MORE ON THE CHIMERA: In today's "Breakfast Table" in Slate, Anne Applebaum dismisses the Saudi plan:
As for the Saudi proposal—I find it ludicrous. There is no evidence that the Arab world is ready to recognize the Israeli right to exist, and certainly no evidence that the Arab world is ready to give up the Palestinian refugees' "right of return" to Israel. Since the Israelis will never accept the refugees—and their many millions of descendants—it is hard to imagine how we get around this one.
Applebaum has been a long-time skeptic of the efficacy of "peace processes," which she repeats here:
In these circumstances, the outside intervention—from President Clinton—was an utter disaster. He forced everyone to play their cards too soon, before either the Israeli or the Palestinian general public were ready to give up on violence. I can't see how Colin Powell or Javier Solana could, at the moment, do much better: Negotiations could perhaps calm the situation, but until one or both sides has come to the conclusion that talking will produce a better deal than fighting, negotiations have little chance of long-term success.
This critique is identical to the one Ari Fleischer cited, to much criticism. They're both wrong, though.
I have been as critical of Clinton as anyone, but the main problem wasn't that he forced the issue, for two reasons. First, the idea to convene Camp David with such an ambitious agenda was as much as I have previously argued at unconscionable length, the problem had more to do with the one-sided giving structure of the "peace process." With that pattern, the breakdown at Camp David over final-status issues would have occurred whether the discussions had taken place in 2000 or 2025. If anything, it was beneficial to force the issue, to see if the Palestinians would be ready to make compromises of their own before Israel had already given up all their chips. A better-designed peace process would have forced the Palestinians to make painful concessions as the Israelis did (indeed, that would have been the "even-handed" approach). Barak's forcing the issue at Camp David was as much an attempt to break out of the prior pattern which governed the peace process as it was an attempt to reach a final settlement. The problem wasn't as much that an outsider had tried to force peace before the parties were ready for it. The problem was that the pattern of dealings between the parties, encouraged by the outside mediators, had led one side to believe that it could have peace without giving up anything, as it was the other who bore all responsibility for making peace.
In fact, I think (as Barak did) that once that pattern had been established, it was necessary to force the issue so as to break out of it, even at the risk of causing conflict such as exists now.