Sources
- Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Cary: Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2007.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 274)
Israel proposed in Taba physically to dismantle, or hand over to the Palestinians for the use of returning refugees, more than one hundred settlements. But those that formed coherent blocs adjacent to the 1967 line were supposed to remain as such under Israel’s sovereignty. However, as the maps that the Palestinians produced at Taba showed, our interlocutors totally rejected the very concept of blocs and referred to the settlements more as isolated outposts that would have to be linked separately from each other to Israel. Israel could not accept such an approach for it contradicted her entire peace strategy, and the Palestinians not only knew it but have always accepted it. All the back-track channels, either official or freelance, ever conducted by Israelis and Palestinians before Taba and after, were based on the acceptance by the Palestinians of the principle of settlement blocs.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 275)
The Palestinians’ lack of interest in a deal in Taba was made patently clear when Yossi Sarid, probably the most emblematic ‘dove’ of Israeli politics and now a member of the Israeli delegation, proposed a Solomonic solution to the differences still pending between the parties on Jerusalem: the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Old City and the holy belt leading from the Old City to the Mount of Olives. Had the Palestinians agreed to stick to the letter and the spirit of the Clinton parameters there should have been no reason for such differences to exist, but Mr Sarid thought nevertheless that an attempt should be made to reach a compromise by going the extra mile towards meeting the reservations of the Palestinians. ‘Let us split the burden between us,’ he suggested; ‘two of the four issues pending will be solved according to your position, and two according to ours, which is, as you know, respectful of the Clinton parameters.’ But to no avail. The Palestinians remained unimpressed.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 275)
Mythologies apart, Taba did not allow an agreement, not because of the fact that the Israelis’ qualitative political time was a desperately diminishing asset, but because the Palestinians treated the parameters as non-committal, and insisted on changing and challenging them on each and every point.