they must serve as a basis for any future negotiations, while Barak himself proclaims that the Taba proposals are null and void.
At the end of the trial, the question will remain: Did the accused, Barak, sincerely intend to reach a peace agreement, and did only a mixture of arrogance, ignorance, and political stupidity prevent him from achieving it (as Clinton believes, according to Malley), or did he, from the beginning, not have any such intention, but only intended to convince the world that he wanted peace while Arafat wants to throw the people of Israel into the sea?
It's up to the judges to decide that.
March 2, 2002
If, in May 1967, an Arab prince had proposed that the whole Arab world would recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it, in return for Israel's recognition of the Green Line border, we would have believed that the days of the Messiah had arrived. Masses of people would have run into the street, singing and dancing, as they did on November 29, 1947, when the United Nations called for the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine.
But then disaster struck: we conquered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Labor and Likud governments filled them up with settlements, and today this offer sounds to many like a malicious anti-Semitic plot.
The leaders of Israel tell us: Don't worry. Just as we survived Pharaoh, so we shall survive Emir Abdullah.53
So what will happen?
In Israel, every international initiative designed to put an end to the conflict passes through three stages: (a) denial, (b) misrepresentation, (c) liquidation. That's how the Sharon-Peres government will deal with this one, too. It can draw on 53 years of experience, during which both Labor and Likud governments have succeeded in scuttling every peace plan put forward.
We must not suspect, God forbid, that the successive Israeli governments were opposed to peace. Not at all. Every one of them wanted peace. They all longed for peace. "Provided peace gives us the whole country, at least up to the Jordan River, and lets us cover all of it with Jewish settlements." Until now, all peace plans have fallen short of that.
PHASE A is designed to belittle the offer. "There is nothing new there," the political sources would assert. "It is offered solely for tactical purposes. It is a political gimmick." If the offer comes from an Arab: