Arguably more than any other, the year 2000 is key to understanding the gap between the way a generation of Israelis and their counterparts across the Western world regard the chances of striking peace with the Palestinians.
Two highly significant events happened that year. 2000 was the year in which Israel made an historic peace offer to the Palestinians. Israeli leader Ehud Barak went practically all-in for peace, compromising to such an extent that then-American president Bill Clinton was astounded that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hesitated and eventually rejected the unprecedented peace proposal.
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2000 was also the year in which Palestinians, essentially backed into a corner by their own leaders’ refusal to make history in agreeing to end the conflict with Israel, coordinated and launched a bloody wave of bombings and attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets that came to be known as the Second Palestinian Intifada.
The above is not a one-sided narrative, but a set of unarguable, well-documented facts.
But readers of a CNN fact sheet on the Oslo Accords are left woefully misinformed, and told a remarkably passive version of the events of 2000.
According to CNN:
Early 2000 – The Oslo peace process appears to be working, but Israeli and Palestinian leaders are unable to resolve some key issues and agree on a final peace settlement.”
Those reading CNN’s fact sheet are led to believe that Israeli and Palestinian leaders shared the blame, and were equally “unable to resolve some key issues and agree on a final peace settlement.” But that’s not how the Americans attempting to broker an agreement saw it.
President Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of the two sides to reach an agreement, and later pronounced, “I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being.” Indeed, Clinton was reported to have been so enraged at Arafat’s persistent refusal to negotiate in good faith that he banged on the table and said: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.”
Dennis Ross, the chief US negotiator, concluded that Arafat was never truly open to a two-state solution. Rather, Arafat and the Palestinians had clung to their desire for “a one-state solution. Not independent, adjacent Israeli and Palestinian states, but a single Arab state encompassing all of Historic Palestine.”
The fact sheet totally fails to mention that Palestinian intransigence in the face of an unprecedented peace offer was responsible for the collapse of talks in 2000. The Israeli contingent bent over backwards to make an extraordinary peace offer, one so generous that it was beyond what much of the Israeli electorate was willing to countenance. But Israel’s magnanimity was totally excised from CNN’s record.
The next entry on the fact sheet is perhaps even more problematic:
“September 2000 – Riots, attacks and suicide bombings end the peace process.”
Again, readers are not given anywhere near enough information to understand what happened here. “Riots, attacks and suicide bombings” didn’t just occur spontaneously. They were perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, and targeted Israeli civilians and military personnel (on and off-duty) alike. In completely omitting the identities of the attackers and of the victims, these acts of terrorism are effectively whitewashed.
Also important to note is that, contrary to the apologetic narrative constructed by Western media, the Second Intifada was premeditated. Palestinian officials have confirmed as much. Speaking at the Ein Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in 2001, PA Communications Minister, Imad Al-Faluji said:
Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton. [Arafat] remained steadfast and challenged [Clinton]. He rejected the American terms and he did it in the heart of the US.”
By obscuring the facts that premeditated acts of murder were committed by Palestinians against Israelis, CNN is whitewashing years of terror.
If you use Twitter, please take a moment to contact CNN and politely but firmly express your disgust.
If you care about accurate news reporting, please take a moment to (politely!) message @MeredithA @EdPayneCNN and @CNN to demand that the article be revised.https://t.co/C6GGnMZvKe
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 15, 2020
