I expect this one to turn into one of the infamous letter exchanges. NYRB has published several accounts with different perspectives on the supposed rejection, as I remember.

Great post Jonathan, Clinton’s charisma now seems more like a miasma than charisma. But then our neo-liberals have always smelled of marsh gas or decomposing animals. Of course Clinton would not lie to us about the vast benefits of NAFTA either. And certainly, certainly the democrats who gained office with a mandate to stop the war in Iraq would not lie either as they would have stopped the war if only they didn’t have a hair appointment or were handicapped by a hangnail.

i'm sure they settled on fingering arafat for bureaucratic reasons.

While Arafat was waiting for 2 hrs. at the Whitehouse lanes, Willie Clinton was too tongue tied-up with Monica Lewinsky.
Let's cut out the chase--Clinton took aRafat as a sucker and dragged the issue out to it's limits. Demos are no better than Repubics- Zealot Zionists

Judging by the Zionist line that the whore Hillary is toeing these days, it's not surprising that her bitch Bill is also following along in lockstep.

Charles Enderlin and Clayton Swisher (sp?) both have good books on what happened with the Camp David talks and also what happened in the following months, culminating at Taba. Basically, all three sides screwed up, but Clinton and Barak decided to blame Arafat. The American press, with few exceptions, dutifully repeated what their masters told them.

F.D.R. was often accused of being a traitor to his class, however Bill Clinton is much more deserving of this distinction. He betrayed the poor white working class from which he hails as well as minorities and others who he has enchanted!

This lie should be Clinton's legacy. It allowed Sharon and now Olmert to say "there is no one to talk to". I believe Clinton empowered the ultra-right in Israel and Sharon aside is most responsible for the latest intifada.

Clinton was working with a stacked deck. It's easy to heap scorn on him, but the alternative would have been a Republican administration. One of the Republican's great successes was not so much the policies of Clinton, but his vilification amongst the left and consequent splitting of the Democrats.

Regardless, rewriting history is wrong. But don't be naive about why he did what he did. I honestly believe he did the best he felt he could in the circumstances. That's not to say he was right: he may have been able to do more. But calling him a class traitor or whatever is idiotic and lends weight to the "they're all the same" meme.

A good debate on this matter can be found here:

http://democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml

The bad thing about it is that Clinton keeps repeating the lie. He should disown it or at least qualify the assertion: the argument made in the discussion I linked to is that Arafat did not explicitly reject the offer, but took actions to undermine it. Clinton should couch it in those terms instead of pandering to the extremist tendencies in Israel as he seems to be doing.

"the alternative would have been a Republican administration"

Huh? That wasn't the alternative, that's what we got.

it might actually feed the israeli right more to blame them than to let them slide. they're much more paranoid than the usual.

Buermann, are you suggesting that the Clinton administration can be compared in any sane way to the Bush administration?

If so, are you stupid, or just ignorant? There is a world of difference between a center-right and a Republican administration.