Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed [Hardcover]

Raymond G. Helmick (Author), Jesse Jackson (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0745322190 | ISBN-13: 978-0745322193 | Publication Date: August 11, 2004

'Ray Helmick has conducted unofficial diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute for decades working closely with leaders on both sides. The fruit of this work is displayed in this book, an unusually sophisticated analysis of the flaws in peace diplomacy and the importance of real and perceived justice to the sustainability of any agreement. His book is all the more persuasive because he clearly cares deeply about the safety and security of the Jews of Israel but also of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine. It is hard to this book down.' Joseph V. Montville , Diplomat in Residence, American University, Senior Fellow, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC In the summer of 2000, President Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat came together to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine. It was a moment laden with hope, that ended in infamous failure. But why did it fail? The Camp David negotiations made headlines around the world for many months, but the real debates took place behind closed doors. Jesuit priest and longtime peace activist Raymond G. Helmick is one of the few people who remained in contact with what went on. He maintained communication with all parties -- including President Clinton -- throughout. This book is his startling account of the arguments, the relationships and the strategies that played out over the summer of 2000. Based on personal correspondence and position papers with all three leaders, and a long personal association with Yasser Arafat and a whole series of Israeli Prime Ministers dating back to 1985, this book offers a unique account of the real reasons behind the failure of Camp David. Helmick believes that a key factor in this failure was the scant attention given to international law by those involved. He explains the context of the negotiations and subsequent Taba talks, detailing the complex history of Israeli and Palestinian efforts to achieve peace, a process which had already been going on for so long. This includes an assessment of the level of communication that was reached in the Oslo accords, and the struggle for mutual recognition between the two peoples in the aftermath of the Six Day War. Helmick details the recommendations he gave, as a mediator, during the period. Written with empathy for all parties involved, the book does not stop short of drawing serious conclusions. Above all it is a hopeful book: Helmick shows that, despite the renewed violence, people have an enormous capacity to overcome animosity and despair. He analyses the prospects for reconciliation in these difficult times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book is another big step down the road to peace in the Middle East. I commend Reverend Helmick for writing it, and I recommend it to you. -- Rev. Jesse Jackson Ray Helmick has conducted track two, unofficial diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute for decades working closely with leaders on both sides. The fruit of this work is displayed in Why Camp David Failed!, an unusually sophisticated analysis of the flaws in peace diplomacy and the importance of real and perceived justice to the sustainability of any agreement. His book is all the more persuasive because he clearly cares deeply about the safety and security of the Jews of Israel but also of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine. It is hard to this book down. -- Joseph V. Montville, Diplomat in Residence, American University, Senior Fellow, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC For more than three decades, Fr. Raymond Helmick, S.J. has been engaged professionally and personally, sometimes at risk of his life, in work to undertand and help resolve the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have known Fr. Helmick since the mid-1980s and have travelled with him several times to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. His encyclopedic knowledge of the conflict's history and his capacity to ask searching questions, listen sympathetically to conflicting views, and offer creative, often profoundly challenging, ideas to Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab leaders in person and through rich, ongoing correspondence are unique. Everyone concerned for peace in the Middle East, no matter how experienced or how partisan, will gain greater understanding of the conflict and what's required for peace from reading Fr. Helmick's book. -- Ronald J. Young, Executive Director, U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East

About the Author

Raymond Helmick is an American Jesuit priest, and Professor of Conflict Resolution in the Department of Theology at Boston College. For over thirty years he has worked as a mediator in various conflicts, including Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, East Timor, the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press (August 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745322190
• ISBN-13: 978-0745322193
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,267,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Long View, Narrated by a Veteran Peace Activist, December 29, 2004

By 

Sanford Goldfless - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed (Hardcover)

Helmick's Why Camp David Failed: Negotiating Outside the Law is a timely and powerful addition to the recent spate of articles and books on the subject. The U.S-brokered negotiations for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that took place at Camp David in 2000 and at Taba in January of 2001 can serve as an object lesson for what must be done differently when a new attempt at resolving the conflict is undertaken.

While the events leading up to Camp David and its immediate aftermath are the focus of the book, Helmick sets the negotiations within a masterly and evenhanded narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1985, when diplomacy focused on the conditions that were put forth by the U.S. and Israel for negotiating directly with the PLO.

Helmick's presentation of the events on the ground during this period is vivid. He is sympathetic to both Israelis and Palestinians and his narrative allows the reader to share both the hope and the despair that is the backdrop to the period's diplomatic activity.

Why Camp David Failed reads briskly and is often hard to put down. At the same time, the book's thorough index and documentation of sources give it the added virtue of being a highly accessible handbook to this period for serious students of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The author, a professor of Conflict Resolution teaching in the theology department at Boston College, draws on insights from thirty years of his work in unofficial diplomacy in the Middle East as well as in other conflict areas around the globe. He adds to his narrative at appropriate points the letters he exchanged with some of the principal personalities involved in U.S.-Israel-Palestine diplomacy, including Barak, Sharon, Clinton and Arafat.

