Originally posted by: teclis1023
By colonialism, I imagine you've mistaken Israel for both Syria and Jordan. You see, after they attacked Israel in '48 and lost, they then claimed the land. Syrian leaders referred to the whole of Palestine as simply a souther tier of Syria. Jordan annexed the West bank and held it until '67. During this time, Jordan massacred over 5,000 Palestinians in response to the rising populist support of Palestinian autonomy.
But you knew that, right?
In fact, you'll find that Israel's alleged 'colonialism' is ridiculous. The West Bank, Gaza Strip and even Sinai Peninsula fell into Israel's hands after the '67 war. Israel has since returned the peninsula and Gaza. In fact, Ehud Barak attempted to return the West Bank PLUS a bit of Israel to the Palestinian people. They were given everything they asked for, and rejected it.
I'm sure you included that in considering your statement, right?
No, you obviously have little knowledge about what's happening in the region. Perhaps if you could ascend above petty insults and present some sort of... I dunno ... argument, you'd be taken more seriously on these boards.
Take some time and read. The conditions that the Palestinians live in certainly aren't wonderful, but you'll find that their economy, rate of education and general infrastructure (electric/water) has risen so dramatically that it's a travesty to mention 'apartheid.' That word fits, perhaps, with the Jordanian rule over the Palestinians, but certainly not with the Israeli rule.
I support a Palestinian state and autonomy, but they have yet to display the ability to govern themselves and reduce attacks on Israel. They're comfortable as victims, displayed perfectly by their historic willingness to pass up peace accords, break cease-fires and reject land offerings. They aren't unified yet, and violence becomes their common-denominator when it comes to Palestinian action. They view the Israelis as terrorists, and then blow up buses filled with school children, all the while hiding their violent operations behind civilian houses. This is all strategy. They hide bombs in ambulances, slip bombs under women's clothing and then complain that the Israelis invade their autonomy by searching.
If you're diploma was worth more than toilet paper then you'd know that what you said about Barak is a mythical lie. You would also know that almost all colonialism come about via war so Israel's victory does not absolve the fact that she has SETTLERS in a land that is not her own.
Why don't you read up on the Haaretz article: "The selling of the summit" by Aluf Benn posted on haaretzdaily.com 7/26/2001. You're a degree-holding intellectual so I'm sure you can find it.
The selling of the summit
How Ehud Barak took advantage of the isolation and
blackout imposed by the Americans at Camp David to
win the Israeli-Palestinian propaganda battle.
The Camp David summit in July 2000 did not put an end to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict; the participants in the meeting failed in an attempt to
hammer out a permanent settlement. But the summit meeting had important
results all the same, which since then have in fact dictated the political and
diplomatic agenda in the Middle East. In the consciousness of the Israeli
leadership and the Israeli media, as well as in the United States and in
most countries of the West, the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, is
perceived to have been in the right, for offering far-reaching concessions in
the face of the rejectionist approach displayed by the Palestinian leader,
Yasser Arafat. Barak succeeded in persuading the shapers of public
opinion in Israel and Washington that Arafat destroyed the peace process
when he rejected the generous offer put forward by Israel. It is only in the
past few weeks that a contrary version of events has emerged, according
to which Israel did not make any serious concessions and only tried to
force on Arafat - with the help of Bill Clinton - a humiliating treaty of
capitulation. That image is a very valuable political asset, one that is today
serving Barak's successors, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres. Even after 10 months of hostilities with the
Palestinians, Israel is not being subjected to pressure to make substantial
concessions. No international body has told Israel, "Leave the Temple
