The failure of the Camp David talks at the end of
August 2000 may have been convenient for the heads of the negotiating
teams of both of the "local" parties, namely, Prime Minister Barak and
Chairman (or "President") Arafat. In any case, in the wake of this
failure, on September 28, bloody clashes erupted on both sides of the
"Green Line", which brought a sort of "wake-up call" in Israel along with
chain reactions in all the states of the Arab League. Thus the Oslo
agreements apparently collapsed, and indeed, perhaps, the entire "peace
process".
This development as a whole, Aharon Amir maintains,
cannot be properly understood without returning to the events of late May
2000 in southern Lebanon, when the IDF suddenly, unilaterally abandoned
Israel's northern security zone at the behest of Prime Minister and
Defense Minister Ehud Barak. In a unilateral, clandestine, and startling
manner, Israel then caused the collapse of the South Lebanese Army (SLA),
a force that since the late 1970s had been an integral part of the defense
system for the settlements of northern Israel and had paid for this with
the lives of hundreds of its soldiers: Christians, Druze, and Shi'ite
Muslims.
To substantiate this claim, the author provides
segments of recorded testimony - heavy with disappointment and bitterness,
marked by harsh personal experiences - from some of these Lebanese, who
now live as refugees in Israel. These testimonies, which certainly do not
reflect honorably on Israel's present leadership, are only a portion of an
extensive assortment that will be included in a "black book" initiated and
edited by Aharon Amir.
