Madam, - Charles Krauthammer in his column today (June 19th), baldly states that at the Camp David negotiations in 2000 Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat a Palestinian state on 95 per cent of the occupied territories with Jerusalem as its capital. How does Mr Krauthammer know this?
At the behest of Ehud Barak nothing was written down so nobody knows for sure exactly what was offered and what was not.
Most thorough studies that have been done on what happened at those negotiations, such as those by Charles Enderlin and Clayton Swisher, show that the Palestinians were offered substantially less than what Mr Krauthammer is suggesting.
Not only were they to receive around 75 per cent of the occupied territories which would not have territorial contiguity and the Israelis could close in case of "emergency" routes joining the blocks of Palestinian land, but all borders were to be held by Israel for at least 30 years and returned by "mutual agreement".
In addition, Israel was to control the vital water supplies in the area. As the Israelis currently draw over six times more water from the aquifers than do the Palestinians, this was rejected by Arafat.
Since the ending of these negotiations the myth has been pushed by pro-Zionists like Mr Krauthammer that it was all the Palestinians' fault.
It is disingenuous and designed to stifle criticism of Israeli policy, which is designed to grab more and more land at the expense of the Palestinians.
Mr Krauthammer might note that settler numbers in the West Bank have doubled since the signing of the Oslo Accords. Hardly indicative of an Israeli desire for a peaceful reconciliation with a viable Palestinian state. - Yours, etc,
PAUL WILLIAMS, Circular Road, Kilkee, Co Clare.