Mount and take back the refugees, and then you will have quiet." The
political criticism and pressure on the Sharon government are focusing on
the military measures Israel is taking, or on marginal issues such as the
stationing of observers in the territories. The partitioning of Jerusalem,
which was at the center of the talks at Camp David, is, once again, not on
the immediate agenda of the attempt to resolve the conflict. The
Palestinians' declaration of an independent state, a move that appeared
inevitable, has been postponed to the indefinite future, together with the
implementation of the interim agreements and the next redeployment of
forces in the West Bank - moves to which Barak objected even during the
period of the Yitzhak Rabin government. The image campaign did not wait
for the verdict of the historians and the memoir writers; it was won during
the summit meeting itself. Barak took advantage of the isolation and
blackout imposed by the American hosts on the delegations at Camp
David in order to dictate from there the media agenda in Israel and the
United States. The Americans, acting like their usual square selves, were
committed to the rules of the game and so maintained silence. The decisive
step taken by the Israeli delegation at Camp David was to leak the
American peace proposal, which was presented to Barak and Arafat,
along with the disclosure that the prime minister had agreed to accept it as
a basis for discussion, while the Palestinian leader said no. The disclosure
of the details of the proposal in Israel, and subsequently in the American
media, while the summit was still in progress, placed Clinton and Barak on
the same side, against the rejectionist Arafat. It also would have enabled
Barak to depict his concessions as surrender to American pressure, if an
agreement had been reached. People close to Barak say in retrospect that
the publication of the American plan had the effect of locking Clinton into
the plan and led him to cast the blame on the Palestinian side and to give
the prime minister high marks. The Israeli publicity effort at Camp David
was conducted by Eldad Yaniv, then the head of the Information
Department in the Foreign Ministry and today the head of a law firm in Tel
Aviv. The Israeli journalists who covered the summit remember vividly the
briefings they received from Yaniv, who was the main source of
information about what was going on. He was also the author of the
"talking points" sheets that were distributed to cabinet ministers and the
other Barak publicists. Yaniv had worked with Barak since his election
campaign as a member of his strategic team, together with Moshe Gaon
and Tal Zilberstein. After the elections those two remained in their private
firm and Yaniv came to work in the Prime Minister's Office, with the task
of preparing the referenda that were planned to endorse agreements with
the Syrians and the Palestinians. At Camp David, Yaniv ensconced himself
in the war room of the Israeli delegation at the U.S. government
firefighters' school in the town of Emmitsburg at the foothills of the
Catoctin Mountains, where the presidential retreat is located. Yaniv didn't
enter the closed facility even once. His working tools were the constant
telephone conversations he held with the prime minister from Dogwood
cabin on "the hill," as Camp David was referred to by the delegation
members, and a secure line to Tel Aviv, at the other end of which were the
advertising man Moshe Gaon and the spokesman David Zisso, who
remained in Israel. Yaniv acted as the "relay station." Every morning he
arrived with Yoni Koren (Barak's former bureau chief in the army) at the
media center in the town of Thurmont and disclosed what was really going
on inside Camp David - before the official briefing of the White House
spokesman, which dealt with trivial matters such as the breakfast menu in
the president's cabin. Yaniv was always available by mobile phone for
correspondents' questions, for providing information he wanted to convey
and for denials. The mission assigned to Yaniv was to prepare public
opinion in Israel for the day after the summit for one of two alternatives -
an agreement or a crisis. Barak knew that the Jerusalem issue would be
raised at Camp David and that it would be necessary to break the taboo
of "Israel's eternal, united capital" that prevailed within the Israeli public.
