David Horowitz, editor of the Jerusalem Report, recently said on the NPR show To the Point that Barak offered "basically all the territory the Palestinians were purporting to seek." This is a widely repeated claim—that Israel offered something like the "pre-1967 borders" that had long been the mantra of Palestinians who favored a two-state solution. But for Palestinians to get all the territory that had been under Arab control before the war of 1967 would mean getting a) all of what we now think of as the West Bank; b) all of East Jerusalem (which some consider part of the West Bank); and c) all of the walled "Old City" that lies between East and West Jerusalem. Barak never offered any of those things—not at Camp David, not at Taba.

So, Barak hung on to key parts of the Old City and proposed that, before surrendering the West Bank, Israel would annex 9 percent of it, leaving 91 percent for the Palestinians.  That was his last, best offer, at Camp David. But wait. Didn't Barak, as his defenders say, offer Arafat land from Israel proper in return for the annexed 9 percent?

Yes. But the terms of the trade bordered on insulting. In exchange for the 9 percent of the West Bank annexed by Israel, Arafat would have gotten land as large as 1 percent of the West Bank. And, whereas some of the 9 percent was choice land, symbolically important to Palestinians, the 1 percent was land whose location wasn't even specified.