David Matz (founder and director of the Graduate Programs of Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, and visiting professor at Tel Aviv University).

Ha'aretz, 4/1/2002

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Taba last January ended with a press conference. The parties agreed that it had been a good effort, that they were never closer, but that they had run out of time. Press accounts of the negotiation refer to it casually as a failure and, occasionally, as an empty political charade intended to influence the Israeli elections that took place in February. I have studied the Taba negotiation fairly closely and have interviewed most of those who participated. I think that Taba had the markings of becoming a negotiating success, and that political decisions intervened to end it precisely because success seemed likely.

First let's recall the main elements of the context. Camp David had failed to produce an agreement, and although there was a great deal of finger-pointing in all directions, the dominant view was that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat had been the main cause of the failure. In addition, the second intifada began in September, 2000, and the action/reaction/action pattern meant that confidence on either side that the other side wanted an agreement was very low. In December 2000, President Clinton proposed the outline of a compromise which both sides, with many reservations, said they, in some sense, accepted.

The Israel election was scheduled for February 6, 2001, and by mid-January, all predictions were that the winner would be Ariel Sharon, who had promised to take all Israeli offers off the table. And, finally, Ehud Barak had lost most of his government coalition, and his continuing efforts to negotiate with the Palestinians were drawing large and loud criticism from all sides.

It is important to recall that as talks at Taba began, the threat that Sharon would take over was a major incentive to seek an agreement; other circumstances - primarily the weakness of the Barak government - made reaching one seem pretty remote. Nonetheless, both sides sent to Taba strong teams of negotiators, experienced in negotiation and with each other, supported by knowledgeable professional staff. Though there had been numerous meetings of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators since Camp David, this was by far the largest group to try. Their attitudes at the outset varied from the conviction that going to Taba was a bad idea, to a sense that they had to make one last effort, to a vague feeling of nothing-to-lose. And, of course, everyone considered the impact of the negotiation, whatever its outcome, on the election.

Sticking to principles

The negotiation began with a plenary session on Sunday night, January 21, and real negotiating ran all day Monday and into Tuesday evening. On Tuesday, two Israelis were killed by Palestinians in Tul Karm, and Barak called back the cabinet member negotiators for the funeral. On Thursday, midday, the negotiation resumed; on Friday evening, there was an upbeat Shabbat dinner for all, and negotiations ended on Saturday in the late afternoon. In all, there were a little more than four days of negotiation.

In that time, there were numerous small meetings (political leaders and staff), and within this flow, it would be possible to identify three or four groups that maintained some consistency. Each of these focused on one of the four major issues: Jerusalem, borders, security and refugees. The group on refugees, though it had occasional visitors, was composed of one group that stayed stable all week as, to a somewhat lesser degree, did the group on security. In the other two discussions, more participants moved in and out.

Despite this traffic pattern, these groups engaged all week in serious, detailed negotiation which made considerable progress. There was intense exploration of how to resolve each difference. Some issues received more scrutiny than others, but on almost every question, there was clarification of issues, definition of problems, explication of concerns and limits, listing of options for resolution, and clues about where resolutions might lie.

Discussion in the opening plenary began with some skirmishing about what role the principles proposed by President Clinton should play in the negotiation but, in practice, the parties stayed pretty close to those principles through the week.

In the discussion of settlements, each side put proposed maps on the table (this was the first time the Palestinians had done so), each criticized the other's maps, and produced further maps marking concessions. In discussing Jerusalem, there was detailed discussion to define the concept of an "open city" and how two nations could divide sovereignty of the city and coordinate responsibility. In discussing refugees, there was a detailed elaboration of the issues, the mechanisms needed to deal with them, and collaborative drafting of "narratives" that would explain how each side saw the history. On the issues of security, there was an identification of those matters on which there was already agreement, and a careful walking through for each issue on which there was still difference.

The spirit of the dialogue was constructive and oriented toward solving problems. There were occasional rhetorical flourishes, and occasional eruptions of frustration, but these did not dominate the proceeding; civility, cooperation, and hard work did.

Just a few days more

No signed agreements were produced at Taba. But on nearly every issue discussed, individuals interviewed on both sides said that they could see, by the end of the Taba process, where an agreement would probably lie. They were clear enough about what the choices looked like, and what the other side could and could not accept, to see how the pieces could fit together.

When I asked the negotiators, "If you had had three or four more days at Taba, would that have been enough time to reach an agreement?" many interviewees said "yes." Moreover, various negotiators during Taba made statements, including at least one to Barak, that agreement on some of the major issues was possible and even, on some matters, imminent. My own review of the positions and options available as Taba ended found nothing implausible in those judgments. That said, several qualifications need be considered.

*An agreement anticipated is not an agreement reached. Surprises can arise; what one party intuits about the other's acceptance may turn out to be wrong; and people change their minds.

*The potential agreements had not been formally approved by negotiating team leaders nor reviewed as part of a total package, though there was no indication that any individual negotiation was going beyond the understood "red lines." And, most importantly, the heads of each government had not approved any agreements.

