The signing of the Oslo Accords gave rise to many believers in the chances of the political process with the Palestinians coming to fruition. Despite the terror and the exploding buses, the feeling among the peace camp in the late 90s was that the "two states" train had to continue on its way. It is in this atmosphere that Gidi Greenstein, then in his 20s, takes his first steps to the crucial juncture that he tells about in a new book he published in the United States (in collaboration with Prof. Ari Afilalo) marking the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords - "Insights from 30 Years of Peace Negotiations", Gefen Publishing.
"I was born and raised in Holon, served in the Navy, and in '95, towards the end of my service, I was accepted to the Foreign Ministry's cadet course. But I, who wanted to be involved in the enormous drama that was taking place at the time, the political process with the Palestinians, took a different path. I came to the Economic Cooperation Fund (ECF), established by Yossi Beilin and Yair Hirschfeld, and for two years I was involved in developing economic cooperation between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. In May '96, when Netanyahu was elected prime minister, I wrote a position paper to my bosses: If Netanyahu does not advance the political process, the next prime minister will have 16 months to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians."
Why this limited time frame?
"For several reasons: the chronic instability in Israel that limits any prime minister in leading long-term moves, and the end of the term of US President Clinton, who was committed to the political process. The second pillar of that document was that the Israeli government, its bureaucrats, do not have the administrative capabilities to lead negotiations on that final status agreement, because the issues are very political and the bureaucracy is not available to deal with issues in which there is very great political ambiguity. That's why I told my bosses: It's a duty and an opportunity to prepare for a theoretical event, and they gave me the mandate. And from November '96 until Ehud Barak's victory in the elections in '99, we led an effort of meticulous and systematic preparation for a permanent agreement."
Gidi Greenstein. THE MAN WHO WAS THERE, PHOTO: SHAHAR AZRAN
He is now 53 years old and has been living with his family in New York for the past few years. After the Camp David chapter, he managed to pass through the Wexner Foundation and found the Reut Institute, which he heads to this day. In 2014, he launched Tom, an international social enterprise to develop affordable products for people with disabilities. We return together to those days, between July 11 and 25, 2000, to the Camp David summit, which raised high hopes but ended without results, and Barak's famous declaration, "There is no partner."
Heimlich to Ehud Barak
When Greenstein was invited to serve as secretary of the negotiating team by Adv. Gilad Sher, he arrived already prepared with plans. The youngest of the members of the delegation, but the one who controls all the details of the 180 articles of the final status agreement. "I was responsible for writing the agreement and formulating the insights that emerged from the teams," he recalls. But in addition to the formal responsibility at Camp David, it turns out that he also saved the life of Barak, who moments before his meeting with Clinton choked on walnut.
"It was around 10 p.m.," he recalls at my request. "The entire team is together in Barak's cabin for his overnight meeting with Clinton, where he intended to discuss dividing Jerusalem. Three of us sat in one room, the rest in the other. Then a severe cough, the noise of a person choking and a loud pat on the back, and the eye of the staff secretary shouts: 'The prime minister is choking. Call the security guards.' We leap towards them and lightning comes out swaying in our direction. From there everything was very fast: I stabilized it, two strong presses - and the cashew flew out. Within five minutes we were back at work," he concludes quite dramatically, adding: "Barak refused Elyakim Rubinstein's request to bless 'HaGomel.' The next day, a doctor was added to the team of security guards, and I think that's been the procedure ever since."
In his new book, Greenstein explains why Barak consciously avoided defining the end of the process as a "peace agreement," and how they intended to take Arafat to the end of the timetable, present him with a tempting offer (East Jerusalem) and make him say the desired "yes." "Barak defines the goal in the final status agreement to reach 'finality of the conflict' and 'finality of claims.' We have come to the conclusion that 'peace' will be too complex and far away, for which the Palestinians will exact a high price. This is essentially similar to Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Why do we need it from them?"
So that terror will stop, and so that it will be clear that the Israel of the Jewish people is here to stay.
"I write about it in a book. The Palestinian resistance apparatus that denies the existence of the State of Israel is divided into two: one group believes in armed struggle and the other advocates strategic patience. Alongside them are those who believe in the two-state solution as the permanent situation. Those who advocate two states – as an interim state or as a permanent state – are a majority, and we have reached the conclusion that it would be most accurate to state within the framework of the agreement that the Palestinian state embodies the right to self-determination of all Palestinians – in Jordan, Israel and the PA. Suppose the Palestinians recognized the nation-state of the Jewish people but did not take upon themselves the right to a Palestinian state in their own state? We would prepare the ground for subversion."
Ehud Barak at the Herzliya Conference - Presenting the Security First Program // Photo: NRG Archive
The leader of the armed resistance to Israel was the PLO terrorist organization, headed by Arafat. Israel had a law forbidding relations with the organization, and as part of the Oslo Accords it was abolished. Wasn't it a mistake to legalize a terrorist organization, bring it back to Israel, and then negotiate with it as if it were representative of all Palestinians, when you know it is not?
"Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords, was the first to deal with this question. He arrives at the second signing in September 93 with the understanding that Israel's interests have been reversed: Until Oslo, Israel wanted to suppress and weaken the PLO, but from the moment we go to an agreement, you want the PLO to be a representative organization, and the interest was to strengthen it. Sharon said it best: 'Things you see from here don't see from there.' It was necessary to strengthen the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, so that all the compromises that the PLO accepts on behalf of the Palestinians will apply to everyone."
"Tragic event"
The summit at Camp David lasted 15 days, at the end of which it was supposed to be a final agreement with the Palestinians – and another state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Greenstein describes the events in detail, especially the attempt to capture Arafat under conditions he could not refuse, so that Barak could return with the promised political agreement to Israel, where his political situation was dire.
"The negotiations have accelerated because this is what suits Israel, not the Palestinians. The more we increased the pressure, the more the PA fell apart, and it became clear that they did not have the ability to make decisions. Barak brought this rather dismantled system to Camp David, because in his surgery Arafat will not accept compromises unless very great pressure is exerted on him and he has nowhere else to go. Clinton scheduled eight days for the convention. According to Barak's logic, in the first four days nothing should happen, and only on the fifth day do you start moving. On Friday evening there was a most moving Shabbat meal of the two delegations, Elyakim Rubinstein made Kiddush. A surreal event.
"The next Saturday, in the Shabbat procedure, and from Saturday night the business began to gain crazy momentum and talks about Jerusalem opened. Barak put on the table the possibility of dividing Jerusalem, thinking that if he solved this issue, solutions to all other issues would be found. Barak wanted to let Arafat stew in moments of pressure, and Arafat refused. Then Barack announced we were leaving and our suitcases piled up in front of his cabin. The Americans begged us not to leave, and another dramatic staff meeting was held in which we recommended that Barak stay and make another attempt. When we met with the Palestinian team for a late night meal, the teams hugged because there was a group there that really wanted an agreement, representatives of the Palestinian peace camp. The tragedy that happened to them there was enormous: they had Gaza in hand, 90-something percent of the West Bank, al-Quds and $20 million to start a state. It's a tragic event."
You wanted to give them Jerusalem. To a large extent, I'm glad it didn't happen.
"Jerusalem is also the circle of outer Palestinian neighborhoods in which a quarter of a million Palestinians live. If they start voting for the City Council, what will the City Council look like? On the one hand, there was extreme opposition from the right to the division of the city, and at the same time a demand not to allow refugees to enter Israel. Where is the logic? I come from a home with a very right-wing background, my grandparents were in the Irgun. There is no logic in controlling a quarter of a million Palestinians in Jerusalem."
Two ultra-Orthodox Jews look at East Jerusalem, Photo: Getty Images
Still, you wanted to give, and that wasn't enough for Arafat either.
