Reuters—Remember Camp David?
Reuters news agency is reporting today that
Palestinians have long suspected that Israeli military clampdowns during a more than 5-year-old Palestinian revolt are at least partly aimed at curbing their independence aspirations.
Reuters doesn’t give Israelis an opportunity to respond to this Palestinian charge; but it should be quite clear to the news agency, even without Israeli comment, that Israel’s “military clampdowns” are meant to defend the country from Palestinian violence, and not to “curb” Palestinian independence. It should be clear because those “clampdowns” began only weeks after the Palestinians were offered independence at Camp David. In fact, even as the Israeli military was forced to “clamp down” in response to the Palestinian violence that accompanied Arafat’s rejection of the Camp David offer, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak endorsed an even more generous offer of Palestinian statehood during negotiations at Taba.
Israel wasn’t “curbing” Palestinian independence aspirations—it was offering the Palestinians their first ever independent state.
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