I was surfing a Pro-Israel website that shall remain nameless (it was recently added to a list of websites considered “terrorist” by the US - check news.google). One of their anti-Arafat points was that the Palestinians were offered a complete nation at the Oslo accord meetings but turned it down as it would require disarmament. Their arguement goes that if Arafat had accepted this, the Palestinians would be far better off today than they are and the fact that they didn’t means they are all blood-thirsty blah blah blah.
Without getting into a flamewar, what exactly were the Palestinians offered?
Another site I visited claims the US gives Israel billions a year in aid and loan guarantees that have a record of not being repaid. How can I find out if this is true and exactly how much money is involved?
OK, I’ll try and answer this (badly). According to Wikipeda , the Oslo Accords granted Palestinian self determination. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were to haev Israeli forces withdrawn from them, and Palestinian self-government would occur in three phases, leading upto permanent status. This happened in a number of places, and the Palestinian Authority was set up, as the Palestinian government. This, eventually broke down, and led to more unrest.
Fast forward to 2000, at Camp David. Preisdent Clinton tried to broker some sort of agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The end result was the Trilateral Statement, where Israel would withdraw from occupied territories (Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, Sinai), and both sides agreed against any unilateral action and recognised the US as a key broker in the peace process.
Needless to say, this also broke down. The Israelis refused to withdraw from all occupied territories, and made limited concessions to the Palestinians, which could never form a viable state. The Palestinians also wanted the “right of return”, so that those Palesitinans dispossessed from their homes in Israel could go back. The Israelis did not agree to this, citing that over a million Jews had been dispossessed from their homes in Arab countries, and so such a right to return was infeasible.
So, the Camp David talks broke down, and the Al-Aqsa Infatida began, with neither side closer to getting a resolution to the conflict.
Sinai? Unless there is some other Sinai, Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979. This was NEVER Palestinian terriory. It was territory taken from Egypt during the Six Day War, IIRC. - Jinx
:smack: Sorry, my Palestinian/Israeli history’s a bit rusty. Yes, Sinai was Egyptian territory that the Israelis captured during the Six Day war, and eventually gave back.
The problem is it depends what you mean by ‘complete’, it didn’t remove all the settlemnts and left Israel in control of several key areas, and it was alot less than what Arafat and the outside world expected as it was thought that the only arae of real compromise would be East Jerusalem.
The Israeli peace-bloc Gush Shalom have a few maps of what was offered:
The US does give Israel alot of money every year in aid and loan guarantees and it’s about the order of a billion all told, but as far as I am aware Israel has not defaulted on any repayments.
Loan guarantees are, if I understand it correctly, comparable to co-signing a loan. In this context, it’s an agreement that if Israel doesn’t repay a loan, America will.
AFAIK, Israel has never defaulted on its debt, so the guarantees have never been invoked. America hasn’t paid anybody anything due to those guarantees.