Seven Days in January: The Taba Negotiations of 2001
For seven days in the Egyptian resort town of Taba, between January 21 and 27, 2001, Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams sat across from one another and worked — seriously, by most accounts — toward a final status agreement. It was the closest the two peoples had come. It would also be, for the foreseeable future, the last time.
The talks took place under extraordinary pressure. Israel’s outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak had lost the confidence of his own government. A general election was scheduled for February 6. The Palestinian side, led by Yasser Arafat and including chief negotiator Saeb Erekat alongside Yasser Abed Rabbo and others, arrived having survived the collapse of Camp David the previous July and five months of deepening violence during the Second Intifada. Both delegations knew the window was closing. They negotiated anyway.
What the Moratinos Non-Paper Reveals
The most important documentary record of what transpired at Taba is what became known as the Moratinos non-paper — a summary of the negotiations drafted by Miguel Moratinos, the European Union’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, who was present as an observer. The document, later published and analyzed by the Institute for Palestine Studies and reproduced in Le Monde Diplomatique‘s archives, is not a joint communiqué; neither party formally signed it. But it represents the most detailed third-party account of where the two sides actually stood.
On territory, the non-paper records that the Israeli side accepted, for the first time in any formal negotiation, the principle that a future Palestinian state should encompass territory equivalent to 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — with agreed land swaps to account for settlement blocs. The Palestinian side accepted the concept of land swaps in principle. Gaps remained on the size and location of those swaps, but the foundational Palestinian demand — a state on the 1967 lines — had, according to Moratinos, been acknowledged rather than dismissed.
On Jerusalem, the convergence was more fragile but nonetheless significant. Both sides accepted the broad framework that Arab neighborhoods would fall under Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish neighborhoods under Israeli sovereignty. The question of the Old City, and specifically the Holy Basin, remained contested. The Palestinian side maintained that sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif — the Noble Sanctuary — was non-negotiable. The Israeli side did not accept this, but the document records that both sides had moved substantially from their Camp David positions.
On refugees, the hardest of the core issues, the non-paper records that the Israeli side acknowledged for the first time a “moral and material responsibility” connected to the refugee question — a formulation Palestinians had long sought as recognition of historical injustice. Implementation details, including the number of refugees who would exercise a right of return to Israel proper, remained deeply unresolved. The Palestinian delegation insisted that the principle of the right of return, grounded in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, could not be traded away even if its practical application was subject to negotiation.
The Clinton Parameters and Their Shadow at Taba
The Taba talks were formally built on the Clinton Parameters — proposals put forward by the outgoing U.S. President in December 2000 that both sides had accepted with reservations. The Clinton Parameters proposed Israeli annexation of roughly 4–6 percent of the West Bank, a Palestinian state in the remainder with a capital in East Jerusalem, and a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees directed primarily toward the new Palestinian state rather than Israel itself.
Palestinian legal scholar Noura Erakat has noted, in work published through academic and policy channels, that the framing of the Clinton Parameters already embedded significant concessions on the Palestinian side — accepting a state on less than the full 1967 territory and accepting a diluted formulation of refugee return. At Taba, the Palestinian negotiators sought to reclaim ground while still operating within the parameters’ broad architecture. The Moratinos document suggests they moved the Israeli position meaningfully, particularly on territorial equivalence and the acknowledgment of refugee responsibility.
Yossi Beilin, the Israeli negotiator who also co-authored the earlier Geneva Initiative, later wrote in his memoirs that Taba had produced “the most far-reaching positions” Israel had ever formally tabled. He believed an agreement was within reach. The Palestinian delegation’s post-Taba statements reflected cautious agreement that unprecedented progress had been made.
Sharon’s Election and the Closing Window
On February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon won the Israeli prime ministerial election by a wide margin. His campaign had been built in part on the premise that the Oslo framework had failed and that no Palestinian partner for genuine peace existed. He did not resume the Taba process. The talks were never formally reconvened.
What was left behind was documented in the Moratinos non-paper: convergences on territory, partial movement on Jerusalem, an unprecedented Israeli acknowledgment on refugees — and a gap that the two sides had not yet closed but had, for seven days in January, genuinely narrowed. For Palestinians, the collapse of Taba was not simply a diplomatic setback. It was the moment the possibility of a negotiated end to occupation — on terms that acknowledged their fundamental rights — receded from the immediate horizon, and did not return.
Sources
- Institute for Palestine Studies — analysis and publication of the Moratinos non-paper text
- Le Monde Diplomatique archives — original publication of the Moratinos non-paper (2002)
- UN UNISPAL — documentation of Clinton Parameters and related final status frameworks
- UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), 11 December 1948 — right of return of Palestinian refugees
- Yossi Beilin, memoirs on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process (cited via Institute for Palestine Studies secondary analysis)
- Noura Erakat — academic and policy writing on Palestinian rights and the legal framework of negotiations