With many trenchant insights into the challenges that faced these personalities at the time, Helmick's letters impress the reader with their boldness as well as with their grace and clarity. As we read these letters we follow the conflict through the eyes of a courageous individual insistent on speaking truth to power in order to further the goal of peace.

But Helmick does not feel that the flaws in Camp David that ultimately led to its failure lay in the personalities involved or in their lack of good faith. In his analysis, the flaws were structural. He points to the imbalance of power between the two sides, a factor that forced the weaker party to believe it could only protect its core interests by resisting continued pressure from the stronger party to make concessions. The needed counterweight to this power imbalance, tragically missing in his view at Camp David, is a legal framework for the negotiations. Helmick's thesis is that an affirmation by both sides of their willingness to abide by international law - in this case the UN resolutions on the return of occupied territory and amelioration of the situation of refugees - is the necessary framework for successful Israeli-Palestinian talks.

His moving narrative provides support for this argument.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Deal, January 22, 2005

By 

Daniel Burnstein (Boston) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed (Hardcover)

This book is a positive, one might say spiritual view of one of the longest running conflicts of recent times. The author has first hand information about the players on all sides, Israel and Palestine as well as the US and he can see their warts, sunbeams and their best human qualities. I found that hearing (reading) the actual words of the participants is a rare opportunity to see that they are special people but they also put their pants on one leg at a time. If you want the real deal about the Camp David talks, the supposed generous offer and the reaction to it read this book first and then read the others.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Legally and Logically Flawed, August 4, 2006

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed (Hardcover)

As its title suggests, this book's leitmotif is that peacemaking can succeed only if based on international law, and that Israel is responsible for the failure of the 2000 Camp David negotiations between itself and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) because its positions were inconsistent with international law. As Joel Singer of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLPs, wrote, the justification presented by Helmick (a Jesuit priest, who makes no claim to a legal education) for his theory is both legally and logically flawed.

He argues repeatedly that U.N. Security Council resolution 242 requires complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice line, even though this resolution only requires withdrawal from occupied territories (but not all the territories), a wording long recognized as not requiring full Israeli withdrawal. This phrasing requires only that the two parties negotiate the location of a "secure and recognized" boundary, not necessarily the armistice line. In fact, the author himself, disregarding his main argument, proposes territorial changes in Israel's favor in the boundary in the Jerusalem area.

Helmick also preaches the idea that, to be consistent with international law, any final Israeli-Palestinian agreement must include an Israeli commitment to permit the Palestinian refugees to relocate to Israel in accordance with U.N. General Assembly resolution 194, while expressing the hope that this step will not lead to the destruction of Israel, because perhaps not all 3.5 million Palestinians that call themselves refugees will choose to immigrate to Israel. In making this argument, the author ignores the small fact that resolution 194 is not part of international law, that the two parties specifically based the Oslo agreements on U.N. Security Council resolution 242 (and its companion resolution 338) but not on resolution 194 (or any other General Assembly resolutions), and that the relocation of Palestinians to Israel is wholly inconsistent with the Oslo agreements that were intended to create two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian, rather than two Palestinian states.

Negotiating Outside the Law is replete with embarrassing factual errors and bizarre assertions. Helmick calls the Palestinian intifada "a campaign of nonviolence," and claims that Abu Nidal was an Israeli Mossad agent. He ludicrously asserts that prior to the Madrid conference, Secretary of State James Baker obtained a written commitment from Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to allow the PLO to have a recognized headquarters in Jerusalem. Hezbollah attacks on Israel, he suggests, were merely reprisals for Israeli attacks on their villages, and Helmick indicates that the notorious Hamas terrorist, Yahya Ayyash (the "engineer"), who orchestrated suicide bombings that caused the deaths of more than seventy Israeli civilians, restrained Hamas from suicide attacks. With that kind of twisted logic, no wonder that Helmick's only other publication on these matters, an article summarizing his book,[Raymond G. Helmick, S.J., "Coercive Agreements and the Disparity of Power," Counterpunch, Dec. 18-19, 2004] was published in Counterpunch, an Internet magazine edited by Alexander Cockburn, who also published articles claiming that Jews spread anthrax and that the Israeli Mossad bombed the World Trade Center on 9-11.

Other than its flamboyant mistakes, Negotiating Outside the Law is supremely dull, consisting of a summary of the main peace process-related events that occurred from the mid-1980s through the post-Camp David conference, based almost exclusively on New York Times articles. Intertwined with this potted history are the full texts of long letters the author wrote during those years--primarily to his Palestinian correspondents--advising them on how to negotiate more effectively with Israel. His advice was not limited to the verbal; Helmick, who falsely claims the title of mediator, urged his Palestinian friends to open an intifada against Israel shortly in early 2000.