*On the discussion of three major questions there is much less reason to be optimistic: The Temple Mount and the "holy basin" received relatively little discussion and the parties could only agree to disagree; the number of refugees who could return to Israel was discussed, and while the gap between negotiating positions was not small, it was smaller than public positions would make it look; and, perhaps most importantly, there was no discussion at all about an end-to-the-conflict provision, a provision with many difficult issues buried in it.

*One critique of Taba has been that everything presented there had been presented before in some other forum, and thus no new ground was broken. As there had been many meetings and negotiations between the end of Camp David and the beginning of Taba, and as all of those were "off the record," it is quite impossible to know if any offer or concession made at Taba had been made before in another conversation. I will rely on the report of almost all those who negotiated at Taba who said that they saw and heard new possibilities there, felt progress was definitely made, and saw possible agreements on the horizon.

So, even with these important qualifiers, it is my view that major progress toward major agreement was being made. And then it was ended.

At the peace cabinet meeting on January 18, when a last round of negotiation was first proposed, the idea was expressed that negotiations would run until six days before the election, which would mean ending by Wednesday, January 31. During the negotiation itself, it was vaguely understood that negotiations might run until Sunday or Monday, the 28th or 29th. On Saturday the 27th, a decision was taken to leave Taba that day. The press conference the same day day stressed that there was not enough time to reach an agreement. In short, the negotiators used about one-half the time available to negotiate a settlement, and a decision was taken not to use the four additional days. Who ended the process and why?

Who terminated Taba?

The question of who ended the Taba negotiation is in dispute. The Israelis say it was a joint decision; the Palestinians say it was an Israeli decision. In any event, however, there is no indication that the Palestinians objected very much. So, one way or the other, it looks like the leadership of both sides concurred in ending it. Why?

For Arafat we have some contradictory stories, but nothing reliable that looks like a real indication of his motive. For Barak's intent, the evidence points in several directions. Accounts of the peace cabinet meeting of January 18, at which the decision was taken to try again at Taba, make clear that Barak gave no clear signal about what he would do if an agreement were reached, other than to allow the negotiators to go. More positively, Barak sent a team of ministers that was as "agreement-seeking" as one could imagine in the circumstances.

On Tuesday, however, when the two Israelis were killed, a decision had to be made whether to continue the negotiation, to take a break, or to end it. Most of the Israeli negotiators were against taking a break, worrying that the excellent momentum of the first two days of negotiation would be lost, and telling Barak that some agreements looked at least possible. The prime minister brought most of the top negotiators back to Jerusalem anyway. In addition, after the middle of the week, various top Israeli negotiators left Taba, suggesting either that they felt Barak did not intend to treat any outcome seriously, or that they just did not believe an agreement was possible. The decision to halt the negotiations on Tuesday may have had political justification, but it clearly showed Barak's less than full commitment to finding an agreement.

And then we have the decision to end the negotiation on Saturday. It is clear that the decision was initiated by Israeli leadership, though the responsibility for the decision among Barak, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Gilad Sher is unclear. We do know that leadership on both sides agreed to keep from the public the fact that the negotiators had reached an agreement on many aspects of the refugee question. There was vague talk about reconvening in Europe and about having Barak and Arafat make a joint statement about something positive. This meant trading concrete progress at Taba with all parties present and working for the possibility of future meetings, some of which would have to take place, rather bizarrely, after the election of Sharon.

In short, Barak appears to have been ambivalent throughout the week about what he wanted from Taba, and on Saturday decided that an agreement was more problematic than a non-agreement.

There were, of course, many reasons to make such a decision. For the Palestinians, why make an agreement with a prime minister who has almost no government and a highly doubtful chance to remain in office? If Sharon takes over, the Palestinians will have reached their red lines and will wind up with an agreement of no legal significance. For the Israelis, what impact an agreement would have on the February 6 election? If an agreement were approved by Arafat and Barak and then voted down by the public, would the Israeli negotiating position be weakened?

And, finally and most difficult for both sides - even if an agreement were approved by Barak and Arafat, and were approved by the Israeli electorate - would the populations on each side hold together through the implementation of the major concessions required by the kind of agreement evolving at Taba?

Reasonable people could conclude, as apparently Barak and perhaps Arafat did, that agreement, as a matter of delicate political judgment, was more dangerous than non-agreement. To so conclude, however, meant ignoring the one moment when the parties were closer to a possible agreement than they had ever been, and to leave the immediate future to a new government sworn to move away from any possible agreement. By one form of reasoning, the forces of history as manifested in the national ethos of each side were against any agreement that could have come out of Taba. The people did not want it, and it was the job of leadership to correctly read the possibilities their people could accept. But, using another angle of reasoning, leaders are occasionally given a brief opportunity to change those possibilities.

Taba may have been that opportunity.

*This article is included in MEDEA's Special File Num. 4:
What did really happen in Camp David?