 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 July 2000 Issue No. 491 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 July 2000 Issue No. 491
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Mood watching at the Camp
By Thomas GorguissianAfter six days of media blackout on the outcome of the negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis taking place in Maryland's blissful Camp David, US President Bill Clinton shed some light on 16 July.
"God, it's hard," he told the New York Daily News. "It's like nothing I've ever dealt with."
Clinton's assessment came on the same day news reports claimed there were signals of "Palestinian optimism" and "Israeli pessimism."
With such confusion in the air, mood indicators last week might well have been the only kind of reporting coming out of the press centre based at Thurmont Elementary School, near the secluded Camp David.
Due to the media blackout imposed by the US hosts, there has been no progress reports, a ban on cellular phone communication and hundreds of reporters from all over the world gathered here about 70 miles away from Washington at a loss for words. The only guiding light as to the direction the meeting is taking has been through leaks, predictions and a great deal of speculation.
Statements made by US officials before the opening of the summit attended by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was that a deadline of 18 July was set at which point the sparring parties would either reach an agreement or take a break. This deadline is one day before Clinton was scheduled to leave for Japan to take part in the summit of the most industrialised nations, known as the G-8. White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart confirmed or denied nothing.
"There's a lot of people talking. A lot of them don't know what they're talking about. Only time will tell who does and who doesn't," said Lockhart.
There was one moment when rumour had it Arafat was threatening to leave the Camp. It was also reported that special envoy Dennis Ross was the source of Arafat's wrath, when he presented proposals on Jerusalem and refugees which were identical to those made by Barak before heading to Camp David last week.
"I didn't see any luggage today," Lockhart told reporters while commenting on this sensational tidbit.
During the first few days of negotiations, the question raised was: Who is in and who is out of Camp David? The United States refused to allow six Palestinian opposition figures, described by the US media as "leftists," to meet Arafat and confer with him at Camp David. Instead, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met those Palestinian officials at a federal emergencies training centre in the town of Emmitsburg, Maryland, a location which had been set aside for technical discussions parallel to the peace talks.
"Given the spirit of the ground rules we've put down, we indicated that we would prefer that that meeting not happen up at Camp David," Lockhart said in a news briefing.
On the second day of the talks, State Department officials rushed to silence Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Amr who was speaking to reporters about Palestinian peace positions outside the press centre. "You are breaking a media blackout that was agreed by the three leaders," reprimanded a State Department official.
"I am only analysing and repeating the known Palestinian positions," the Palestinian minister replied. Meanwhile, inside the press centre, the Israeli Prime Minister's spokesman Gadi Baltiansky, and Israeli Knesset, or parliament, member Rabbi Michael Melchior, were meeting with journalists. The excuse given for Barak's spokesman was that he was talking about the suspension or the cancellation of the Phalcon early warning system deal which Israel promised China, but had to give up after US pressure.
But Rabbi Melchior was talking about the issues which were on the table with Palestinians, described in Camp David as "core issues." Two days later, an American official expelled Limor Livnat, a former Israeli minister and member of the opposition Likud party, from the press centre, where she was voicing her opposition to Barak's peace policies. Journalists wondered if there were double standards applied to the US-imposed news blackout.
As was the case during the Wye River talks between Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the parking lot of the press centre was used to conduct interviews on the sly, away from the eyes and ears of American officials. Even anti-Barak demonstrators used that spot to leave their mark in the form of a graffiti on a stop sign that read: "Barak is a traitor."
It seems Thurmont, a little town of about 5,200 (not counting the journalists and the negotiating teams), has also learned something from the negotiating sides. The removal of three American flags from those rooms in the elementary school used to accommodate journalists reportedly upset Congressman Roscoe G Bartlett, a Republican from Maryland. He publicly complained and asked the flags to be put back, saying his office had received hundreds of phone calls over this issue. "I don't think that most of America will understand how looking at our flag could offend people who came here at our invitation."
This "flagless" approach, usually applied in many international events, deeply disturbed Thurmont, Maryland, thrust under the spotlight of the world media.
What was noticeable too in the days of Camp David II was how the American media, especially television, served as stage for displaying Palestinian and Israeli perceptions of the peace process. The star of these confrontations on the Palestinian side was Hanan Ashrawi, whose counterparts were Israeli Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg, Israeli Immigration Minister Yuli Tamir, among others. Americans observed through this medium the extent of progress and "how nice they are sometimes to each other." Reporters, however, wondered whether these television snippets were an American effort to embellish what was going on behind closed doors at Camp David.
The media blackout basically riveted public attention onto the "chemistry [between] the main players" and "the general mood" of the negotiations. Only still photos are provided by the White House, paving the way for commentators to weave more speculations and predictions by the looks of things.