As head of a left-wing government, whose coalition had split apart on the
way to the summit, Barak knew he would not be able to wait until the last
minute to reveal the concessions, as Menachem Begin had done at the
previous Camp David summit, with Egypt, in 1978. From the moment the
subject of Jerusalem was raised in the discussions, a wave of reports
flooded Israel about Barak's readiness to divide the city. The public
opinion surveys that were conducted during the summit showed that the
message had been absorbed and that there was a majority in favor of the
deal Barak was proposing. To demonstrate the full weight of the prime
minister's decision and to place him at the political center, a report was
leaked that two top members of the delegation, cabinet ministers Shlomo
Ben-Ami and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, were pressing Barak to make
additional concessions in Jerusalem. It was afterward learned that the two
had indeed put forward a more flexible approach, but during the summit,
the effect was to create the impression of a breaking of ranks within the
Israeli delegation. The same individual who was behind the leak was also
quick to deny it, and all without blinking. The obligatory denial only
enhanced the credibility of the story. Within a few days it became clear
that the prospects for an agreement were slim. Arafat closeted himself in
his cabin, refusing to discuss any of the proposals, and forbade his staff to
conduct negotiations. So now it became necessary to prepare public
opinion for a failure, and portray Arafat as the guilty party. Yaniv and the
official spokesmen of the delegation, Gadi Baltiansky and Merav Parsi-
Zadok, began to drive the message home to the correspondents. The goal
was to apprise the public at home of what was going on, but without going
into too many details. The reports in Israel were immediately picked up
and quoted by the American media, which had no independent sources of
their own during the summit. Clinton's bridging proposal was conveyed to
the sides orally. Gidi Greenstein, the secretary of the Israeli delegation, put
it in writing. The decision to leak it was made when it became clear that
the conference was close to collapse - although Barak was careful enough
not to give Yaniv an explicit instruction, which might be picked up by the
Americans' wiretapping machinery. The delegation's messenger came
down from "the hill" bearing a copy of the plan for Yaniv, and details from
it began to crop up in the media in a growing stream of leaks. The leaks
were not altogether accurate with regard to such details as the percentage
of the territories Israel would withdraw from, in order to keep things under
a fog to some degree and not to embarrass the hosts. To heighten
credibility, the correspondents were told which cabinet ministers had
spoken with the prime minister; the reporters immediately called their
sources in Israel and received the same information. Barak controlled the
flow of information from Camp David in two main channels: phone calls to
the ministers who acted as his publicity team back home - such as Haim
Ramon, Yossi Beilin, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Dalia Itzik, who hurried to
report what they had heard to news programs on the radio; and Yaniv's
briefings to the correspondents on the scene. The method was based on
spinning the news, but without actually lying. When Barak wanted to hint
that progress was being made, the correspondents were told, "Reisner is
on the hill, and you know what that means." Colonel Daniel Reisner, from
the office of the Judge Advocate General, was the formulator of the
agreements for the Israeli delegation. His being called to Camp David
meant, supposedly, that serious negotiations were under way. The truth is
that Reisner was engaged only in preparing internal papers for the Israeli
side and never even spoke with the Palestinians. Still, even Barak's
efficient operation had its share of hitches. The biggest one of all was the
headline above the byline of Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer in the
mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth at the end of the first week of the
summit: "Barak returning without an agreement." That report antedated by
two days the "crisis of packing to leave" fomented by the Israeli
delegation, which at the time was vehemently denied. Other snafus
involved the late-night phone calls made by Army Radio correspondents
Razi Barkai and Raviv Drucker in an attempt to infiltrate their way into the
camp. At one point, they got a confirmation from Shahak that the Yedioth
headline was incorrect, while at another, Ben-Ami confirmed that
Jerusalem was on the negotiating table. But the damage was minimal. The
final movement of the "spin orchestra" was played on the flight home. The
summit ended with a dramatic press conference called by Barak at the
hotel of the Israeli journalists, in the town of Frederick, in which the prime
minister explained the breakdown of the talks. On the way to the Israel
Air Force plane, at Andrews Air Force Base, Barak decided that all the
members of the delegation should give their account of the summit. The
result was that the trip home turned into a flying press conference that
went on for hours, in the air and at the stopover in Rome. Everyone gave
interviews at great length and rehashed the official version, which held that
Barak was a distinguished, visionary leader, while Arafat was a
recalcitrant rejectionist who was leading his nation to a historical calamity.
This time, the details that were provided about the withdrawal proposals in
the West Bank and Jerusalem were more accurate. During the landing at
Ben- Gurion Airport, Barak delivered another speech, read out the
messages that had been formulated on the plane, and for the first time said
that Arafat was not a partner, and that "the heart is aggrieved." A year
after the summit, Barak's propaganda victory at Camp David is even more
pronounced in the light of Israel's ongoing failure to get across its position
during the violent standoff with the Palestinians. Western public opinion,
which took Barak into its fold as a peace-seeking leader who is ready for
compromise, rejected the contentions of both Barak and Sharon that
Israel was the victim of a Palestinian terrorist offensive, and found no
moral difference between the terrorist attacks of Hamas and the actions of
the Israel Defense Forces.
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