"The Palestinians claim today that their mistake was that they did not accept Netanyahu's proposals in 2014. Netanyahu, very wisely, kept the proposals very secret, but believe me Jabal Mukaber and Qalandia do not remain Israeli in the same proposals. Many of the people I meet think that Oslo is an event that ended in '99. I argue that Oslo is a stage in the implementation of the Camp David Accords that began in 78 with the Egyptians, which is the realization of the basic logic of Zionism from 1930 until the sixth Netanyahu government. Therefore, the understanding of Oslo is very relevant to what is happening now, and therefore it is a mistake to think about it as much as is left in the past. It's no coincidence that the U.S. continues to insist on the two-state solution, they are forcing a political approach on us."
Was or was not a partner
Greenstein reiterates in the interview and in his book the view that the Oslo Accords are intertwined with the Zionist idea. The issue of the Jewish majority in the state and the lack of military control over the Palestinian population are the ideas underlying the operation of the architects of Oslo, the attempts of Barak and Ehud Olmert and later Ariel Sharon, and even, according to Greenstein, of Netanyahu himself. "The Abraham Accords were signed against Netanyahu's waiver of the annexation option. This means that he, too, leaves the future of Judea and Samaria to negotiations. This is a direct recognition that this is a disputed territory between Israel and the PA. Trump's positions, which Netanyahu accepts as part of the deal of the century, are almost identical to Barak's positions at the entrance to Camp David in 2000. The Trump plan will be the starting point for any future final status negotiations. Netanyahu single-handedly created the basis for the future final status agreement."
Yet Netanyahu, Barak, Olmert, Barak and Rabin all discovered at some point that there was no partner. Ehud Barak said this when he got off the plane on your return from Camp David, and in fact shattered the dream of the peace camp by saying, "There is no partner." Did you agree with him?
"I didn't agree with him, with reservations. Barak said, 'There is no partner for peace at this time.' As far as the left was concerned, this was a devastating statement, and the left embarked on an almost obsessive move to prove that there was a partner, that Barak did not behave well enough to Arafat or was not generous enough. And to the right it was convenient to lower the sifa 'at this time'. I would add two more words: We have no partner for a permanent agreement at this time."
So who's to blame for all the failed attempts?
"If one person has to be pointed out, it will be Arafat. He didn't start the war, he didn't want it, but he didn't stop it either," Greenstein explains, referring to the riots that led to the second intifada. "He wanted a limited confrontation with Israel aimed at an agreement. A few days after the riots broke out, we met with the Palestinian team and Saeb Erekat cried, saying that his son, Ali, had been bullied by friends who called on him to come out and confront the Jews to show that he was a proud Palestinian. Dahlan wanted an agreement and fought Arafat and Abu Mazen for it, and he told us at the time: 'We won't be able to reach an agreement until there are a few more Israelis killed.'"
It only reinforces the strong feeling that arises in me in this conversation, that you and many in the peace camp are still captive to the conception that if only the stars aligned there would be peace – without seeing all the problems, obstacles and dangers of an agreement with an unrepresentative Palestinian organization, and when our neighbors do not abandon for a moment the hope of destroying us.
"There is one logic here that says, 'liberated territory will not be returned,' and on the other hand, a logic that says that there must be a sovereign Jewish majority, and this reality must be shaped. We did it against the Egyptians, and it's not controversial. In Lebanon, too, no one talks about reconquering territories, and the same goes for the borders with Jordan. We are left with the question of how to define the borders with the Palestinians. This is the most shocking point in the historical process in which Zionism shapes the space in which the Jewish people will live here. So yes, the book was written in the belief that another significant political event will take place."
The cover of Greenstein's book,
Are you one of the last optimists among us?
"I'm really not the last. These are deep and rich ideas and not a one-time situation that took place between '93 and '95. The current government is dismantling the ambiguity that has existed until now regarding the future of Judea and Samaria, thereby effectively pushing the United States and Europe to sharpen their positions. This ambiguity made it possible to whitewash the settlement blocs, based on the logic that we are in the midst of a political process. But when the government takes steps that prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and declares the application of sovereignty in the West Bank, it forces the Americans to respond. If I were right-wing, I would be very worried about the future of the settlements." √
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