Rabbi Ira Youdovin ("Arabs shouldn't throw away another chance at resolution," Perspective, June 1) repeats the familiar canard that the Palestinians made no counter-offer at Camp David in response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's unprecedented concessions. This myth arose from the self-serving story put out by Barak and President Clinton in an attempt to place the entire blame for the summit's failure on Arafat. It was accepted uncritically by much of the American and Israeli media at the time. Since then, fuller, more accurate accounts of the negotiations have emerged. According to Israel's own chief negotiator Gilad Sher, on July 21, 2000 at Camp David the Palestinians presented a map of the West Bank as they envisioned it in a peace accord. A similar Palestinian counter-proposal was also presented at the final round of peace talks in Taba on Jan. 23, 2001, showing Palestinian acceptance of Israel's annexation of 3.5% of the West Bank (compared to Israel's Taba proposal of 6%). The Camp David map also showed that the Palestinians accepted the idea of a land swap, under which Israel would incorporate three West Bank settlement blocs in exchange for land of equal size and value. Barak had proposed larger settlement blocs, and an unequal exchange of territory.

The Palestinians made counterproposals on other issues as well. At Camp David, Arafat proposed an arrangement for Jerusalem whereby the Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the Palestinian neighborhoods, while Israel would hold sovereignty over the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, along with the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, as part of a land swap, a position Israel accepted only later at the Taba talks. All this is confirmed by Sher in Just Beyond Reach: The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations 1999-2001, and in Charles Enderlin's Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, which was the basis for a PBS documentary shown nationwide last year.

A more equitable solution for Jerusalem would be to internationalize sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram, while dividing actual control fairly between both sides, as the United Nations recommended in Resolution 194. Palestinian leaders other than Arafat proposed this to Israel at Camp David; Israel accepted, while Arafat rejected this solution. Those more moderate Palestinian leaders have now gained greater power under Prime Minister Abu Mazen, offering hope for a future peace accord which would divide the land between two states in a way that would win the backing of most Palestinians and Israelis.

The writer is President of Chicago Peace Now and co-editor of a forthcoming volume, From Baghdad to Jerusalem: A New Road to Middle East Peace?. He served as Senior Foreign Press Translator in the Israel Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.