helpful,and ethically satisfying:To ally and help a country that's liberal(old fashioned meaning),a democracy,an ally that has geo=political and military strategic value and a relationship going back decades or?

[Solomon]

Re: Ben-Ami and "Bantustans"

You may be interested in his first answer in this "live chat" at the Oxford U Press blog. He's rather definitive in his answer (and mentions maps).

http://blog.oup.com/oupblog/2006/02/live_chat_with__1.html

[Daniel]

This reflects about what I have understood about teh Camp David Accord. One point only. Ben A,mi states he was surprised that ether was no counter offer. Apparently it was Arafat's style never to make any proposals. The entore Camp David Accord consisted out of proposals by Israel, and Americans acting "on behalf" of a non proposing Palestinian team which preferred just commenting (dennis Ross)

[dwayne]

Two questions:

When you quote Ben-Ami from his book saying the Camp David offer was not a "deal of Bantustans" does he agree with M and W's claim that Israel would have maintained control of the Jordan Valley? I'd look it up myself but don't have the book.

And then secondly, why do you think it's good to compare the ability for an Arab to live in Israel with the ability of settlers to live in the occupied territories? (That is your comparison, isn't it?) Palestinians act violently towards settlers because they (and the international community) believe the settlements are illegal?
And if you're wondering why Jews don't live among the Palestinians - outside of settlements- in the occupied territories then that's an interesting question. I would guess mainly because economic prospects are very slim in Palestine, as compared to the alternative of immigrating to Israel and becoming citizens in a prosperous state committed to social welfare. I'd be interested to know if you knew of any Jews who had tried to live in Palestine in this way.